Unit 1 Topic 3 of 8
Philosophy and psychology
Syllabus Philosophy and psychology
Students who meet Indian psychology for the first time often ask a fair question. Is this psychology at all, or is it philosophy, or religion? The texts it draws on talk about the self, liberation and ultimate reality. Those sound like topics for a philosophy or religion class, not for a psychology laboratory.
This page answers the question in steps. First it explains what philosophy and psychology are, and how they are related. Then it tells how psychology left philosophy in Europe and America, and why the same split never happened in classical India. Last, it looks at how today's writers on Indian psychology handle the line between claims about ultimate reality and claims that a psychologist can study.
What philosophy is
philosophyphilosophyLiterally: Greek philosophia, love of wisdomPhilosophy is careful reasoning about the most basic questions: what is real, how we can know anything, and how we should live.Indian link darshana, a 'way of seeing' that joins a view of reality with a practice and the aim of liberation; also anviksiki, critical inquiry.Full entry in the glossary is careful reasoning about the most basic questions people can ask. The word comes from Greek and means "love of wisdom". Philosophers do not usually run experiments. They build arguments, look for errors in them, and compare them with other arguments.
Philosophy has several branches. Three of them matter for this course, because every kind of psychology depends on them.
Key concept
metaphysics
Metaphysics asks what is real. Is there anything besides matter? Is the mind the same thing as the brain, or something more? Is there a self that stays the same through a whole life?
These questions cannot be settled by looking or measuring alone, because they are about what lies behind everything we look at and measure. That is why they belong to philosophy.
Indian psychology is full of metaphysical claims. Examples are the claim that pure consciousness exists apart from the mind, or that the true self is one with ultimate reality. This page keeps asking which of those claims a psychologist can test, and which they cannot.
Closest Indian idea darshana, a school's full view of reality.
Key concept
epistemology
Epistemology asks how we know anything, and when we can trust what we think we know. Can I trust my eyes? Can I trust my memory? Is a person's report of their own feeling good evidence, or only an opinion?
Every research method in psychology is an answer to an epistemological question. An experiment rests on the idea that careful observation of many people, under controlled conditions, gives reliable knowledge. A meditation teacher who says "sit quietly and watch your mind, and you will see it for yourself" rests on a different idea of reliable knowledge.
Indian schools had detailed theories of knowledge. You will meet them on the paradigm debate page, and in depth in Unit 2.
Closest Indian idea pramana shastra, the study of the valid means of knowledge (pramanas).
The third branch is ethicsethicsLiterally: Greek ethos, character or customEthics is the branch of philosophy that asks how we should live and act: what is right, what is good, and why.Indian link dharma, which joins personal ethics with social duty and the order of the world.Full entry in the glossary, which asks how we should live and act. Psychology meets ethics every time it decides what counts as healthy, or what a good result of therapy looks like.
| Branch | The question it asks | A question a psychologist meets |
|---|---|---|
| Metaphysics | What is real? | Is the mind the same thing as the brain? |
| Epistemology | How do we know, and when is knowing reliable? | Can a person's report of their own feelings count as evidence? |
| Ethics | How should we live and act? | Should therapy help a client feel "normal" again, or help them grow beyond normal? |
What psychology is, and why it cannot escape philosophy
psychologypsychologyLiterally: Greek psyche (soul, breath) + logos (study, account)Psychology is the study of mind and behaviour. Modern psychology mostly uses experiments and measurement to study how people think, feel and act.Indian link manovijnana (the modern Hindi word for psychology), or adhyatma vidya (the science of the self). Neither was a separate discipline in ancient India.Full entry in the glossary is the study of mind and behaviour. Today most psychologists gather evidence by observing and measuring, often with experiments and statistics. The start page explains this in more detail.
A psychological theory always rests on answers to the three questions in the table, even when it never states them. Take behaviourismbehaviourismBehaviourism is a school of psychology that studies only observable behaviour, not the mind. It explains behaviour through learning from rewards, punishments and associations.Indian link samskara (habits built by repeated action) overlaps a little with learning theory, but Indian psychology rejects behaviourism's exclusion of consciousness.Full entry in the glossary, the school that studies only what people do. It assumed that only observable behaviour is fit for science. That is an epistemological choice. Many behaviourists also assumed that the mind is nothing more than the body at work. That is a metaphysical choice.
