A Greater Psychology

All truths, even those which seem to be in conflict, have their validity, but they need a reconciliation in some largest Truth which takes them into itself.

Sri Aurobindo

1

The Nature and Methodology of Yoga Psychology

The following account of Sri Aurobindo's first major spiritual experience provides a good starting-point for explicating the nature of yoga psychology:

...to reach Nirvana was the first radical result of my own Yoga. It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world — only when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialised shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That, featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realisation nor something glimpsed somewhere above, — no abstraction, — it was positive, the only positive reality, — although not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying or rather flooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world leaving no room or space for any reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial.¹

The illusoriness of the ego and the unreality of the world mentioned in the experience just described are well-known philosophical concepts, associated chiefly with Buddhism and Vedanta. Here, however, the non-existence of the ego and the unreality of the world are not stated as abstract philosophical concepts but as a direct experience, devoid of any thought or mental movement: "there was no ego, no real world". Herein lies the first fundamental characteristic of yogic knowledge — it is based on experience, not on thought or reasoning. Thus yoga psychology, like modern psychology, is an empirical science, that is, a body of knowledge based on observed or experiential data;

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it is not a philosophy arrived at by speculative thought. Criticizing the inadequate scientific basis of early modern psychology, Sri Aurobindo states;

The old European system of psychology was... a pseudo-scientific system. Its observations were superficial, its terms and classification arbitrary, its aim and spirit abstract, empty and scholastic.²

A direct experiential and experimental psychology seems to be demanded if psychology is to be a science and not merely a mass of elementary and superficial generalisations with all the rest guesswork or uncertain conclusion or inference. We must see, feel, know directly what we observe; our interpretations must be capable of being sure and indubitable; we must be able to work surely on a ground of sure knowledge.³

Sri Aurobindo's assertion that "Yoga... bases all its findings on experience"⁴ disaffirms views such as the following that regard Indian psychology — which is based on yogic knowledge — as philosophical rather than scientific:

There is no empirical psychology in India. Indian Psychology is based on Metaphysics.⁵ (Sinha)

In India there is no psychology in our [European] sense of the word. India is "pre-psychological"... ⁶ (Jung)

Explaining the relationship between yogic or supra-intellectual knowledge and philosophical thought through which it is expressed, Sri Aurobindo states:

...fundamentally, it [the statement of supra-intellectual things] is not an expression of ideas arrived at by speculative thinking. One has to arrive at spiritual knowledge through experience and a consciousness of things which arises directly out of that experience or else underlies or is involved in it. This kind of knowledge, then, is fundamentally a consciousness and not a thought or formulated idea. For instance, my first major experience... came after and by

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the exclusion and silencing of all thought — there was, first, what might be called a spiritually substantial or concrete consciousness of stillness and silence, then the awareness of some sole and supreme Reality in whose presence things existed only as forms but forms not at all substantial or real or concrete; but this was all apparent to a spiritual perception and essential and impersonal sense and there was not the least concept or idea of reality or unreality or any other notion, for all concept or idea was hushed or rather entirely absent in the absolute stillness. These things were known directly through the pure consciousness and not through the mind, so there was no need of concepts or words or names. At the same time this fundamental character of spiritual experience is not absolutely limitative; it can do without thought, but it can do with thought also.⁷

A second characteristic of yoga psychology is that its purview extends beyond the normal or ordinary state of awareness and includes non-ordinary states of consciousness whose view of things often contradicts that of the ordinary consciousness. For example, the ego — that which gives us the sense of being someone who exists in the world and who is separate from everyone and everything else in the world — is an unquestionable fact of experience of our ordinary consciousness. However, in the Nirvana state of consciousness, previously alluded to, the ego is an illusion. According to yoga psychology, the true view of things can be obtained only by going beyond the normal superficial mental consciousness and looking from a deeper or higher consciousness.

