PSYCHOLOGY
THE first or superficial view which the observing mind
takes of any object of knowledge is always an illusory view; science, all true
knowledge comes by going behind the superficies and discovering the inner truth
and the hidden law. It is not that the thing itself is illusory, but that it is
not what it superficially appears to be; nor is it that the operations and
functionings we observe on the surface do not take place but that we cannot
find their real motive-power, process, relations by the simple study of them as
they offer themselves to the observing senses. ...These material constituents
again are merely formulations of a Force which we cannot describe as material
and of which the senses have no evidence. Yet the mind and the senses can live
quite satisfied and convinced in the world of illusions and accept them as the
practical truth-for to a certain extent they are the practical truth and
sufficient for an initial, ordinary and limited activity.
But only to a certain extent; for
there are possibilities of a wider life, a more mastering action, a greater
practicality which can only be achieved by going behind these surfaces , and
utilising a truer knowledge of objects and forces. The discovery of the secret
operations of Nature leads to a contigent discovery, the possibility of a
farther use of her forces to which she herself has not proceeded, not finding
the necessary for the mere preservation of existence and its ordinary workings,
but has left to man, her mental being, discover and utilise for the amelioration
of existence and for the development of its possibilities.
All this is easy to see in the realm of Matter; but
mankind is not yet entirely ready to recognise the same truth and follow up the
same principle in the realm of the Mind. It is true that psychology has made
an advance and has begun to improve its
method. Formerly, it was a crude, scholastic and superficial systematisation of
man's ignorance of himself. The surface psychological functionings, will, mind,
senses, reason, conscience, etc., were arranged
in a dry and sterile classification;
their real nature and relation to each other were not fathomed nor any use made
of them which went beyond the limited action. Nature had been found sufficient
for a very superficial mental and psychic life and for very superficial and
ordinary workings. Because we do not know ourselves, therefore we are unable to
ameliorate radically our subjective life or develop with mastery, with
rapidity, with a sure science the hidden possibilities of our mental capacity and
our moral nature. The new psychology seeks indeed to penetrate behind
superficial appearances, but it is
encumbered by initial errors which prevent a profounder knowledge,-the
material- istic error which bases the study of the mind upon the study of the
body; the sceptical error which prevents any bold and clear-eyed investigation
of the hidden profundities of our subjective existence; the error of
conservative distrust and recoil, which regards any subjective state or
experience that departs from the ordinary operations of our mental and,
psychical nature as a morbidity or a hallucination,- just as the Middle Ages
regarded all new science as magic and a diabolical departure from the sane and
right limits of human capacity; finally, the error of objectivity which leads
the psychologist to study others from outside instead of seeing his true field
of knowledge and laboratory of experiment in himself. Psychology is necessarily
a subjective science and one must proceed in it from the knowledge of oneself to
true knowledge of others.
But whatever the crudities of the
new science, it has at least taken the first capital step without which there
can be no true psychological knowledge; it has made the discovery which is the
beginning of self-knowledge and which all must make who deeply study the facts
of consciousness, that our waking and surface existence is only a small part of
our being and does not yield to us the root and the secret of' our character,
our mentality, or our actions. The sources lie deeper. To discover them, to
know the nature and the processes of the inconscient or subconscient self and,
so far as is possible, to possess and utilise the secret forces of Nature,
ought to be the aim of a scientific psychology.
Modern psychological experiment and
observation have proceeded on two different lines which have not yet found their point of meeting. On the one hand,
psychology has taken for its starting-point the discoveries and the fundament
thesis of the physical sciences and has worked as a continuation of physiology.
The physical sciences are the study of
inconscient Force working in inconscient Matter and a psychology which
accepts this formula as the basis of all existence must regard consciousness as
a phenomenal result the Inconscient working on the inconscient. Mind is only an
outcome and as it were a record of nervous reactions. The true self is the
inconscient; mental action is one of its subordinate phenomena. The Inconscient
is greater than the conscient; it is the god, the magician, the creator
whose action is far more unerring than
the ambitious but blundering action of the conscious mentality….
The other line of psychological
investigation is still frowned upon by orthodox science, but it thrives and
yields its results in spite of the anathema of the doctors. It leads us into
bypaths of psychical research, hypnotism, mesmerism, occultism and all sorts of
strange psychological groupings. Certainly, there is nothing here of the
assured clearness and firmly grounded positivism of the physical method. Yet
facts emerge and with the facts a momentous conclusion,-the conclusion, that
there is a 'subliminal' self behind our superficial waking mind, not
inconscient but conscient, greater than the waking mind, endowed with
surprising faculties and capable , much surer action and experience, conscient
of the superficial mind though of it the superficial mind is inconscient. And
then a question rises. What if there were really no Inconscient at all, but a
hidden Consciousness everywhere perfect in power and wisdom, of which our mind
is the first slow hesitating and imperfect disclosure and into the image of
which the human mentality is destined progressively to grow? It would at least
be no less valid a generalisation and it would explain all the facts that we
now know considerably better than the blind and purposeless determinism of
the materialistic theory .
In pursuing psychological
investigation upon this line we shall only be resuming that which had already
been done by our remote forefathers. For they too, the moment they began to
observe, to experiment, to look below the surface of things, were compelled to
perceive that the surface man is only a form and appearance and that the real
self is something infinitely greater and more profound. They too must have
passed through the first materialistic stages of science and philosophy. ...The
Vedantic psychology was aware of other depths that take us beyond this formula
and in relation to which the mental being becomes in its turn as superficial as
is our waking to our subliminal mind. And now once more in the revolutions of
human thought these depths have to be sounded; modern psychology will be led
perforce, by
the compulsion of the truth that it is seeking, on the
path that was followed by the ancient. The new dawn, treading the eternal path
of the Truth, follows it to the goal of the dawns that have gone before,-how
many, who shall say? l
1 Arya, 'The Inconscient', Vol. II, pp. 112-20,
September 1915.