The Indian-Canadian psychologist Anand C. ParanjpeAnand C. ParanjpeIndian-Canadian psychologist, Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Canada. He writes on self and identity in Western and Indian thought.Full entry in the glossary puts the point this way. Psychology "cut the apron strings" of philosophy, as a child leaves its mother, and then became suspicious of philosophy. Rao and Paranjpe (2016) argue that, as a result, many students do not notice that psychology's own methods rest on a particular philosophy. That philosophy is positivismpositivismLiterally: Latin positivus, laid down, givenPositivism is the view that real knowledge comes only from observation and measurement, as in the natural sciences. Claims that cannot be tested are set aside as meaningless.Indian link the Charvaka view that only perception is valid. Most Indian schools reject this and also accept inference, testimony and yogic insight.Full entry in the glossary: the view that real knowledge comes only from observation and measurement. You will meet positivism again on the paradigm debate page.
Where this argument is made
Paranjpe makes the "apron strings" point in his chapter in Cornelissen, Misra and Varma (2014, pp. 237 to 238). Rao and Paranjpe (2016, sec. 1.3.1) argue that psychology's methods are "almost completely derived from logical positivism". Paranjpe also traces psychology's habit of ignoring old ideas to the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who saw human thought passing through theological, philosophical and then "positive" (scientific) stages.
How psychology left philosophy in the West
For most of European history, questions about the mind belonged to philosophy and to medicine. Philosophers such as the English thinker John Locke and the German thinker Immanuel Kant wrote about perception, memory and the self. Even the word "psychology" is fairly modern. It joins two Greek words, psyche (soul or breath) and logos (study or account). The Latin form psychologia appears in print in a book title of 1590, by the scholar Goclenius.
In the late 1800s, psychology began to separate. It grew out of a meeting of philosophy and physiology, the study of how the body works. The timeline shows the main steps.
How Western psychology left philosophy, and partly came back
- Institution or event
- Book or idea
- 1590
Book or idea: The word psychologia in print
Goclenius uses it in a book title. The word is older than the separate science.
- 1879
Institution or event: Wundt's laboratory at Leipzig
Wilhelm Wundt opens a laboratory for psychology. This date is often used as the start of psychology as a separate science.
- 1890
Book or idea: William James, The Principles of Psychology
James describes the mind as a stream of consciousness, and separates 'knowledge about' a thing from 'knowledge of acquaintance' with it.
- 1913
Book or idea: Watson launches behaviourism
Watson says psychology must discard all reference to consciousness, and that introspection is no part of its methods.
- 1956 to 1967
Book or idea: The cognitive revolution
Research on memory, language and thinking brings the mind back into psychology, studied as information processing.
- 1960s
Book or idea: Humanistic and transpersonal psychology
Psychologists such as Maslow study growth, meaning and states beyond the ordinary self. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology starts in 1969.
- 1979
Institution or event: Kabat-Zinn's stress reduction clinic
A meditation-based course for patients opens at the University of Massachusetts. It becomes Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
- 1996
Book or idea: Varela's neurophenomenology
Varela proposes joining trained first-person reports of experience with brain data.
- 2000
Book or idea: Positive psychology
Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi call for a psychology of strengths and wellbeing, not only of illness.
Sources: Watson (1913), the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, published abstracts in PubMed, and the course textbooks.
The step from 1879 to 1913 is the important one for this unit. Wilhelm WundtWilhelm Wundtsay: vil-helm voontGerman scientist (1832 to 1920) who opened a laboratory for psychology at Leipzig in 1879. That date is often used as the start of psychology as a separate science.Full entry in the glossary still saw psychology as closely tied to philosophy, and his laboratory used controlled self-observation: trained people reported their own experience under fixed conditions. That method, looking inward and reporting what you find, is called introspection.
Key concept
introspection
Introspection means observing your own mind and describing what you find: a sensation, a feeling, a passing thought. If someone asks "how do you feel right now?" and you pause to check before answering, you are introspecting.
Early laboratory psychology used trained introspection as a main method. Then in 1913 the American psychologist John B. WatsonJohn B. WatsonAmerican psychologist (1878 to 1958) who launched behaviourism in 1913. He said psychology should study only behaviour that can be observed, not consciousness.Full entry in the glossary rejected it. His article opened: "Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science." Introspection, he said, "forms no essential part of its methods".
Why reject it? Because another scientist cannot check your report. If two trained observers describe their inner experience differently, there is no public way to decide who is right. Behaviourists wanted data that anyone could see and count. So for about forty years much of American psychology avoided consciousness altogether.
Rao and Paranjpe (2016, sec. 1.3.4) value trained introspection but question its aim. Psychologists such as Edward Titchener in the United States refined it, trying to make inner reports reliable "by transforming experience into observation". Rao and Paranjpe contrast this with India: "In the Indian tradition, experience is an item for realization and not of observation." A simple example, invented for this guide: a meditator is not asked to report on calm. The meditator is asked to become calm, and the change is the result.