...knowledge only begins when we get away from the surface phenomena and look behind them for their true operations and causes. To the superficial view of the outer mind and senses the sun is a little fiery ball circling in mid air round the earth and the stars twinkling little things stuck in the sky for our benefit at night. Scientific enquiry comes and knocks this infantile first-view to pieces. The sun is a huge affair (millions of miles away from our air) around

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which the small earth circles, and the stars are huge members of huge systems indescribably distant which have nothing apparently to do with the tiny earth and her creatures. All Science is like that, a contradiction of the sense-view or superficial appearances of things and an assertion of truths which are unguessed by the common and the uninstructed reason. The same process has to be followed in psychology if we are really to know what our consciousness is, how it is built and made and what is the secret of its functionings or the way out of its disorder.⁸

The last statement leads up to the definition and scope of psychology from the standpoint of yoga.

Psychology is the science of consciousness and its status and operations in Nature and, if that can be glimpsed or experienced, its status and operations beyond what we know as Nature.

It is not enough to observe and know the movements of our surface nature and the superficial nature of other living creatures just as it [is] not enough for Science to observe and know as electricity only the movements of lightning in the clouds or for the astronomer to observe and know only those movements and properties of the stars that are visible to the unaided eye. Here as there a whole world of occult phenomena have to be laid bare and brought under control before the psychologist can hope to be master of his province.

Our observable consciousness, that which we call ourselves, is only the little visible part of our being. It is a small field below which are depths and farther depths and widths and ever wider widths which support and supply it but to which it has no visible access. All that is our self, our being, — what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature.

Even the movements of this little surface nature cannot be understood nor its true law discovered until we know all that is below or behind and supplies it — and know too all that is around it and above.⁹

The yogic view that regards our observable surface self as only

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a small part of our being is similar to the psychoanalytical view which compares the mind to an iceberg, nine-tenths of which lies below the surface. However, yoga psychology is based on a vastly more comprehensive view of consciousness, distinguishing various levels of consciousness which, in relation to the surface consciousness, are below it (the subconscient and the inconscient), behind it (the subliminal), around it (the circumconscient) and above it (the superconscient).¹⁰

From the standpoint of yoga psychology, the reductionistic view of psychoanalysis which tries to explain all human motivation, including the pursuit of art, philosophy and religion, in terms of the unconscious is due to an incomplete and lopsided view of consciousness. Commenting on the psychoanalytical reductionism, Sri Aurobindo writes:

They [the psychoanalysts] look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things [spiritual experiences] is above and not below, upari budhna eṣām.¹¹ The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest.¹²

Implicit in the statement that one must know the whole before one can know the part is the yogic view that the human being is part of the Being of the universe; therefore in order to understand the psychological nature of the human being, it is necessary to know first the metaphysical reality of the Being of the universe.

Being or the Self of things can only be known by metaphysical — not necessarily intellectual — knowledge.

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This self-knowledge has two inseparable aspects, a psychological knowledge of the process of Being, a metaphysical knowledge of its principles and essentiality.¹³

A complete psychology cannot be a pure natural science, but must be a compound of science and metaphysical knowledge.¹⁴

Thus another characteristic of yoga psychology — in which it differs from modern psychology — is that it is part of and inseparable from philosophy. Though both yoga psychology and yoga philosophy are based on experience and constitute a unified body of knowledge, their provinces and nature of enquiry are distinctly different.

Metaphysics deals with the ultimate cause of things and all that lies behind the world of phenomena. As regards mind and consciousness, it asks what they are, how they came into existence, what is their relation to Matter, Life, etc. Psychology deals with mind and consciousness and tries to find out not so much their ultimate nature and relations as their actual workings and the rule and law of these workings.¹⁵

The investigation of the workings of consciousness and the laws governing these workings calls for special processes and instruments which can be discovered only by yogic practice.

This definition [of psychology as an examination of the nature and movements of consciousness] at once takes us out of the field of ordinary psychology and extends the range of our observation to an immense mass of facts and experiments which exceed the common surface and limited range very much as the vastly extended range of observation of Science exceeds that of the common man looking at natural external phenomena only with the help [of] his unaided mind and senses. The field of Yoga is practically unlimited and its processes and instrumentation have a plasticity and adaptability and power of expansion to which it is difficult to see or set any limit.¹⁶

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It is only by Yoga process that one can arrive at an instrumentation which will drive large wide roads into the psychological Unknown and not only obscure and narrow tunnels.... It is through consciousness, by an instrumentation of consciousness only that the nature and laws and movements of consciousness can be discovered — and this is the method of Yoga.¹⁷

Yoga, by which one discovers the processes and develops the instruments required for the study of consciousness, does not refer to any specific spiritual discipline.

