The Promise of a Greater Psychology Integrating Knowledge of the Whole With Understanding of the Parts

The Greek philosopher Plato, after deep consideration, reached the conclusion that some higher principle was real, which he called ‘Forms” or ‘Ideas’, and that the physical reality we see and experience is the result, not the cause. This concept is in consonance with the Vedic understanding. Even the Christian Bible notes that ‘In the beginning was the Word’. All of these approaches (and many more from around the world and across numerous traditional religious, philosophical and spiritual directions) make it clear that the physical world is a derivative phenomenon of the higher Source.

Western psychology, in its earliest approaches, tries to define the meaning, direction and motivation for our lives in the exte
al reality, based in trauma and various drives of the lower nature, without ever taking into account the implications of the higher Wisdom that the sages and thinkers throughout the ages have eventually embraced. The life we lead, the promptings we follow, the thoughts we think, the aspirations we experience do not originate in material substance somehow trying to survive due to random combinations of chemicals making us what we are; rather they come from levels that are currently superconscient to our normal experience, which represent the Idea, the Word, the Light, or as some define it, God.

In his book The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo identifies the basic human aspiration as a seeking after “God, Light, Freedom, Immortality”. It is these basic drives that define the value and development of human life in general, as well as providing specific motivation to individuals as they awaken to a greater meaning for their existence.

Once we recognise the wider range of the human existence, encompassing drives, energies, motivations, aspirations that are conscient to us, as well as those that are subconscient and those that are superconscient, we cannot avoid expanding the focus of psychology to not simply try to fit all human life into a small part of the subconscient elements of our existence; rather, we need to develop what Sri Aurobindo calls a ‘greater psychology’ that takes all the different planes and parts of our being into account, and explores also the impacts of forces subliminal to our conscious awareness. Trying to define humanity by our subconscient, animal drives is both unduly limiting and a falsification that distorts our search for meaning and our understanding of the significance of life and of our own lives in particular.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights, — yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e- tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esham. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, Physical Consciousness — Subconscient — Sleep and Dream — Illness, pp. 96-97