How to improve the quality of our psychological knowledge:
towards rigorous subjectivity

Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: 05 March 2024

This chapter may not be fully understandable
if one has not read the preceding chapters.

section 1
Introduction

As we saw in the previous chapters, one of the reasons that the hard sciences made so much more progress than psychology, is that they managed to make instruments to make their observations more precise and reliable, while psychology did not. The instruments the hard sciences use to discover new things about the physical reality, are primarily physical,1 and they are constructed with the help of knowledge and know-how discovered with similar instruments at an earlier stage. In the same way, the instruments psychology needs have to be primarily inner, psychological instruments and they have to be built with the help of psychological knowledge and know-how gathered earlier.2 In this chapter we will see whether this can be done, whether we can create inner, psychological instruments for the detailed and reliable study of what exists primarily in our consciousness, or as the Chandogya Upanishad says, ‘behind our eyes’.To get a better idea of what we mean by such ‘inner instruments’, it is useful to start with two very different ways of looking inside: ordinary introspection, in which one looks with one part of one’s mind at what happens in another part of one’s mind, and a pure witness consciousness, sākṣī, which looks at what happens in the mind as if from the outside.

Of birds and balconies:
from introspection to puruṣa-based self-observation

There is a common notion, equally widespread, for example, in contemporary consciousness studies as in classical pramāṇa-based Buddhist and Indian epistemology, that one cannot at the same time observe the world, and be aware of oneself observing it. To use a simple metaphor, one cannot stand at the same time on a balcony and walk in the street.3 So in ordinary introspection one tries to observe oneself by switching quickly between being engaged with the world and looking at the memory of how one was engaged with the world just a moment earlier.

One possible reason for the mutual exclusiveness of perception and self-awareness in our ordinary waking consciousness might be that they function through the same inner instrumentation: In the Indian terminology, it is the same manas, or sense-mind, which in our ordinary consciousness is either engaged with the outside world through the outer senses, or with the inner world through the inner senses. The manas may simply not be able to do both at the same time.

There is, however, a second way of observing oneself that actually can take place at the same time as any outer or inner action. This second type of self-observation can easily be confused with ordinary introspection, but it has an entirely different character. The main difference is that it is not based on an activity by the mind, but on a direct apprehension of reality by a pure witness consciousness (sākṣī). This second type of self-observation is depicted in the ancient Indian image of two birds, good friends, beautiful of feather who sit in the same tree: one eats the fruit while the other watches (Ṛg Veda I. 164. 2). Here what watches is not the separative, ego-centric, and sense-mediated surface mind, but a deep, silent, non-egoïc, all-inclusive, pure consciousness that allows the egoïc actions (and even the egoïc observations) to continue somewhere in its own infinitude without being perturbed by them. As there is no egoïc centre and no boundaries to this background awareness, the question of recursion does not arise.

What makes it difficult to achieve is that the consciousness that watches must be pure and utterly silent. If for some reason the running commentary which is so typical of the surface mind intrudes and one notices, ‘Hey, look, I’m watching what is going on from my deep silent inner self!’ one has obviously lost it, and gone back to the ordinary, ego-based introspection.

In practice, these two different types of inner apprehension are not entirely exclusive of each other, and there are various in between stages. As one becomes only gradually more settled in the deeper, inner silence, it is possible, for example to arrive first at an in-between status of consciousness from which one introspectively observes what one is doing with what we have called knowledge of type 3, and yet retain some intimate contact of type 2 with a deep inner vastness of silent awareness that is of type 1. One is then aware of the presence of pure consciousness as a kind of background for the superficial mental activity in which one is involved, while one still identifies more with the mental activity on the surface than with the wider consciousness in the background. When one goes deeper within, one begins to centre in that vastness itself. Then one can see, sanction and ultimately master4 from deep within the activities of the surface mind without losing in any way one’s real ‘identity’ (if that term still applies) as the all-including vastness. One can then, for example, be aware through knowledge by intimate direct contact (type 2) of an infinite delight above, a borderless infinitude of awareness in between and a complex stream of actions and events below, all in the vastness of one’s being. It is these more inward ways of watching in an absolute inner silence, which can allow knowledge by identity to arise, not only of one’s own innermost self, but, potentially, of anything in existence.

It may be noted that in spite of its 3D imagery, the street and balcony simile presumes a ‘flat’ concept of consciousness in which there is only one type of knowledge which is separative and exclusive: one either observes oneself or the world; one is either the observing subject or the observed reality; and so on. The image of the two birds, on the other hand, is based on a totally different, multidimensional concept of consciousness and reality in which two different types of knowing are used and the dichotomies that perplex our dualistic surface mind are easily resolved in a higher-order, underlying unity.

In our interpretation of the ancient image of the tree inhabited by the two birds, the tree represents reality, and the birds are two major aspects or portions of our self that employ two very diffrent ways of knowing: The tree-world of the first bird called nara (man) belongs to the ordinary waking consciousness and is exclusive, enmeshed in time and causality. This bird ‘eats the fruits’: he is fully engrossed in life and suffers the consequences of his actions. The world of the second bird, Nārāyaṇa (the Supreme), is part of an all-inclusive consciousness, containing all time and all opposites within itself. Nārāyaṇa watches in the Vedāntic, non-dual sense of the sākṣī (the witness consciousness) and remains unaffected by karma (in this context, one's actions). Interestingly, and typical of the ancient, even-handed love for man and God, the birds are mentioned as good friends, and both as ‘beautiful of feather’. Though the two birds may remind one of the dualist conception of Puruṣa Prakṛti, the relation between Narayana and Nara is more intimate: they are described as good friends!5

If there is any truth in the distinctions and possibilities mentioned so far, then the next question is, how do we do it? How do we move from the superficial and often erroneous knowledge provided by the observation of outer behaviour and ordinary introspection, to a more penetrating and reliable insight in the deeper layers of the mind, in other words, how do we perfect our ‘inner instrument of knowledge’, the antaḥkaraṇa.

Endnotes