Learning from the Indian knowledge systems

Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: 29 September 2025

Four major contributions the Indian knowledge systems can make to psychology

One can distinguish four major contributions which the Indian civilization can make to psychology and the science of the inner domain:
 

1. A comprehensive background philosophy
   The Indian civilization has developed a deep and well-worked out philosophical understanding of reality which is as suitable for the psychological as for the physical domain. Its earliest formulations can be found in some of the oldest Indian texts like the Ṛg Veda, the early Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā. The "Vedic paradigm" given in these texts functions as a loving grandmother to the enormous variety of spiritual, philosophical, religious and cultural schools which India later brought forth. Outside India, it has been mainly these later traditions that have made an impact. One can think for example of Buddhist thought, which spread throughout Asia and more recently through Europe and the Americas. Another example is Patanjali's Yoga Sutras which has become popular amongst practitioners of hatha-yoga. There is an extensive body of research about them, and there can be no reasonable doubt about their value for self-development and therapy.

   The older, more integral tradition is interesting for a different reason. It is its ability to support and nurture in an impartial — and often surprisingly modern — manner, the entire range of human efforts at understanding and improving the world and ourselves, whether religious, cultural, spiritual, or scientific. As science and technology are removing the distances that used to keep people and cultures apart, it is hard to exaggerate how much humanity needs such an integral framework for understanding all aspects of reality, and all the different ways in which people deal with them.

   In modern times, Sri Aurobindo is the main exponent of the integral Indian tradition, and we will make use of Sri Aurobindo's work throughout this text.1
    

2. Methods to arrive at reliable knowledge in the inner domain
   The Indian civilization has also developed sophisticated and effective methods for the rigorous, in-depth study of consciousness and other aspects of reality that cannot be studied effectively with the research methods mainstream psychology uses at present. The Indian civilization did this by by turning our human nature into a reliable and precise "inner instrument of knowledge", antaḥkaraṇa, fit for the effective study of the inner domain.

   If the early psychologists had known and accepted what the Indian knowledge systems discovered about how to turn human nature into a reliable and precise inner instrument of knowledge, psychology, and possibly society as a whole might have developed in a very different manner. That the early psychologists in the beginning of last century were not sufficiently aware of this — or even when they were aware of it were not yet ready to use it — is to some extent understandable. The mindset of colonialism and Western superiority was still rampant, even in academia, but that science, which in other fields has become a truly global enterprise, even now, more than 75 years after India's political independence, still doesn't make use of the methods India developed for the study of the inner domain is plain inexcusable. We'll take these epistemological and methodological issues up in the chapters on Knowledge and Research, and as we will see there, the methods the Indian systems developed are logically coherent as well as practically doable and should allow us — with sufficient effort — to turn our own human nature into the reliable and precise instruments psychology needs.

   With this we have arrived at what may well be one of the most important contributions the Indian civilization can make to modern science. While decontextualised forms of yoga and mindfulness are used on a large scale for well-being, the potential of the Indian knowledge systems for providing detailed and reliable knowledge and know-how in the inner domain has hardly been touched. This is remarkable — and tragic — since in the culture of origin, yoga was taken up not only for happiness, but also, and often primarily, for the sake of knowledge and wisdom.
    

3. A rich repertoire of psychology-related theories
   One of the neat outcomes of the Indian approach is that it has produced a wealth of sophisticated and logically coherent theories about reality and human nature in all its complexity. They are based on the deep understanding of our psychological functioning and possibilities for further development that the practice of yoga makes possible, and they go way beyond the furthest ranges known to modern psychology.

   Since the focus of this text is on the research methods that are needed to study the rather large and influential part of reality which our present science does not know how to study, we will not take this up in the main text. Instead we have included in the Appendix two chapters that may give some indication of the direction in which a further study of the inner domain could take us. The first gives a somewhat simplified map of the territory. It is called "The self and the structure of the personality". The second, "What makes us what we are? An overview of influences on our personality", deals with the dynamic side of the human adventure. It outlines some of the main formative factors in psychology, as well as the possibilites we have for further development.
    

4. A wide range of effective practices to achieve happiness and a higher consciousness
   As mentioned earlier, decontextualised versions of hathayoga and mindfulness, are already adopted by mainstream psychology on a large scale, and more comprehensive implementations are part of a variety of subcultures. But while all this is great for those who use them, it is not sufficient to take psychology further as a science. For that we need to understand the ontology, the epistemology, the research methodologies, and the theoretical framework that gave rise to these practices.
    

