Page 24 - NAMAH-Jan-2024

Namah Vol. 31, Issue 4, 15th January 2024

He elaborated this stance on theorisation unconscious could not be truly unconscious!
in one of his letters while commenting on (Sri Aurobindo had by this time already
conflicting theories underlying different established his realisation that the unconscious
therapeutic modalities: or `Inconscience’ was actually a mask of
consciousness). He reportedly remarked:
“A theory is only a constructed idea-script
which represents an imperfect human “Modern psychology is only surface deep.
observation of a line of process that Nature Really speaking a new basis is needed for
follows or can follow; another theory is a psychology. The only two important requisites
different idea-script of other processes that for real knowledge of psychology are:
also she follows or can follow…. all are only
outward means and what really works are (i) Going inwards, and
unseen forces behind; …. if one can make the (ii) Identification (meaning `experiential
process a right channel for the right force, then knowledge’)
the process gets its full utility — that is all (8).” And those two are not possible without Yoga
(10).”
While Hill suggested `social reform’ through
psychoanalysis to resolve the Hindu- Comments on ’Psychophysics’
Muslim conflict, Bose initiated a movement
to understand Indian mythology, Indian
religion and Indian philosophy through
psychoanalysis, a lineage carried on in the
21st century by men like Kakkar. This quest
r
s
led to a number of attempts to view Krsna as
n
a master psychoanalyst who analysed Arjuna
and resolved his complexes. Commenting on
such ideas which sought to explain anything
by psychoanalytic theory, in an informal talk Sri Aurobindo strongly disapproved the
on 4.01.1939, Sri Aurobindo pointed out that modelling of psychology on the line of
there was an inherent contradiction in the physical sciences as early as 1916, when he
psychoanalyst’s position. If the unconscious began serialising `The Psychology of Social
was really an unconscious (Sri Aurobindo Development’ (later published under the title,
used the term inconscient), how could it throw The Human Cycle). In his essay on Materialism
up repressed things and raise symbols in that appeared in 1918, he pointed out that:
one’s consciousness. He was hinting that
the unconscious could not logically possess “Only a limited range of the phenomena of
`conscious’ activities like propelling up life and mind could be satisfied by a purely
repressed elements to the conscious zone bio-physical, psycho-physical or bio-psychical
(9)." explanation, and even if more could be dealt
with by these data, still they would only have
Obviously, such a technology if it could at been accounted for on one side of their mystery,
all be applied by the unconscious, then the the lower end. Life and Mind, like the Vedic

24