INDIAN YOGA AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY
More than half a century ago Swami Vivekananda realised the "Importance of psychology" and has drawn, in a lecture with the same title, a comparison between the Western and Indian approaches to psychology, which he calls the "science of sciences". To quote the words of the Swami:"Psychology is the science of sciences; but in the West it is placed upon the same plane as all other sciences; that is, it is judged by the same criterion-utility. "How much practical benefit will it do to humanity? How much will it add to our rapidly growing happiness? How much will it detract from our rapidly increasing pain? Such is the criterion by which everything is judged in the West.
.. But even taking the Western idea of utility as a criterion by which to judge, psychology, by such a standard even, is the science of sciences. Why? We are all slaves to our senses, slaves to our own minds, conscious and subconscious.
"Deep down in our subconscious mind are stored up all the thoughts and acts of the past, not only of this life, but of all other lives we have lived. This great, boundless ocean of subjective mind is full of all the thoughts and actions of the past. Each one of these is striving to be recognised, pushing outward for expression, surging, wave after wave, out upon the objective mind, the conscious mind.
These thoughts, this stored-up energy, we take for natural desires, talents, etc., It is because we do not realise their true origin. We obey them blindly, unquestioningly and slavery, the most helpless kind of slavery, is the result, and we call ourselves free. Free! "The ghosts of past thoughts, past lives hold us down. All the misery of the world is caused by this slavery to the senses. Our inability to rise above the sense-life-the striving for physical pleasures, is the cause of all the horrors and miseries in the world.
"It is the science of psychology that teaches us to hold in check the wild gyrations of the mind, place it under the control of the will, and thus free ourselves from its tyrannous mandates. Psychology is therefore the science of sciences without which all other sciences and all other knowledge are worthless.
"The mind. uncontrolled and unguided, will drag us down, down forever rend us, kill us; and the mind controlled and guided will save us, free us. So it must be con¬trolled, and psychology will teach us how to do it.
"Deep, deep within, is the soul, the essential man, the Atman. Turn the mind inward and become united to that, and from that standpoint of stability, the gyrations of the mind can be watched and facts observed, which are to be found in all persons. Such facts, such data, are to be found by those who go deep enough, and only by such. "If you intend to study the mind, you must have syste¬matic training; you must practise to bring the mind under your control, to attain to that consciousness from which' you will be able to study the mind and remain unmoved by any of its wild gyrations."
The Complete pp. 26-30.Works of Swami' Vivektmanda,Vol. VI,
Parvamani