www.remember-to-breathe.org<\/a> – on neuroscience and meditation (which, with its focus on integration, may actually be quite a bit closer to Sri Aurobindo\u2019s yogic psychology than it appears at first glance).<\/p>\nI thought for this first post I would focus on what I personally think is the single greatest impediment to the widespread acceptance of \u201cIndian\u201d or \u201cyogic\u201d psychology.\u00a0 10 years ago, I would have simply said, \u201cmaterialism.\u201d\u00a0 However, this term seems to have gone out of fashion.\u00a0 For awhile, it looked like \u201cphysicalism\u201d would replace it, but gradually, people seem to have come to the conclusion that nobody quite knows what the word \u201cphysical\u201d means (I think there\u2019s actually a Wikipedia article saying \u201cphysical\u201d refers to whatever physicists study).<\/p>\n
More recently, I\u2019ve seen the term \u201cnaturalism\u201d used instead of \u201cmaterialism.\u201d\u00a0 This seems particularly odd, as it somehow implies that mind, feelings, consciousness, awareness, etc are somehow \u2013 \u201csupernatural\u201d\u2026 or perhaps \u201cunnatural\u201d?\u00a0 I\u2019m going to stick with materialism for now, as I think it conveys the problem better than the other terms.<\/p>\n
What exactly is the problem?<\/p>\n
I think it could be safely said that, with the exception of the Charvakas, almost all Indian philosophy (and the psychology associated with it) is non-materialistic (at least, in the modern sense of the word \u201cmateralism\u201d).\u00a0 To the extent that modern \u201cscientific\u201d psychology has a materialist (or physicalist, if you prefer) orientation, psychologists are going to see Indian psychology as unscientific.<\/p>\n
So what is the solution?<\/p>\n
The solution, I think, is to see clearly, to think logically, to understand that materialism and physicalism are illogical, and in fact, incoherent ways of looking at the world. Most importantly, they are philosophic views that people associate with science that were not themselves arrived at in a scientific manner.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they are views which have so long been associated with science that to criticize them is taken as a criticism of science.<\/p>\n
Where to start?<\/p>\n
I like to start with experience.\u00a0 As given.\u00a0 And to whatever extent possible, shorn of excess preconceptions.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s start with a white coffee cup (mathemetician and philosopher Thomas McFarlane has an excellent video on Vimeo in which he presents this experiment at one of the Franklin Merrell-Wolff gatherings; this is a modified version).<\/p>\n
Say you\u2019re sitting in a chair, looking at a coffee cup on a table. How might we describe your experience?\u00a0 There are an assortment of percepts \u2013 \u201cchair\u201d, \u201ccup\u201d, \u201ctable\u201d, etc.<\/p>\n
Where do these percepts \u201cexist\u201d (or perhaps a better way of stating it, \u201cby what means to you come to \u2018know\u2019 these percepts\u201d?)\u00a0 For you, they exist in your awareness, no?<\/p>\n
Do you experience an essentially different awareness in regard each percept? Is there a chair-awareness, and entirely distinct from that, a table-awareness, a floor-awareness, etc?<\/p>\n
Try it.\u00a0 Do you find any divisions or boundaries in awareness?\u00a0 In fact, do you actually find a clear division or boundary between \u201cawareness\u201d and \u201cpercepts\u201d?<\/p>\n
Does it make any sense, then, to describe your experience as a unified yet differentiated field of awareness?<\/p>\n
Now, where does \u201cmatter\u201d (or \u201cphysical\u201d) fit in all this. If you do not make it into an abstraction, it certainly seems appropriate to refer to the \u201ctexture\u201d or \u201cform\u201d of the table, chair, floor, cup, etc as matter.\u00a0 But this is not the \u201cmatter\u201d of the materialist.<\/p>\n
So where, or when, is the matter of materialism?\u00a0 And how might we come to know of it?\u00a0 What experiment could we perform to find some kind of \u201cmatter\u201d which exists entirely independent of awareness, consciousness or knowing?\u00a0 That is, which exists outside of the field of differentiated yet unified awareness.<\/p>\n
*****<\/p>\n
So now that we have dispensed with materialism – well, ok, it\u2019s not really that easy\u2026 now that we have perhaps questioned the materialistic view enough to grant a greater legitimacy to the non-materialistic perspective of Indian psychology, we might have an easier time exploring what changes might be necessary in research methodology to allow Indic psychology to transform the way we understand ourselves, consciousness, matter, life \u2013 and in fact, our whole approach to science.<\/p>\n
(Note – I am not proposing this as an alternative metaphysical position. In fact, I’m not suggesting any metaphysic here at all. I’m simply offering a way of thinking that might facilitate questioning of the materialistic orthodoxy).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cScience in its essence should stand only for a method and not for any special beliefs, yet as habitually taken by its votaries, science has come to be identified with a certain fixed general belief, the belief that the deeper order of nature is mechanical exclusively, and that non-mechanical categories are irrational ways of conceiving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}