Closest Indian idea svadhyaya (self-study) and the witness stance (sakshi) trained in meditation.
What the split gained and what it lost
The split gave psychology a great deal. Findings could be checked by other researchers, numbers could be compared, and knowledge could build up step by step. Most of the psychology you will study in other courses comes from this tradition.
Writers on Indian psychology argue that the split also cost something. Paranjpe and Rao (2008, p. 253) write that consciousness and the self were "virtually banished" by behaviourism. They add that this "turned out to be a relatively temporary aberration", because consciousness later returned as a research topic. Rao (2008, p. 5) argues that even cognitive psychology studies only what consciousness does, not what it is. And questions about how a person should live were left to philosophy and religion, outside psychology.
Why India never made the split
In classical India, psychology did not leave philosophy. In fact the two were never apart. The psychologist Ajit K. DalalAjit K. DalalIndian psychologist at the University of Allahabad who studied health beliefs and folk healing, and wrote a widely used history chapter on psychology in India.Full entry in the glossary, who wrote the course textbook's history of psychology in India, writes: "In the ancient Indian scriptures no rigid distinction among religion, philosophy and psychology was maintained" (Dalal, 2014, p. 20).
Here "classical India" means the schools whose texts are in Sanskrit and Pali. Folk, Islamic, Sikh, DalitDalitदलितdalitasay: duh-litLiterally: broken, crushed, oppressedDalit is a name used by and for people from the castes that were once treated as 'untouchable'. Many prefer it to older insulting labels because it names the oppression they faced.Full entry in the glossary and AdivasiAdivasiआदिवासीādivāsīsay: aa-di-vaa-seeLiterally: original inhabitantsAdivasi, 'original inhabitants', is a name for India's tribal peoples. Many live in forest and hill regions, with their own languages, religions and ways of life.Compare Close to 'Indigenous peoples' in other countries.Full entry in the glossary traditions have their own accounts of the mind, which the course books rarely cover.
Durganand SinhaDurganand SinhaIndian psychologist (1922 to 1998) at Allahabad. He led the call to 'indigenize' psychology in India, so that it fits Indian life and problems.Full entry in the glossary made the same point in 1965. He quoted the philosopher M. Hiriyanna, who wrote that the study of mind in India "never branched off from philosophy and every system has therefore its own psychology". Sinha added that each subject did develop on its own, but the differences "did not amount to a divorce".
Two paths: where psychology sits
Read each column from top to bottom.
Europe and America
- Before about 1850Questions about the mind belong to philosophy and medicine.
- 1879Wundt opens a psychology laboratory at Leipzig. Psychology starts to become a separate science that measures.
- 1913 to the 1950sBehaviourism drops consciousness and introspection. Questions about what is real and how to live stay with philosophy.
- 1950s onwardCognitive, humanistic and later meditation research bring the mind and consciousness back, with new methods.
Result: two separate university subjects. Psychology rarely asks what is ultimately real or what life is for.
India
- Classical schoolsEach darshanadarshanaदर्शनdarśanasay: duhr-shuh-nuhLiterally: seeing, view; from dṛś-, to seeDarshana means 'a way of seeing'. It is the usual word for a school of Indian philosophy, such as Sankhya, Yoga or Vedanta.Western link Close to 'philosophy' or 'school of thought'. The difference: a darshana is meant to be lived and practised, not only argued, and most aim at liberation.Full entry in the glossary is one package: a view of what is real, a theory of how we know, an account of the mind, ethics, and a practice.
- The aimFreedom from suffering (mokshamokshaमोक्षmokṣasay: mok-shuhLiterally: release, freedom; from muc-, to freeMoksha means liberation: final freedom from the cycle of rebirth and from suffering. It is the highest of the four aims of life.Western link Close to 'salvation' in religion, or to 'self-transcendence' in transpersonal psychology. The difference: moksha is freedom through knowledge or insight, not a reward from outside.Full entry in the glossary). Knowledge is meant to change the knower.
- 1905 onwardWestern psychology arrives in Indian universities, at first inside the philosophy department at Calcutta.
- 2002 onwardThe Indian psychology movement tries to draw the psychology out of the old packages and test it, while keeping their view of consciousness.
Result: in the classical texts, psychology never branched off. Every school has its own psychology.
Sources: Rao and Paranjpe (2016, sec. 1.1.1); Dalal (2014, pp. 20 to 21); Hiriyanna (1951), quoted in Sinha (1965). The first two steps of the India column describe the classical Sanskrit and Pali schools, not every Indian tradition.
