Infinity in a Drop
 
a consciousness-centred psychology
inspired by the work of Sri Aurobindo

 
 
 
how rigorous research in the inner domain
can help psychology to become a more
effective and quickly progressive science

Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: 12 November 2025

CONTENTS^nb

1.  Introduction: why this text was written

• A personal preamble
• The need for two fundamental sciences
• For whom this text is meant

2.  Psychology and its place within the academic world

• Psychology and what happened to it
• How science, and society, became more and more physicalist
• How psychology followed the hard sciences, and lost itself
• Two different ideas on what the world is made of
• Can we bring them together?

3.  Learning from physics

• Watching the stars
• What made the hard sciences progress so quickly?
• Learning from other knowledge systems

4.  Learning from the Indian knowledge systems

• Four major contributions the Indian knowledge systems can make to psychology
• Super-specializations, and the need for a synthesis
• Integration of Indian methods of inquiry with those of science

5.  Integrality

• Why this text is called Infinity in a Drop
• Integrality as translation of purna

6.  Consciousness and its role in reality

• Introduction: three concepts of Consciousness
• The physicalist concept of consciousness
• Consciousness from the perspective of exclusive spirituality
• The integral concept of consciousness
• An issue-wise comparison between all three concepts of consciousness
• Conclusion: towards an integral view of reality (in process)

7.  Knowledge

• Introduction (in process)
• Four ways of arriving at knowledge
• Naïve and expert modes of arriving at knowledge
• From introspection to puruṣa-based self-observation
• Perfecting one's inner instruments of knowledge
• Four knowledge realms

8.  Doing yoga-based, consciousness-centred research

• Looking at science and yoga as complementary knowledge systems
• Similarities between science and yoga as knowledge-systems
• Difficulties specific to research in the subjective and inner domains
• Integration of yoga-based research with mainstream academics (in process)

9.  Towards a more integral system of education

• Is traditional schooling injurious to health?
• Free Progress: education guided by the soul (in process)

10.  Introducing first-person psychology at college level

• Who am I?
• Introduction
• My surface personality
• My character
• Anyone at home?
• Self and personality: a short outline
• Different ways to classify types of knowing
• How to do small first-person research projects: a student's guide
• Maintaining a journal

11.  The self and the structure of the personality:
An overview of Sri Aurobindo's terminology

• Introduction
• An overview of Sri Aurobindo's terminology
• Going within: discovering the concentric system
• The vertical system
• Centres of identity: ego, self and soul
• Bringing it all together
• Locating the centre and the borders of the self
• The dynamism of the Self

12.  What makes us what we are?

• An overview of influences on our personality

13.  The ongoing evolution of consciousness

• The evolution of matter, life and mind
• The post-biological evolution:
  changing the world and changing ourselves
• The necessity of an involution before the evolution
• The next step in the evolution of consciousness

14.  The practice of Integral Yoga

• Introduction (in process)
• Finding your own path
• Steps of the soul
• The science of living
• Processes of change
• Relationships
• Self-observation
• The evolving soul
• The role of pain and suffering
• The Vedic image of man
• The Bhagavad Gita
• Yoga in a progressive universe
• Aspiration, rejection, surrender

15.  Epilogue

• An expression of gratitude

Appendices

1.  Behaviourism

• Classical Behaviourism

2.  Biographical and bibliographical notes on Sri Aurobindo

• A short biography of Sri Aurobindo
• A brief survey of Sri Aurobindo's writings

3.  References and glossaries (in process)

• References
• Glossary of Sanskrit words
• Technical terms other than Sanskrit

4.  Stories

• A perfect therapy session
• Oh God, she quarrelled again
• Plato's cave and a teashop in Thailand
• What is māyā?
• The first selfie
• The pandit and the milk-maid
• A simple blade of grass
• Churning the ocean
• How the world was made

NB   This text is still in process.

For updates and further information,
please contact   Infinity in a Drop :
mail@ipi.org.in