The first systematic attempt of psychology to look beyond the surface phenomena of life to a hidden stratum of consciousness was made by psychoanalysis, founded by Freud. Freud described the unconscious as that part of mind that lay below the surface of the conscious mind and thereby inaccessible to introspection while yet being the most powerful determinant of behaviour. Sri Aurobindo hailed the discovery as ‘the beginning of self-knowledge and which all must make who deeply study the facts of consciousness, that our waking and surface existence is only a small part of our being and does not yield to us the root and secret of our character, our mentality or our actions. The sources lie deeper. To discover them, to know the nature and the processes of the inconscient or subconscient self and, so far as is possible, to possess and utilize them as physical science possesses and utilizes the secret of the forces of Nature, ought to be the aim of a scientific psychology’.(Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental manifestation and other writings,1972 ed,pp258-59)
Behaviourism opted for strict objectivity, rejected all hypothetical constructs such as mind and consciousness and focused on observable, measurable behaviour. It looked upon mental processes as epiphenomena accompanying physiological processes. The net result was that consciousness was rejected. Watson, in 1913, reiterated this position: ‘The time seems to have come when psychology must discard all reference to consciousness… This suggested elimination of states of consciousness as proper objects of investigation in themselves will remove the barrier from psychology which exists between it and the other sciences”(Watson,J: The Psychological Review,XX,) That legacy lasted so long that even the 1984 edition of the ‘Encyclopedia of Psychology’ published by Wiley and Sons from New York contained no entries for ‘consciousness’, ‘awareness’ or introspection’.
The Re-entry of
Consciousness in Psychology
By
the end of the 20th Century, consciousness had regained a
new place in psychology. This was the culmination of two important
movements that were mainly initiated in the 1960’s
(a)
The growth of
cognitivism
(b)
The growth of
transpersonal psychology.
Cognitivism
In an excellent overview,
Guzeldere shows how cognitive psychology, inspired by computational
models, gave re-birth to consciousness in terms completely foreign
to its past- consciousness became a sort of component of
information-processing models. Ongoing neuropsychological research
also found it credible to study consciousness.
Information-processing models were used successfully to explain
learning, memory, problem –solving- almost everything except the
‘experience’ of consciousness. ‘The fact that consciousness seemed
to be the last remaining unexplained phenomenon in an otherwise
successful new research paradigm helped highlight old questions
about consciousness buried during the behaviourist era. Furthermore,
similar developments were taking place in philosophy. Functionalist
accounts, largely inspired by computational ideas, were being met
with noticeable success in explaining prepositional attitudes,
whereas consciousness (in the sense of the subjective character of
experience, or qualia) was largely being regarded as the only aspect
of mind escaping the net of functionalist explanation’ (Guzeldere, G: The Many faces of Consciousness: A Field Guide, in The Nature of
Consciousness, ed by Ned Block et al, London,1998). Sri Aurobindo
had foreseen this riddle and had commented.’
‘The significance of
our conscious being in an material world is the last and
worst enigma’(Essays Divine and Human,,pg285). ‘An observing and
active consciousness emerging as a character of an eternal
Inconscience is a self-contradictory affirmation, an unintelligible
phenomenon, and the contradiction must be healed or explained before
this affirmation can be accepted. But it cannot be healed unless
either the Inconscient has a latent power for consciousness – and
then its inconscience is phenomenal only, not fundamental, - or else
is the veil of a Consciousness which emerges out of a state of
involution which appears to us as an inconscience’ (Ibid, pg 289).
Cognitivism also
encouraged the search for a neuropsychological basis of
consciousness through unraveling of physiological mysteries. Sri
Aurobindo comments: ‘To see how the body uses consciousness may
be within limits a fruitful science, but it is more important to see
how consciousness uses the body and still more important to see how
it evolves and uses its own powers. The physiological study of the
phenomenon of consciousness is only a side-issue; the psychological
study of it independent of all reference to the body except as an
instrument is the fruitful line of inquiry. A body using
consciousness is the first outward physical fact of our existence,
the first step of our evolution; a consciousness using a body is its
inner spiritual reality, it is what we have become by our evolution
and more and more completely are’.( Ibid,pp291-292)
The Growth of
Transpersonal Psychology
The traditional schools of
psychology did not deal with what was uniquely human – the striving
for growth and self-development and the attainment of the higher
values of life. This gap led to the rise of Humanistic psychology
whose chief protagonist, Abraham Maslow, distinguished two broad
types of human needs- fundamental physiological needs which are the
legacy of our atavistic past and meta-needs that encompassed moral,
aesthetic, intellectual and other similar needs for
self-actualization or the attainment of one’s highest potentials.
