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Namah Sri Aurobindo’s Comments on Western Psychology

Agni, have their two extremities hidden in a noble, magnificent, something which the
secrecy, and we should by this way only have mind in man can do as it can escape from
hold of the tail-end: the head would still be ”the restrictions of the vital and physical
mystic and secret. To know more we must formula of being (15).”
have studied not only the actual or possible
action of body and matter on mind and life, but In the late 1940s, Sri Aurobindo gave a classic
explored all the possible action of mind too on statement on psychophysiology (which he
life and body; that opens undreamed vistas. referred to as mixing of psychology and
And there is always the vast field of the action physiology), describing it as an “extended
of mind in itself and on itself, which needs for physiological”, not a “true psychological
its elucidation another, a mental, a psychic knowledge (16).” He explained that
science (11).” whatever psychophysiology revealed was
not unexpected since we are a consciousness
At a time when behaviourism was in its hey- embodied and not disincarnate, acting
day, Sri Aurobindo had quipped (sometime through a body and therefore conditioned
between 1940-42),”….sense and reflex action by the body. “The truth of things can only
becomes absurd if we try to explain by it be perceived when one gets to what may be
thought and will (12).” He had remarked in called summarily the spiritual vision of things
1925, “The difficulty is that they want to work and even there completely only when there
in psychology in the same way that they work is not only vision but direct experience in the
in physics. But psychology is not so simple. You very substance of one’s own being and all
can’t generalise in it as you can with matter. It being (17).” He advocated that not psycho-
is very subtle, and one has to take into account physiological knowledge per se but “a
many factors (13).” psycho-physical knowledge with a spiritual
foundation (18)”, would be more meaningful
Comments on Psychophysiology to understand human nature.

Sri Aurobindo had been commenting on the Comments on Altered States of Consciousness
skewed views resulting from the mixing of
psychology and physiology since 1916. In The Altered states of consciousness have become
Synthesis of Yoga (serialised between 1914-21), important sources for research in transpersonal
he pointed out that a psychophysiological psychology and in body-mind interactions. As
perspective that considers the biological early as in 1915, Sri Aurobindo had written:
and physiological factors of our nature as
the sole foundation of psychology could “Modern psychological experiment and obser-
explain only, ”... the animal side of human vation have proceeded on two different lines
nature and of the human mind in so far as it which have not yet found their point of meeting.
is limited and conditioned by the physical part On the one hand, psychology has taken for its
of our being (14).” This would not suffice to starting-point the discoveries and fundamental
explain human nature because the animal thesis of the physical sciences and has worked
mind cannot even for a moment delink itself as a continuation of physiology(19).” “The
from its origins and become great, free, other line of psychological investigation is

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