CHENNAI: Psychology is the science of realisation and its status and operations, if can even be slightly glimpsed, take us to an entirely different mental sphere.

It is not enough for us to just observe and know the movements of nature superficially from the outside, just as it is not enough for Science to observe and know electricity only through the movements of lightning in the clouds or for an astronomer to observe and know only those movements and properties of the stars that are visible to the unaided eye.

Here is a whole world of occult phenomena that has to be laid bare and brought under control, before the psychologist can hope to be a master of his respective domain.

Our observable consciousness, that which we call ourselves, is only the little visible part of our being. It is a small sphere, below which are depths and farther depths and widths and wider widths which support and supply it, but to which it has no visible access. All that is our self, our being — what we see on the top is only our ego and its visible nature.

For below this comprehendible nature is the vast unfathomable nature out of which we come. The Incomprehensible is greater, deeper, more original, and more potent to shape and govern what we are and do, than the little derivative comprehendible nature. In that kingdom are many powers, movements, personalities which are part of ourselves and help to form our little surface personality and its powers and movements.

We may not know this inner self and these inner persons but we ought to know that they know and observe us and in turn dictate our words, thoughts, feelings, actions even more directly than the fathomable.

Around us is a circum comprehensible universe and we are a portion. This circum conscience is pouring its forces, suggestions, stimulus, and compulsions into us at every moment of our existence.

The universal mind impacts our mind’s formation. The thoughts, feelings and impulses are continually little more than a personally modified reception and transcription of its thought-waves, its force-currents, its foam of emotion and sensation, its billow of impulse.

The permanent universal life which is around us, of which our petty flow of life-formation begins and ceases is only a small dynamic wave.

Psychology is the science of consciousness, the knowledge of its nature, its processes and the aim or results of its processes, its law, its habitat and instruments; its what, why, where, and whether.

But what is consciousness and can there be a science of consciousness ?

We are not in presence of a body of concrete, visible or sensible facts, verifiable by all, which form an indisputable starting-point, are subject to experiment and proof, where theories can be tested at every point and discarded if they do not accord with the facts, with all the facts. The data here is subjective, fluid elusive. It does not subject itself to exact instruments or varying theories and does not afford proofs easily verifiable by all.

Their presentation is difficult and can hardly be more than scanty and often infantile in their insufficiency. Theories are numerous, but few or none have any solidity or permanence.

To understand the psychology of others, we depend upon our observation of them and our own interpretation of the movements we observe and our comparison with our own psychological actions and reactions. But our observation is limited by the fact that what we observe is not psychological events we wish to study but signs of speech, action, facial or bodily expression which seem to us to indicate them; but it is still more limited by the possibility of error in our observation and still more in our interpretation. 

Errors of attribution, exaggeration, evidence and false valuation, crop up at every turn; indeed, the whole observation may be nothing but error, the interpretation purely personal and mistaken.

Comparison with us may be a fruitful fountain of mistakes, there is no doubt a general similarity in the mass of human reactions, but the differences and variations are also marked and striking; there is here no source of certitude.

A direct experiential and experimental psychology seems to be demanded if psychology is to be a science and not merely a mass of elementary and superficial generalisations with all the rest guesswork or uncertain conclusion or inference.

We must see, feel, know directly what we observe; our interpretations must be capable of being sure and indubitable; we must be able to work surely on a ground of sure knowledge.

Modern psychologists have aimed at certitude in their knowledge, have found it or thought they found it by mixing up Psychology and Physiology; our physiological processes are supposed to be not only the instrumentation or an instrumentation of our consciousness, but the base or constituents of our Psychological processes.

However, by this method we can only arrive at an extended physiological, not at a true psychological knowledge. We learn that there is a physical instrumentation by which  physical things and their contacts work upon our consciousness, reach it through the nerves and the brain and awake certain reactions in it which may however vary with the brain and consciousness contacted; we learn that the consciousness uses certain physiological processes as well as physical means to act  upon outward things and conditions; we learn too that physical conditions have and action upon our state of consciousness and its functioning.

But all this was to be expected, since we are a consciousness embodied and not disincarnate, acting through a body and with a body as a habitation and instrument and  not a pure consciousness acting in its own right.

Excerpts from the book Essays Divine and Human by Sri Aurobindo