A darshana is a way of seeing
The Sanskrit word usually translated as "philosophy" is darshanadarshanaदर्शनdarśanasay: duhr-shuh-nuhLiterally: seeing, view; from dṛś-, to seeDarshana means 'a way of seeing'. It is the usual word for a school of Indian philosophy, such as Sankhya, Yoga or Vedanta.Western link Close to 'philosophy' or 'school of thought'. The difference: a darshana is meant to be lived and practised, not only argued, and most aim at liberation.Full entry in the glossary. Literally it means "sight" or "seeing". It is used for a school or system of Indian thought, such as SankhyaSankhyaसांख्यSāṃkhyasay: saang-khyuhLiterally: enumeration, countingSankhya explains everything with two realities: pure consciousness (purusha) and nature (prakriti). In Sankhya, the mind belongs to nature, not to consciousness.Western link Close to mind-body dualism, as in Descartes. The key difference: Sankhya puts the mind on the material side; only pure consciousness is separate.Full entry in the glossary, YogaYogaयोगsay: yo-guhLiterally: joining, yoking; discipline; from yuj-, to yokeYoga is both a school of philosophy and a set of practices that train body, breath and mind. Its classic text is Patanjali's Yoga Sutra.Western link Often compared with mind-body or mindfulness-based interventions. The key difference: classical Yoga is a full ethical and spiritual path, not only a technique for health.Full entry in the glossary or VedantaVedantaवेदान्तVedāntasay: vay-daan-tuhLiterally: end of the VedaVedanta is the family of schools based on the Upanishads. They ask how the self (atman) relates to ultimate reality (Brahman).Western link Sometimes compared with idealist philosophy, which holds that mind or spirit is basic. The key difference: Vedanta claims this can be known by direct experience, not only by argument.Full entry in the glossary. The name suggests that each school offers a view of reality, something to be seen, and not only something to be argued.
The classical schools did argue, and carefully. Indian writers used the word anviksikianviksikiआन्वीक्षिकीānvīkṣikīsay: aan-vee-kshi-keeLiterally: examining, looking intoAnviksiki is critical inquiry: careful reasoning about a question by fixed rules, such as preferring the simpler explanation and avoiding circular arguments.Western link Close to 'critical thinking' or 'philosophizing'. The difference: it was taught alongside other branches of learning, not as a separate school of thought.Full entry in the glossary for critical inquiry, reasoning by rules such as preferring the simpler explanation and avoiding circular arguments. Girishwar Misra (2014, p. 122) calls this "philosophizing" rather than "philosophy". The schools also argued with each other. A 14th-century book, the Sarva-darshana-samgraha, collected many views side by side, even the materialist CharvakaCharvakaचार्वाकCārvākasay: chaar-vaa-kuhLiterally: uncertain (one guess is 'sweet-tongued', caru + vac); the other name, Lokayata, means 'directed at the world' (loka + ayata)Charvaka, also called Lokayata, is India's materialist school. It held that only matter is real and that perception is the only sure way of knowing.Western link Close to materialism and empiricism in Western philosophy. Like modern physicalism, it explains the mind as a product of the body.Full entry in the glossary school, which most others rejected.
The aim was freedom from suffering
Why did these schools keep psychology inside philosophy? The main reason is their aim. Sinha (1965) wrote that Indian philosophy "did not primarily take its rise in wonder or curiosity as it seems to have done in the West". It began "under the pressure of a practical need". That need was to understand suffering and end it.
New Pali word
dukkha दुक्ख
Dukkha is usually translated as "suffering", but it means more than pain. It includes the quiet dissatisfaction of a life in which nothing lasts and nothing fully satisfies. A student who gets the marks she wanted, and a week later feels empty again and wants more, has met dukkha in a small form.
The word is central in Buddhism, where the first teaching of the Buddha is that ordinary life is marked by dukkha. But the idea is shared across Indian schools. Rao and Paranjpe (2016, sec. 2.9) treat suffering, and the endless desires that feed it, as the starting point of the Indian "human quest".
For psychology, dukkha is a theory of distress. It says that much unhappiness comes from craving and from how we relate to experience, not only from what happens to us.
Nearest Western idea Close to 'suffering', 'distress' or 'dissatisfaction' in psychology. The difference: dukkha includes a quiet unease even in pleasant states, because they do not last.
New Sanskrit word
moksha मोक्ष
Moksha means liberation or release: final freedom from suffering and from the cycle of birth and death. In most Indian schools it is the highest aim of life.