But what precisely do we mean by the word Yoga? It is used here in the most general sense possible as a convenient name including all processes or results of processes that lead to the unveiling of a greater and inner knowledge, consciousness, experience. Any psychic discipline by which we can pass partly or wholly into a spiritual state of consciousness, any spontaneous or systematised approach to the inner Reality or the supreme Reality, any state of union or closeness to the Divine, any entry into a consciousness larger, deeper or higher than the normal consciousness common to humankind, fall automatically within the range of the word Yoga.¹⁸

When questioned about tests of validity of the knowledge acquired by the processes of yoga, Sri Aurobindo replied:

...the experiences of yoga belong to an inner domain and go according to a law of their own, have their own method of perception, criteria and all the rest of it which are neither those of the domain of the physical senses nor of the domain of rational or scientific enquiry. Just as scientific enquiry passes beyond that of the physical senses and enters the domain of the infinite and infinitesimal about which the senses can say nothing — for one cannot see and touch an electron or know by the evidence of the sense-mind whether it exists or not or decide by that evidence whether the earth really turns round the sun and not rather the sun round the earth as our senses and all our physical experience

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daily tell us — so the spiritual search passes beyond the domain of scientific¹⁹ or rational enquiry and it is impossible by the aid of the ordinary positive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether those things exist or not or what is their law and nature. As in Science, so here you have to accumulate experience on experience, following faithfully the methods laid down by the Guru or by the systems of the past, you have to develop an intuitive discrimination which compares the experiences, see what they mean, how far and in what field each is valid, what is the place of each in the whole, how it can be reconciled or related with others that at first might seem to contradict it, etc., etc., until you can move with sure knowledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to test spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other method and I have found it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand, if you are not prepared to go through all that yourself, — as few can do except those of extraordinary spiritual stature — you have to accept the leading of a Master, as in Science you accept a teacher instead of going through the whole field of Science and its experimentation all by yourself—at least until you have accumulated sufficient experience and knowledge. If that is accepting things a priori, well, you have to accept a priori. For I am unable to see by what valid tests you propose to make the ordinary reason the judge of what is beyond it.²⁰

A Victorian agnostic objection to the claim that yogic knowledge is scientific states that yogic experience is subjective and purely individual; such experience, which is coloured by the individuality of the seer cannot be said to achieve ultimate truth. To this Sri Aurobindo replies:

One might ask whether Science itself has arrived at any ultimate truth; on the contrary, ultimate truth even on the physical plane seems to recede as Science advances. Science started on the assumption that the ultimate truth must be physical and objective — and the objective Ultimate (or even less than that) would explain

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all subjective phenomena. Yoga proceeds on the opposite view that the ultimate Truth is spiritual and subjective and it is in that ultimate Light that we must view objective phenomena. It is the two opposite poles and the gulf is as wide as it can be.

Yoga, however, is scientific to this extent that it proceeds by subjective experiment and bases all its findings on experience; mental intuitions are admitted only as a first step and are not considered as realisation — they must be confirmed by being translated into and justified by experience. As to the value of the experience itself, it is doubted by the physical mind because it is subjective, not objective. But has the distinction much value? Is not all knowledge and experience subjective at bottom? Objective external physical things are seen very much in the same way by human beings because of the construction of the mind and senses; with another construction of mind and sense quite another account of the physical world would be given — Science itself has made that very clear.... that the yoga experience is individual, coloured by the individuality of the seer... may be true to a certain extent of the precise form or transcription given to the experience in certain domains; but even here the difference is superficial. It is a fact that yogic experience runs everywhere on the same lines. Certainly, there are, not one line, but many; for, admittedly, we are dealing with a many-sided Infinite to which there are and must be many ways of approach; but yet the broad lines are the same everywhere and the intuitions, experiences, phenomena are the same in ages and countries far apart from each other and systems practised quite independently from each other. The experiences of the mediaeval European bhakta or mystic are precisely the same in substance, however differing in names, forms, religious colouring, etc., as those of the mediaeval Indian bhakta or mystic - yet these people were not corresponding with one another or aware of each other's experiences and results as are modern scientists from New York to Yokohama. That would seem to show that there is something there identical, universal and presumably true - however the colour of the translation may differ because of the difference of mental language.