Towards the end of his life, Maslow conceived of human growth even
beyond self-actualization: “I consider Humanistic, third Force
psychology to be transitional, a preparation for a still ‘higher’
Fourth Psychology, transpersonal, transhuman, centered in the cosmos
rather than human needs and interests, going beyond humanness,
identity, self-actualization, and the like.”(Maslow, A :Towards a
Psychology of Being,New York,1968) This higher psychology began to
take shape in the form of Transpersonal psychology since the late
1960s and has taken up for study areas like higher states of
consciousness, ultimate values, highest meanings,
self-transcendence, mystical experiences. A.S.Dalal, in a broad
overview ( Dalal, A:Towards a Greater Psychology) points to three
landmark developments beyond the boundaries of traditional
psychology that have taken place as a result of the transpersonal
perspective:
A. Psychology is being
redefined as the study of consciousness in the deeper sense of a pluridimensional Reality that is in consonance with Sri Aurobindo’s
thought where there are ranges of consciousness above and below the
mind;
B. The traditional methods
of psychology (introspective study of mind, observation and
quantification of behaviour, psychoanalytical probings into the
unconscious) have been supplemented by experiential methods viz,
meditation, use of psychedelic drugs, body techniques, music and
sound etc. The new approach is more in the nature of a
‘self-knowledge psychology’ and as such one must proceed in it from
the knowledge of oneself to the knowledge of others; and
C. The Ego needs to be
replaced by a Beyond-Ego principle so that one can discover one’s
true nature. A dis-identification from the ego leads to an awakening
and development of the real personality.
The relevance of Sri
Aurobindo’s Thought: Defining Psychology and Consciousness
Defining psychology
The transpersonal psychology movement echoes the seed-ideas inherent
in Sri Aurobindo’s thought. Sri Aurobindo, in an incomplete
manuscript written in 1927, defined psychology as ‘ 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’ (Essays Divine and Human, pg333).
This landmark definition of psychology can be regarded as a
forerunner of the transpersonal approach. This is the real nature of
INTEGRAL YOGA PSYCHOLOGY. Actually this definition was a
modification of a more simple definition he had penned during
1917-18: Psychology is the knowledge of consciousness and its
operations.
We
have elaborated in details what Sri Aurobindo means by
‘consciousness’, However, this definition also uses the term
‘Nature” with a capital N. What is indicated by that term? Nature
refers to an externally objective and superficially subjective
phenomenon which manifests the creation that includes minds, lives
and bodies. This Nature is not mechanical but organized by an Energy
or Force, which arranges things according to their inner truth.
Outwardly this Nature presents a façade of limitation and division.
There is also a higher aspect of Nature that is referred in the
definition as ‘beyond what is known as Nature’. This ‘Supernature’
is the source of the higher Reality, the Consciousness-Force aspect
of Sachchidananda that upholds the lower Nature.
Defining Consciousness
With
this background, we can now attempt to define consciousness in terms
of Integral Yoga Psychology:
Consciousness can be defined as a self-aware, self-manifesting,
creative force of existence, which is simultaneously the inmost
reality of everything( known as ‘self’ in this poise) and the
Conscious-force that builds and organizes the worlds (viz. of
Matter, Life, Mind etc.) and therefore antedates the brain in
evolution using it as an instrument for expression; it extends
beyond the mind through the subconscious into an inconscience full
of involved potentialities at one end, at the other end it rises to
a Superconscience full of dynamic possibilities.
This
definition of consciousness is in perfect consonance with the
significance of Consciousness-Force implicit in the verses of the
Upanishads quoted by Sri Aurobindo in the beginning of this chapter:
They beheld the self-force of the Divine Being sleep hidden by its
own conscious modes of working. Swetaswatara Upanishad, I.3
This is he that is awake in those who sleep. Katha Upanishad, II.2.8
A Mind shall think behind Nature’s mindless mask,
A consciousness Vast fill the old dumb brute Space.
This faint and fluid sketch of soul called man
Shall stand out on the background of long Time
A glowing epitome of eternity,
A little point reveal the infinitudes.
A Mystery’s process is the universe.
At first was laid a strange anomalous base,
A void, a cipher of some secret Whole,
Where zero held infinity in its sum
And All and Nothing were a single term,
An eternal negative, a matrix Nought:
Into its forms the Child is ever born
Who lives for ever in the vasts of God.
A slow reversal’s movement then took place:
A gas belched out from some invisible Fire,
Of its dense rings were formed these million stars;
Upon earth’s new-born soil God’s tread was heard.
Across the thick smoke of earth’s ignorance
A Mind began to see and look at forms
And groped for knowledge in the nescient Night:
Caught in a blind stone-grip Force worked its plan
And made in sleep this huge mechanical world,
That Matter might grow conscious of its soul
And like a busy midwife the life-power
Deliver the zero carrier of the All.
Because eternal eyes turned on earth’s gulfs
The lucent clarity of a pure regard
And saw a shadow of the Unknowable
Mirrored in the Inconscient’s boundless sleep,
Creation’s search for self began its stir.
A spirit dreamed in the crude cosmic whirl,
Mind flowed unknowingly in the sap of life
And Matter’s breasts suckled the divine idea.
A miracle of the Absolute was born;
Infinity put on a finite soul,
All ocean lived within a wandering drop,
A time-made body housed the Illimitable.
To live this Mystery out our souls came here.
(Sri
Aurobindo, Savitri, Pg. 100-101)
Date of Update:
16-Oct-12
- By Dr. Soumitra Basu
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