Indian Psychology's Coming of Age

Ulrich Mohrhoff
Indian Psychology’s
Coming of Age
2007 National Seminar on Indian Psychology
When academic psychology was introduced in India (in 1905), the
supposed superiority of the western conception of knowledge led to
an uncritical acceptance of western concepts and methodologies. The
rich Indian traditions concerned with consciousness or the self, which
were perceived by the British rulers as emanating from the primitive
notions of a backward people, were left out of the curriculum. It
stayed that way until 2001, when the Indian Council of Philosophical
Research (ICPR) sponsored the first seminar devoted entirely to the
development of new approaches to psychology based on traditional
Indian psychology and yoga.1 Since then there has been a dramatic
increase in interest in this subject. There have been conferences and
seminars devoted to various aspects of Indian psychology in all cor-
ners of the country. A rapidly expanding group of psychologists are
studying psychological theories and methods based on the intellectual
and spiritual traditions of India. Recommendations for curricula,
teaching and research methods are being framed and slowly but
increasingly implemented.
The latest milestone for this growing movement has been a
National Seminar on Indian Psychology2 that was jointly organized
by the ICPR and the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana
Samsthana (SVYASA). It took place from 26th to 28th December
Correspondence:
Ulrich Mohrhoff, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry,
India. Email: ujm@auromail.net
[1] URL: http://ipi.org.in/texts/ip2/ip2-contents.html.
[2] URL: http://ipi.org.in/events/nsip-2007info.html.
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15, No. 5, 2008, pp. 121–26

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U. MOHRHOFF
2007 in the vicinity of Bangalore, on SVYASA’s beautiful hill-
station campus. Over 120 papers were presented in seven plenary
and five times five concurrent sessions. Eight sessions occupied the
intersection of Indian philosophy and yoga with health and healing,
five were dedicated to issues of a primarily philosophical,
epistemological, or methodological nature, five to yoga and spiritual
practice per se, to their interface with society or, more specifically,
to their relation to positive psychology or their application to
management. Four sessions dealt with spiritual traditions (e.g.,
Buddhism, Patanjali), three with education, and two addressed ques-
tions of cultural and historical interest. The fact that any number of
alternative groupings would have been equally viable given the
intricacies of the subjects and their complex mutual relations, must
have been a major headache for the organizers.
The welcome address was given by H.R. Nagendra, Vice Chancel-
lor of SVYASA, and this was followed by the keynote address by
Ramakrishna K. Rao, Chairman of the ICPR. In the next plenary
session (a panel chaired by Janak Pandey, Head of Psychology,
Allahabad University), Professors Rao, Sudhir Kakar, Uday Pareek,
V. George Mathew, and Lilavathi Krishnan reflected on the why of
Indian psychology. While mainstream academic psychology relies
primarily on a physicalist view of reality, the vast majority of Indian
thinkers took consciousness, rather than matter, as the basis of reality.
If the materialist viewpoint is carried to its extreme, consciousness
becomes a causally ineffective epiphenomenon. If one looks from the
opposite extreme — the standpoint of the mayavada school of Indian
thought — the material world becomes an illusion. Both extremes,
however useful they may be or have been for their respective pur-
poses, are severely impoverishing. The more ancient vedanta of the
Upanishads steered clear of both extremes, so that across the spectrum
of Indian philosophy we find ultimate reality (brahman) described in
terms that are spiritual yet utterly life and world affirming: brahman is
(i) the existence or substance (sat) that constitutes the world, (ii) a
consciousness (chit) that contains the world, and (iii) an infinite bliss
(ananda) that expresses and experiences itself in the world.
Before we can hope to reap the potentially enormous benefits of
this grand vision of reality, we are in for some metaphysical house-
cleaning. The world is effectively what we think it is, and we know
little, if anything, about how this is determined by what it really is.
Besides, if the expression ‘what it really is’ means, as it usually does,
‘what it is by itself, out of relation to consciousness or a self’, then
from the Indian perspective it lacks a referent. This theme was