Different schools describe moksha differently. For Advaita VedantaAdvaita Vedantaअद्वैत वेदान्तAdvaita Vedāntasay: uhd-vai-tuh vay-daan-tuhLiterally: not-two; non-dualAdvaita Vedanta teaches that the true self (atman) and ultimate reality (Brahman) are one. The feeling of being a separate person comes from ignorance.Western link Often called monism. Advaita writers prefer 'non-dualism': reality is not two, but it is not described as one countable thing either.Full entry in the glossary it is the realisation that the true self is one with ultimate reality. For Sankhya and Yoga it is consciousness standing free of the workings of nature and mind. Buddhists speak instead of nirvananirvanaनिर्वाणnirvāṇasay: nir-vaa-nuhLiterally: blowing out, extinguishing (nir + vā-, to blow)Nirvana is the goal of Buddhism: the end of craving, hatred and delusion, and so the end of suffering. The word means 'blowing out', as of a flame.Western link Sometimes compared to deep peace or the end of desire. Calling it 'annihilation' is a common Western mistake; Buddhist texts call it the highest happiness.Full entry in the glossary, the ending of craving.
What matters for this page is the shape of the idea. Knowledge was valued because it could free a person. A theory of the mind that did not help on the way to freedom was of little interest.
Nearest Western idea Close to 'salvation' in religion, or to 'self-transcendence' in transpersonal psychology. The difference: moksha is freedom through knowledge or insight, not a reward from outside.
Key concept
soteriology
Soteriology is a teaching about how a person can be saved or set free. The word comes from Greek soteria, "salvation". In the West it is used mainly for Christian teachings about salvation. For India, scholars use it for teachings about moksha and nirvana.
Calling the Indian schools soteriologies helps explain their shape. Each school has a picture of what is wrong with the ordinary human condition, a picture of what freedom looks like, and a path between them. Psychology sits in the middle: it explains how the mind keeps us stuck and how it can be trained.
Closest Indian idea teaching about liberation (moksha, nirvana, kaivalya), the final aim of most darshanas.
The path was not only a set of ideas. It was a practice. Theory and practice were joined in the idea of sadhanasadhanaसाधनाsādhanāsay: saa-dhuh-naaLiterally: means of accomplishing; from sādh-, to accomplishSadhana means steady spiritual practice: the daily discipline, such as meditation, prayer or study, that a person follows to grow toward a spiritual goal.Western link Close to 'deliberate practice', or to a structured training programme for the mind. The difference: its aim is spiritual change, not a measurable skill.Full entry in the glossary.
New Sanskrit word
sadhana साधना
Sadhana means steady, disciplined practice aimed at a spiritual goal: daily meditation, breath control, study of a text, service to others, or the inner work of watching one's reactions. A person doing sadhana is not only learning about the mind. They are training it.
This is why Indian writers say knowledge "changes the knower". Girishwar Misra (2014, p. 123) writes that knowledge in this tradition "changes the knower or the person engaged in the pursuit of knowledge more than changing or controlling the object or the thing being known".
Compare a chemistry student, who learns about a substance without being changed by it, with a student of sadhana, whose aim is to become calmer, clearer and less driven by craving. In Indian thought the second kind of knowledge ranks higher. The ancient texts call it para vidyapara vidyaपरा विद्याparā vidyāsay: puh-raa vid-yaaLiterally: higher knowledgePara vidya is 'higher knowledge': direct knowledge of ultimate reality. It is gained in deep states of consciousness, not through the senses or reasoning.Western link Close to mystical or transcendent knowledge in the psychology of religion. Mainstream psychology does not accept it as a scientific method; Indian psychologists argue that it can be trained and checked.Full entry in the glossary, higher knowledge, and contrast it with apara vidyaapara vidyaअपरा विद्याaparā vidyāsay: uh-puh-raa vid-yaaLiterally: lower knowledgeApara vidya is 'lower knowledge': knowledge of the world gained through the senses, reasoning and study, including the sciences and even the Vedas.Western link Close to empirical and rational knowledge, the kind science works with. The difference: Indian thought sees it as true but limited, not as the only kind of knowledge.Full entry in the glossary, ordinary knowledge of the world.
Nearest Western idea Close to 'deliberate practice', or to a structured training programme for the mind. The difference: its aim is spiritual change, not a measurable skill.
Sinha (1965) summed up the practical spirit with a Jaina saying: "Do not live to know, but know to live." He also quoted the English philosopher A. N. Whitehead, who called Buddhism "the most colossal example in history of applied metaphysics".
Try this
A first-year student (an invented example) tells her classmate: 'The Upanishads talk about the self and liberation. That is religion. Psychology is about experiments. So the two have nothing to do with each other.'