Super-specializations, and the need for a synthesis

It is a major theme of this text that the Indian understanding of the basic nature of reality and knowledge, together with its practical methodology for the study of the inner domain could revolutionise psychology and its applications in education, self-development, counselling, therapy, management, governance, etc. Studying the psychological aspects of the various Indian knowledge systems is, however, not that simple. The Indian civilization is extremely complex and so, if one wants to go beyond the usual platitudes, one must choose between a selection and a synthesis. For one's own individual growth, a selection may well be the most efficient way to proceed, since any one of these different paths can take the seeker to the experience and realization of the divine Absolute. All that an individual needs to do is to find the path that works best given his or her unique background and nature. But if our aim is to develop a comprehensive framework for the whole of psychology, we need a synthesis.
 

Instead of attempting to make my own synthesis, for which I am ill-equipped, I've used the synthesis Sri Aurobindo made in the first half of the last century. This synthesis is special for several reasons.

The first is simply the sheer quality of his work, which I hope will come across even from the short quotations from his writings I've included in this text.

The second is that it is the outcome of a rigorous effort at going back in his own experience to the underlying reality that gave rise to the different terminologies and schemata developed by the major Indian and Western knowledge systems. As a result of this deeper, more inward effort, Sri Aurobindo's synthesis is clearly not based only on a scholarly study of texts; it appears rather like a remarkably comprehensive and coherent expression (in poetry as well as in prose) of what he discovered in his own experience about the realities that gave rise to the sometimes radically opposite ideas one finds in the various Indian and Western schools of thought.

The third is that he used that inner knowledge not only to create a comprehensive overview of the inner reality of which the various Indan knowledge systems had seen different aspects, but that he extended his synthesis to include the Greek ideals of beauty, Darwin's idea of biological evolution, and the later European ideals of collective, social progress, all of which he knew well from his early education in London and Cambridge. Together these Indian and European influences allowed him to create a truly integral perspective on life that is centred around two complementary ideas. The first is the Vedic conception of an involution of consciousness creating the physical world. The second is the idea that the biological evolution Darwin studied is actually a still ongoing evolution of consciousness.
 

The integration of Indian methods of inquiry with those of science

As we discussed in the Introduction, the central purpose of this text is to explore ways to make science more balanced, so that humanity can begin to develop the wisdom and psychological know-how that is needed to use the powers provided by the hard sciences in a manner that is in harmony with the rest of nature as well as with the essence of our own being. Unfortunately, this is more complicated than it looks at first sight. The core of the problem is that the study of the inner domain requires not only different methods of inquiry, but also a different understanding of the basic stuff, structure and functioning of reality as a whole. Since the Indian knowledge systems are wider and more complex than those of mainstream science, incorporating them as a small niche within the existing framework of science does not work. Without a basic grasp of their consciousness-centred understanding of reality, we cannot understand their methods for making knowledge of the inner, subjective domain more reliable, precise and cumulative. And perhaps even more importantly, we cannot develop these methods further, which, as we will see, is crucial if humanity is to take the next step in the still ongoing evolution.2

Considering all this, the first thing we will take up is the concept of integrality in the extended sense of the Sanskrit word purna, the idea that the ultimate Whole is responsible for the existence and the functioning of the parts. Integrality deserves to be a central theme in psychology, since our human lives go well to the extent that we live and act in harmony with the ultimate Whole of which we and everything else are parts. After that, we'll have a look at different concepts of consciousness, since a too limited understanding of consciousness has been one of the main stumbling blocks standing in the way of progress in psychology, and a more comprehensive understanding of it will be crucial to take psychology further. The third thing we'll look at is the way Sri Aurobindo reconceptualised the Vedic idea of an involution of consciousness preceding the —still ongoing — evolution of consciousness. He saw this involution and evolution of consciousness as the "secret ingredient" that made Darwin's biological evolution possible. One of the reasons to bring this in, is that it provides a relatively simple, logical and coherent answer to a wide variety of existential questions that have mystified humanity for as long as we know. It also provides a deeply inspiring vision of where humanity is going and what we can do to expedite this journey.

Once these ontological and axiological foundations have been laid, we'll come back to the practical question how to develop appropriate and efficient research methods for the subjective and inner domains.

We'll approach the concept of integrality in two very different ways. The first describes the allegorical image that has given rise to the title of this text. The second offers a more prosaic explanation of integrality. If the first version is too poetic for your taste, you can jump straight to the second one.