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developed by Neeta Arora in her paper on critical constructivism and
by Shanti Auluck, who reminded us of Polanyi’s (1969) observation
that while theology was the greatest single source of fallacies in the
days when any idea could be silenced by showing that it was contrary
to religion, at a time when any thought can be discredited by branding
it as unscientific the greatest single source of error is science.
Science perpetuates both its successes and its failures through edu-
cation. Three papers on alternative approaches in teacher and elemen-
tary education were presented, two by Srila Basu and one by Baren K.
Raul, both belonging to Mirambika, an innovative school in New
Delhi providing a training ground for educators from all over India.
Divya Parasher for her part reported on the novel methods of teaching
adopted at the Indian Psychology Institute, Pondicherry. Pointing to
the increasing disenchantment with existing practices the world over,
Bharati Baveja remonstrated that innovative frameworks for educa-
tion have little impact. Interpreting experience according to fixed
notions derived from abstract theories or specialized discourse is a
recipe for mystification and cynicism. Teaching needs to be conceptu-
alized as an ongoing process of contemplation, an evolutionary
process of self-development, capitalizing on the learner’s innate
ability to think and reflect.3
A revealing instance of both the underdetermination of theory by
data and the ‘overdetermination’ of it by dogma is provided by the
fundamental theoretical framework of contemporary physics. If one
tries to make sense of quantum theory within a materialist framework
[3] Researchers at Johns Hopkins, M.I.T., and other well-regarded universities inside and
outside the United States have documented that ‘students who receive honor grades in
college-level physics courses are frequently unable to solve basic problems and questions
encountered in a form slightly different from that on which they have been formally
instructed and tested … Indeed, in dozens of studies of this sort, young adults trained in
science continue to exhibit the very same misconceptions and misunderstandings that one
encounters in primary school children’ (Gardner, 1991, pp. 3–4). A regularly updated bib-
liography (Duit, 2007) that at the time of this writing has about 7,700 entries documenting
change in students’ conceptions, makes it clear that ‘little or no change happens when
students experience even the best of standard science instruction’ (Dykstra, 2005). What
most science students learn is that they are on the lower rung of a system in which they are
dependent on a higher rung for declarations of the truth. Orthodoxy holds that once the
teacher has presented the established canon by approved methods, she has done her job.
Whether or not a student ‘gets’ it is out of her hands. As a result, science instruction fails
society by promoting elitism and rendering most of its members intellectually stunted or
handicapped. Alternative approaches to teaching science, which have been demonstrated
to yield significant progress in understanding, are resisted or ignored (Dykstra, 2005). The
reason this is so, one surmises, is that in substituting a constructivist epistemology for the
realist conception of the knowledge constituting the canon, these alternative approaches
deflate the status of the institution of science by controverting if not an explicit claim of
access to ontological truth then certainly the carefully cultivated perception of such
access.

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U. MOHRHOFF
of thought, one will ‘go down the drain’, as Feynman has warned.4 If
instead one interprets it within the Vedantic framework outlined
above, it makes perfect sense, or so U. Mohrhoff (your reporter) main-
tained. One of the differences between a materialistic world view and
a spiritual one is that the former assigns ultimate reality to a multitude
(e.g., particles or spacetime points) and models reality ‘from the
bottom up’, whereas the latter assigns ultimate reality to a unitary
principle and models reality ‘from the top down’. Multiplicity results
when brahman, entering into self-relations, presents itself to itself in a
multitude of aspects, each containing as well as contained in the
whole. Seen in this light, quantum theory’s radically holistic features
are unsurprising.
As Matthijs Cornelissen stressed in one of the Seminar’s most
significant lectures, virtually all major research projects on yoga till
date are carried out within the limits of existing science. By distilling
from the Indian tradition only those theories and techniques that
science can assess by its own methods, they treat the psychological
knowledge-base that the Indian tradition has created as a dead histori-
cal collection, without worrying how the ancient Indian sages actually
arrived at their knowledge and techniques. The research methods used
by the Indian tradition were sophisticated but essentially subjective.
To arrive at a serious integration of the Indian knowledge systems
with modern scientific methods requires the acceptance of methods
that are thoroughly subjective yet intellectually rigorous.
Many a guardian of science will reject the idea of intellectually
rigorous subjective research as a contradiction in terms. The prevalent
perception is that whereas objective research is amenable to public
validation, inasmuch as its data reside in a shared physical universe,
subjective research is not, its data being only privately accessible. To
this, Cornelissen offered several insightful responses. For one, the
alleged privacy of consciousnesses does not come into the picture.
What matters is that someone’s results are reproducible by similar
methods of inquiry, and in the subjective domain this is as possible as
in the objective. For another, it isn’t the case that one consciousness is
strictly inaccessible to another. There is, for instance, a wealth of
anecdotal data about people becoming aware, without any kind of
physical contact, of what their loved ones go through, especially at
times of crises, and in the Indian tradition the ability to know what
goes on in someone else’s mind is widely held as a sensitivity that can
[4] Feynman didn’t have to mention the framework part — this goes without saying as long as
the name of the game of science is virtually synonymous with saving the materialistic
appearances.