Using the ideas on this page so far, what is right and what is wrong in her claim?
Show the reasoning
She is right that the Upanishads and the classical schools do not run experiments, and that their aim, moksha, is a religious or spiritual goal. She is also right that modern psychology prefers public, measurable evidence. That preference goes back to the split between psychology and philosophy in the West, and to Watson's rejection of introspection in 1913.
She is wrong that the two have nothing to do with each other. The classical schools contain detailed accounts of attention, desire, suffering and self-control, because their path to liberation needed a theory of how the mind works. As Hiriyanna put it, every system "has its own psychology". And modern psychology also rests on philosophical choices, such as positivism, which it seldom states. The better question is not "religion or psychology?" but "which claims in these texts can a psychologist study, and how?"
Is Indian psychology philosophy, psychology or religion?
Today's writers on Indian psychology try to separate the psychology from the philosophy it grew in. K. Ramakrishna RaoK. Ramakrishna RaoIndian psychologist and philosopher (1932 to 2021). A leader of the Indian psychology movement and co-author of the course textbook Psychology in the Indian Tradition.Full entry in the glossary uses a mining image. The psychological insights are "diamonds in the raw, buried deep in the ravines worn by philosophical streams" (Rao, 2014, p. 3). They must be dug out and cut into the categories of modern psychology.
Rao also compares the name "Indian psychology" with the name "Indian philosophy". In Indian universities, the philosophy department mostly teaches Western philosophy. Yet "Indian philosophy" still means a distinct tradition of thought. In the same way, "Indian psychology" does not mean "psychology as taught in India", nor "the psychology of Indian people". It means a body of psychological ideas that grew in the Indian tradition. The start page sets out these three meanings side by side.
Rao and Paranjpe go one step further. They call Indian psychology a school of psychology with its own theory, comparable to psychoanalysis or behaviourism (Rao and Paranjpe, 2016, sec. 1.1.2).
A tension inside the textbook
Read two sentences from the same course textbook side by side.
"As noted, Indian psychology is a school of psychology and not a system of philosophy."
Rao and Paranjpe (2016), sec. 1.3.2
"Indeed, its philosophical preoccupation is its strength and not its weakness."
Rao and Paranjpe (2016), sec. 1.4
The first sentence separates Indian psychology from philosophy. The second roots it in philosophy. Both are meant seriously. The best way to read them together is this: Rao and Paranjpe separate Indian psychology from philosophy as a discipline, because they want it to observe, test and apply its ideas. But they keep its philosophical worldview, especially the views of Advaita Vedanta and Sankhya-Yoga about consciousness. An exam answer that notices this tension, and explains it, will be stronger than one that quotes only one side.
Is it religion?
This is the harder version of the same question. Here are the strongest points on each side, taken from the course books.
The case that it is not simply religion.
- Rao (2014, p. 5) separates spirituality from religion: "Spirituality is to religion what science is to technology." For him spirituality is the search, and religions are the tools people have built for it.
- Some Indian schools have no God at all. Paranjpe (2014, p. 237) points out that "the Samkhya system is itself atheistic", and that atheists can practise meditation and the other yogas. Buddhism and Jainism also do without a creator God.
- Paranjpe also argues that the Western suspicion of religion comes from Europe's own history of church authority and heresy trials, which India did not share. In his words, "disdain for religion is the result of the historical baggage of Europe, and not of India".
- The editors of the course textbook point to ShankaraShankaraशङ्करŚaṅkarasay: shuhng-kuh-ruhIndian philosopher of the 8th century CE, the most influential teacher of Advaita Vedanta, which holds that the true self and ultimate reality are one.Full entry in the glossary, the great teacher of Advaita Vedanta. In his commentary on the Bhagavad GitaBhagavad Gitaभगवद्गीताBhagavad Gītāsay: bhuh-guh-vuhd gee-taaLiterally: song of the Blessed LordThe Bhagavad Gita is a 700-verse dialogue inside the Mahabharata. Krishna advises the warrior Arjuna, who is in crisis before a battle.Western link Often read as a counselling text: a person in crisis talks with a guide. Unlike most Western therapy, the guide also gives moral and spiritual teaching.Full entry in the glossary he wrote that "even a hundred scriptural passages" cannot make it true that fire is cool or dark. Experience, in this view, can overrule scripture.
The case that religion is still present.
- Dalal (2014, p. 34) says Indian psychology is "spiritual in its orientation", and that spirituality here "connotes faith in the existence of higher powers". A critic would call that a religious commitment.
