How do we know? — V

Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: 02 January 2025

four knowledge realms

Once we recognise how much the naïve and expert modes of these four ways of acquiring knowledge differ from each other, it becomes clear that there are actually eight clearly distinct ways of acquiring knowledge that give access to eight different aspects of reality. For psychology, it is practical to order these eight methods of knowing on a trajectory that reaches from the purely physical outer reality (studied by objective science) to the deepest innermost self (studied by yoga). Doing so, we can then group the different aspects of reality which these eight ways of knowing allow us to explore, into four distinct ‘knowledge realms": objective knowledge, subjective knowledge, inner knowledge and self-knowledge.

Only the first two, objective knowledge and subjective knowledge, can be accessed with some confidence in the ordinary waking state (OWS). In the OWS, people appear to have only an extremely limited and vague sense of the deeper realms of inner knowledge and self-knowledge. For a complete understanding of human nature, a detailed and accurate knowledge of these realms is however essential, and getting access to them tends to require considerable inner work. In most Indian traditions, this inner work is considered an essential element of yoga, and so, in the following table, we will call the state in which one is at least a little bit more aware of the Self and the inner realms, the ‘yoga-based inner state’ or YBIS. It may be noted that the YBIS does not necessarily exclude the faculties that are part of the OWS. Though it is possible to have the YBIS in trance, it is also possible to be aware of the inner and outer worlds at the same time. As we will see in the chapter on the integration of yoga-based knowledge systems with science, the ability to do so is in fact essential to enable effective sharing of inner knowledge in an academic setting.

Table 8e presents an overview of the four knowledge realms that are needed for a complete psychological understanding. It shows how the naïve and expert modes of Sri Aurobindo's four ways of acquiring knowledge work themselves out into eight types of knowing that can be used to explore eight different aspects of reality.

Table 8e. Four knowledge realms

The four realms in some more detail

Objective Knowledge

This is the knowledge we have of the physical and socio-economic world around us. It is sense-based and (supposed to be) guided by reason and 'common sense'. There are two varieties of it. The naïve variety (type 4_n) is simply whatever ordinary people know about the physical world outside of themselves. The expert variety (type 4_e) is science. These two don't differ in principle, but they differ massively in their actual processes and results. Science is more rigorous, specialised and cumulative; our human senses are extended by instruments that have been constructed with the help of prior knowledge of this same type; the reason is extended way beyond its normal capacity in the form of mathematics. The last two centuries have been the scene of an almost incredible collective growth of this type of knowledge.

It may be noted that science, the expert variety of this kind of knowledge, deals with things, forces and processes that are also known to the naive variety of this kind of knowledge, but also with aspects of the physical reality that are not. The most frequently used in the latter category is probably electromagnetism, a physical force which is not accessible to our human senses, but about which science has developed so much detailed knowledge that it is now used in the manufacture of virtually every thing we use in our day-to-day lives.

Subjective Knowledge

Subjective knowledge is the knowledge we have of what is happening inside ourselves. The word ‘subjective’ has nowadays largely negative connotations, and I use it here only for the naïve variety of what we know about our own nature and our own self-existence. Within the realm of subjective knowledge, one can distinguish three types: introspection, which is a naïve attempt at being ‘objective’ about one's own nature and all one is normally aware of by looking ‘inside’ (type 3_n); and experiential knowledge, which deals with processes we intimately identify with (type 2_n); a basic awareness of our own self-existence (type 1_n). All three are limited in scope and all that subjective knowledge can contribute to science is what ‘ordinary’ people know, or rather think, about themselves. It cannot tell what is actually happening ‘inside people’, or that we can know in other ways than through our outer, physical senses and instruments. As we have perhaps repeated too often, using population surveys in which people are asked to complete Likert scales about themselves is like doing astronomy by asking people about what they see in the evening sky.

Inner Knowledge

This is the kind of knowledge needed to study the inner domain, the part of reality that within the structure of the personality corresponds to the subliminal.1 Its study is as crucial to take psychology further as the study of physiology, chemistry and physics is for medicine. There are two varieties of Inner Knowledge.

• The first comprises of the expert mode of what Sri Aurobindo calls knowledge of type three: the pure, detached, puruṣa-centred witness consciousness (type 3_e). Since it allows precise and unbiased, ‘objective’ knowledge of whatever happens within human nature, it can be expected to play an increasingly central role in psychology.
• The other is the expert mode of type two, knowledge by intimate direct contact (type 2_e). As already mentioned, certain aspects of this kind of knowledge are already used by professionals in a wide variety of fields — dance, music, theatre, athletics, sport, leadership, therapy — but it can be taken much further. Just as the expert variety of our sense-based knowledge of the physical domain has learnt to deal with physical things and forces that are not accessible to the naive variety of that type of knowledge, so also the expert variety of the two ways of acquiring knowledge in the ‘inner worlds’ (type 2_e and 3_e) has access to phenomena that our ordinary waking consciousness is not aware of, and there is no reason that they cannot be studied with the same intellectual rectitude and rigour that the hard sciences use for the physical world.