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As for ultimate Truth, I suppose both the Victorian agnostic and, let us say, the Indian Vedantin may agree that it is veiled but there. Both speak of it as the Unknowable; the only difference is that the Vedantin says it is unknowable by the mind and inexpressible by speech, but still attainable by something deeper or higher than the mental perception, while even mind can reflect and speech express the thousand aspects it presents to the mind's outward and inward experience.²¹

The nature of yoga psychology may be made clearer by comparing it with modern psychology and noting some of their similarities and differences. Yoga psychology, like modern psychology, is an empirical science in the sense that both are knowledge based on experience. Both employ observation and experiment as their fundamental methods. However, the field of yoga psychology is much vaster than that of modern psychology since it extends to experiences and phenomena which are beyond the perception of the physical senses or cognizable by the intellect. Therefore, in addition to the physical senses, yoga psychology employs subtler inner senses belonging to the subliminal consciousness. Further, unlike modern psychology which relies solely on intellectual reasoning in drawing conclusions from observations, yoga psychology utilises an intuitive perception for assessing the significance and validity of experiences which pertain to non-ordinary states of consciousness and which are therefore supra-rational. Both modern and yoga psychologies presume the operation of law in the realm of the psyche. However, modern psychology attempts to discover the laws governing psychological phenomena from the study of sample data, therefrom deriving generalisations by statistical inference based on the law of probability. Yoga psychology, on the other hand, shuns generalisations and aims at understanding the human being as a part of the whole universe by proceeding intuitively from the knowledge of the whole, based on self-realisation, to the knowledge of the part. In Sri Aurobindo's words: "...this knowledge [Vijnana, which takes

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into itself all truth and sees objects of knowledge all at once in their essence, totality and parts or aspects] is not a systematised result of mental questionings and reasonings, not a temporary arrangement of conclusions and opinions in terms of the highest probability, but rather a pure self-existent and self-luminous Truth."²² Such knowledge of the essential nature of things in their totality and parts can be acquired only through spiritual experience and realisation. "The truth of things can only be perceived when one gets to what may be called summarily the spiritual vision of things and even there completely only when there is not only vision but direct experience in the very substance of one's own being and all being."²³ Thus whereas modern psychology consists of intellectual knowledge discovered by the mind, yoga psychology is supra-intellectual knowledge which is discovered by growing into a consciousness beyond that of the mind.

Notes and References

1. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (hereafter SABCL), (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970-75), Vol. 26, pp. 101-02.

2. Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1994), p. 332.

3. Ibid., pp. 335-36.

4. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, p. 189.

5. Jadunath Sinha, Indian Psychology, Vol. 1 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985), p. xviii.

6. C.G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East, Collected Works, Vol. XI (Bollingen Series XX, Pantheon Books, 1958), p. 580.

7. Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, SABCL Vol. 26, pp. 86-87.

8. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, pp. 321 -22.

9. Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, pp. 333-34.

10. A fuller discussion of the subject will be found in a subsequent

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essay in this book ("Sri Aurobindo and the Concept of the Unconscious in Western Psychology").

11. "Their foundation is above." (Rig Veda 1.24.7)

12. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 24, pp. 1608-09.

13. Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, p. 323.

14. Ibid., p. 322.

15. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 24, p. 1281.

16. Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, p. 339.

17. Ibid., p. 340.

18. Ibid., p. 345.

19. It should be noted that here the term "scientific" is used in its narrow sense, denoting what is based solely on positive reason.

20. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL Vol. 22, pp. 190-91.

21. Ibid., pp. 189-90.

22. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga — Parts One and Two, SABCL Vol. 20, p. 12.

23. Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, p. 337.

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