- L. S. S. Manickam (2008, p. 493), writing in the Handbook, admits that "the spirit of critically questioning these principles" is not encouraged, so the line between sacred and secular "is rather blurred".
A fair conclusion is that Indian psychology draws on religious traditions without being the same as any one religion. Whether a particular claim is religious or psychological depends on the claim. That is why the next section matters.
Where metaphysics ends and psychology begins
Every writer on Indian psychology has to decide what to do with the big metaphysical claims of the old schools: that pure consciousness exists, that the true self is one with ultimate reality, that the mind is a subtle form of matter. The course books take three different positions.
| Position | What it says | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| A. Set the metaphysics aside | Study experiences, practices and their effects. Leave aside whether the experiences show something real beyond the mind. | Rao (2008, p. 7; 2014, p. 10); William Braud (2014, pp. 84 to 85); Paranjpe (2014, p. 237) |
| B. Treat the metaphysics as a hypothesis | Turn the big claims into statements that observation could support or weaken. | Rao (2008, p. 10); Peter Sedlmeier (2014, pp. 61 to 66) |
| C. Reach the metaphysics only by changing yourself | The deepest truths can be known only by a researcher whose own consciousness has been transformed. | Kundan Singh (2014, p. 50); Matthijs Cornelissen (2014, p. 113) |
Position A is the most cautious. Rao admits that psychology "cannot study consciousness-as-such", only how it shows itself in persons. He writes: "Spirituality per se may not be empirically tested; but, I believe, its effects can be observed and measured" (Rao, 2014, p. 10). On this view a researcher can study whether meditation changes attention, without deciding whether meditation reveals a pure self.
Position B is bolder. Rao also says that the claim that a mind emptied of all content touches pure consciousness "is not a sacred speculation, but a hypothesis that can be elaborated and subjected to verification by observation" (Rao, 2008, p. 10). Sedlmeier lists questions of this kind, such as whether pure consciousness is "just a special brain state".
Position C says the outsider's methods can never reach the goal. Kundan Singh argues that in a true science of consciousness, "the researcher and the researched become one". Cornelissen argues that reports of inner states can be checked only by people with "inner instruments of knowledge that are similar or better in quality". The paradigm debate page looks at the criticisms of this position.
Who these writers are
William Braud worked at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Peter Sedlmeier is a German academic psychologist who is sympathetic to Indian psychology but insists on mainstream methods. Matthijs Cornelissen writes in the tradition of Sri Aurobindo. Kundan Singh writes on consciousness and on the idea of knowledge by identity. All four have chapters in Cornelissen, Misra and Varma (2014).
Two kinds of truth: sat and satyam
Rao and Paranjpe (2016, sec. 2.2) offer a useful tool for drawing the line. They separate two Sanskrit words for truth, sat and satyamsat and satyamसत्, सत्यम्sat, satyamsay: suht, suht-yuhmLiterally: sat: being, what truly is; satyam: truthRao and Paranjpe use sat for an absolute truth that can never be shown false, and satyam for what has been found true so far and stays open to revision.Western link Like the difference between a metaphysical certainty and a scientific finding that holds only until it is refuted, as in Popper's idea of falsification.Full entry in the glossary.
- Sat is absolute truth, "an absolute truth that can never be falsified". Claims about BrahmanBrahmanब्रह्मन्brahmansay: bruh-hmuhnLiterally: the vast; from bṛh-, to grow, expandBrahman is the ultimate reality in Vedanta: the one source and ground of everything. It is often described as being, consciousness and bliss.Western link Close to 'the Absolute' in Western philosophy, or to God in mystical theology. The difference: in Advaita, Brahman is not separate from the self that seeks it.Full entry in the glossary or pure consciousness are claims about sat.
- Satyam is what "is found to be true so far" and "remains open for revision", "like truths of science".
Psychology deals in satyam. A finding about meditation and attention is true so far, and a better study could overturn it. A claim about sat is not the kind of claim a study can overturn. Keeping the two apart helps a student see which parts of Indian psychology belong to research and which belong to faith or philosophy.