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be developed. It is in fact thought, again on the basis of much anec-
dotal evidence, that a competent spiritual guide can know better what
happens in a disciple’s consciousness than the disciple herself.5
Cornelissen compared the introspective methods developed in the
West and used in mainstream psychology (to the extend that such
methods are used) to developing astronomy by asking people to look
at the sky and then collating their reports. Astronomy has more
sophisticated tools at its disposal, and so has yoga-based psychologi-
cal research.
The first and indispensable condition to be fulfilled by the
researcher wishing to employ the powerful tools of yoga is disentan-
glement of the self, atman, from the activities of mind, manas. The
ensuing stillness allows subtleties of perception that are not possible
to the mind engrossed in the relentless flow of its thoughts. The objec-
tivity — in the sense of detachment, impartiality, clearheadedness —
of the resulting witness consciousness (sakshi) far surpasses the
objectivity that can be achieved by manas, entangled as it is with pre-
conceptions, predilections, beliefs and opinions, likes and dislikes.
For instance, if one succeeds in adopting the witness perspective, one
immediately realises that our ordinary sense of agency is a mistake;
few if any of our thoughts and behaviours are under our direct con-
scious control. Libet’s (1999) findings do not surprise those who are
capable of observing their minds from this perspective.
This conference has highlighted the enormous potential that tradi-
tional Indian psychology holds for psychology at large, at least in the
long term. (It will take some time for a significant number of psycholo-
gists to become yogis!) Even greater perhaps are the potential benefits
of a world view that puts at the very heart of reality an infinite bliss that,
in objective terms, is the quintessence of quality and value. In a materi-
alistically conceived world, where ultimate reality belongs to some ulti-
mate multitude (traditionally known as ‘dust’), quality and value are
strangers; the most ‘uplifting’ perspective on offer is a naturalistic
humanism or a ‘spiritual naturalism’ (see, for instance, naturalism.org).
Now that is a contradiction in terms. But perhaps the most radical change
Indian psychology has the potential to bring about is the deposition of
physics as the most direct access to reality. In a spiritually conceived
world, where the force at work in the world is a conscious force, that dis-
tinction goes to psychology. Psychologists, say ‘bye’ to physics envy.
[5] I would add a third response: whereas the assertion that subjective data reside in a share-
able subjective universe — a cosmic consciousness — can be and has been established by
advanced yogic methods, the assertion that objective data reside in a shared physical uni-
verse is unprovable by the established scientific methods.

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References
Duit, R. (2007), ‘Students’ and teachers’ conceptions in science: A bibliography’,
http://www.ipn.uni-kiel.de/aktuell/stcse/stcse.html.
Dykstra, D.I., Jr (2005), ‘Against realist instruction: Superficial success masking
catastrophic failure and an alternative’, Constructivist Foundations, 1 (1),
pp. 40–60.
Gardner, H. (1991), The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools
Should Teach (New York: Basic Books).
Libet, B. (1999), ‘Do we have free will?’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6
(8–9), pp. 47–57.
Polanyi, M. (1969), Knowing and Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

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