The tradition has two similar pairs. apara vidyaapara vidyaअपरा विद्याaparā vidyāsay: uh-puh-raa vid-yaaLiterally: lower knowledgeApara vidya is 'lower knowledge': knowledge of the world gained through the senses, reasoning and study, including the sciences and even the Vedas.Western link Close to empirical and rational knowledge, the kind science works with. The difference: Indian thought sees it as true but limited, not as the only kind of knowledge.Full entry in the glossary (lower knowledge, about the world) is set against para vidyapara vidyaपरा विद्याparā vidyāsay: puh-raa vid-yaaLiterally: higher knowledgePara vidya is 'higher knowledge': direct knowledge of ultimate reality. It is gained in deep states of consciousness, not through the senses or reasoning.Western link Close to mystical or transcendent knowledge in the psychology of religion. Mainstream psychology does not accept it as a scientific method; Indian psychologists argue that it can be trained and checked.Full entry in the glossary (higher knowledge, about the ultimate). And in Advaita Vedanta, the everyday level of reality, vyavaharikavyavaharikaव्यावहारिकvyāvahārikasay: vyaa-vuh-haa-ri-kuhLiterally: relating to daily dealings (vyavahāra)Vyavaharika means the everyday or 'transactional' level of reality: the world of people, objects and science, which is real for practical life.Western link Close to Kant's world of appearances (phenomena), or to the reality that science studies. The difference: Advaita claims the higher level can be known directly.Full entry in the glossary, is set against the ultimate level, paramarthikaparamarthikaपारमार्थिकpāramārthikasay: paa-ruh-maar-thi-kuhLiterally: relating to the highest truth (parama + artha)Paramarthika means the ultimate level of reality in Advaita Vedanta. At this level only Brahman, pure consciousness, is real.Western link Close to Kant's 'thing in itself' (noumenon). Kant held that it cannot be known; Advaita holds that it can be known by direct experience.Full entry in the glossary. In all three pairs, ordinary science and psychology work on the first side.
Key concept
phenomenology
Phenomenology is the careful description of experience as it appears to the person who has it, before any theory explains it away. The German philosopher Edmund Husserl developed it as a method in the early 1900s. One of its tools is "bracketing": setting aside your assumptions about what is "really" there, so that you can describe what is actually experienced.
Imagine describing the taste of tea without saying anything about chemistry or the brain. You would describe warmth, bitterness, the way the taste changes, the feeling of comfort. That is a phenomenological description.
Phenomenology matters here because it is the main Western tradition that takes first-person experience seriously, as Indian psychology does. The editors of the course textbook name it as one exception to mainstream psychology's preference for outside observation.
Closest Indian idea anubhava (direct experience), and the yogic observation of the movements of the mind (vrittis).
Buddhist thought gives a second link to phenomenology. Early Buddhist texts analyse experience into small, changing parts: feelings, perceptions, intentions, moments of consciousness. They do this mostly without depending on claims about God or a permanent self. The psychologist John Pickering (2011, p. 106) suggests that this "marginalization of metaphysics" is one reason Buddhism has spread so easily into Western psychology.
Why this matters for a psychologist
Every psychology carries a philosophy. The main lesson of this topic is that no psychology is free of philosophical choices. Mainstream psychology carries positivism and, often, materialism. Indian psychology carries the worldview of Vedanta, Sankhya-Yoga or Buddhism. A good psychologist can name the choices behind a theory before judging it.
Separate testable claims from the rest. When you meet an Indian idea in this course, ask which of the three positions in the table you are using. "Breath practice reduces anxiety" is a satyam-type claim that a study can check. "The true self is pure consciousness" is a sat-type claim that no study can settle. Both may be worth studying, but in different ways.
Notice the aims behind a therapy. Rao and Paranjpe (2016, Table 1.1) contrast a Western aim of mental health as "repair and rebuild" with an Indian aim to "cultivate and promote", taking the person beyond the average. In counselling, the aim you choose shapes what counts as success.
Read textbooks with the tension in mind. Many course readings move between philosophy and psychology without warning. When an author slides from "meditation improves attention" to "meditation reveals the self", notice the step. It is a step from satyam to sat.
Try this
Ravi (an invented example), a counselling student, attends a workshop on stress. The speaker says: 'Our ancient sages knew that the mind is only a cloud over the pure self. That is why breathing practice calms you. Modern research now proves it.' Ravi wants to write a short, fair critique for his class.
Which parts of the speaker's claim could a psychologist test, which could not be tested, and how would the ideas of sat and satyam help Ravi write his critique?
Show the reasoning
The speaker joins two different kinds of claim. "Breathing practice calms you" is a psychological claim about satyam. A study could test it, for example by comparing anxiety scores in people who practise and people who do not. If the evidence supports it, it is true so far and open to revision.
"The mind is only a cloud over the pure self" is a metaphysical claim about sat. No study of calmness can prove it, because breathing practice could calm people for purely bodily reasons. So research cannot "prove" the sages right, even if the practice works. Ravi's critique should say that the practical claim may be well supported, the metaphysical claim is outside what the research tests, and the speaker has moved from one to the other without saying so. That is position A on this page: study the effects, and set the metaphysics aside.