One interesting result of becoming aware of those regions in one's nature that ‘most people most of the time’ are not aware of, is that one realises that we are not as skin-encapsulated in these normally subliminal layers of our personality as we are on the surface. The deeper layers of our consciousness are in direct contact with those of others and, unknown to our awareness on the surface, there is a continuous interaction going on between our own consciousness and that of the people and even the things in our surroundings. In other words, there is in the subliminal domain not only an intraconscient through which we can become aware of what happens inside ourselves, but also a circumconscient, through which we can become aware of the inside of what we normally experience as the outside world. It is this type of circumconscient inner knowledge that produces many of the anomalous phenomena that are studied by parapsychology. They become possible when one attunes one's consciousness to the consciousness in others and even in things, so that one knows them in the same intimate, unmediated, and direct manner in which people normally only know what goes on inside themselves. In the ordinary waking state, people are only aware of their own sensations, feelings and thoughts, and accordingly, they see the rest of reality only from the outside, 'objectively'. But just as we can become more aware of our own ‘subliminal’ existence through the ‘intraconscient’, we can also become aware of the consciousness in other things and people through the ‘circumconscient’. The chapter on advanced psychology has in its section on the self and the structure of the personality a graphical presentation of how the subjective and inner domains are related.

Self-Knowledge

This is the expert variety of knowledge by identity (type 1_e), which when perfected, can give us the knowledge of the Divine, who we are in the very essence of our being. The difficulty is that our outer nature does not remotely have sufficient bandwidth to express, or even innerly acknowledge this type of knowledge in its full grandeur, detail, strength, love, light and beauty. Accordingly, many religious and spiritual traditions describe it in negative terms: in Christian mysticism and European philosophy, it is often described as knowledge of the ineffable Transcendent, while the Indian traditions uses terms like moksha, sunya, nirvana and nirbija samadhi.

The Vedic tradition also mentions another, all-inclusive form of this highest type of knowledge. It calls it the knowledge that ‘once known makes everything known’, yasmin vijñāte sarvamidam vijñātam (Śāṇḍilya Upaniṣad, 2.2). It is the knowledge that is inherent in everything that exists, and that, as we saw in the chapter on the evolution of consciousness, must have played a role in the very creation of reality. On our day-to-day human level, it is the secret origin of the sense of recognition and relief we experience when we sense some real truth in the constructed knowledge our brain-based minds produce. The area in which humanity uses this knowledge most effectively is in all likelihood mathemathics, which works so well because its intuitive component is as highly structured as the physical world whose laws it describes. In most other fields, we tend to receive only vague wafts, or occasional droplets from the heights, which can be difficult to translate into a concrete form or linguistic expression.

Exploring the infinite within

Though every little move towards a greater equanimity helps, it may be clear that the perfect inner silence which is needed to observe what happens inside our consciousness without any bias or error, can only be reached when there is a radical change in our basic sense of who and what we are. Using the terminology of Samkhya, there has to be a shift of the centre of our identity from the inherently ego-centric and time-bound sense-mind (manas) which is part of Nature (prakṛti) to the Self (puruṣa) which is in its essence infinite and eternal. Experientially this is, as may be clear, a rather momentous and radical shift, for while the outer and even the inner nature are finite and in one way or another limited, and as such separated from and potentially in conflict with other entities, this greater Self is not: it stands in a direct, open and perfectly harmonious contact with the Infinite which contains and inhabits absolutely everyone and everything in existence. What is more, the intensity and completeness to which one allows oneself to be aware of that Infinite in its aspects of being, consciousness, and joy can begin to feel like a choice, though it is a choice constrained on the one hand by the 'bearing-capacity’ of one's nature, and on the other by the strength with which one aspires for the Absolute.2

There are several ways of dealing with the difficulty created by the gap between the finite character of one's outer nature and the Infinity one is within. The most radical is perhaps the one aimed at by several ascetic traditions in India: to learn how to go back to the Transcendent at will by cutting the contact with one's outer nature and entering into a state of inner trance or samadhi, and then to do this for longer and longer periods till one can finally stay permanently ‘on the other side’ in one's maha-samadhi. In a more moderate, ‘householder's approach’, one lives from an inner peace while continuing on the outside a more or less ordinary life. There is however also a third, more difficult option in which one tries to stay in contact with the Transcendent Infinity as well as with the outer world, gradually exploring the intermediate territory and expanding the pathways between them. This is the path Sri Aurobindo has followed, and he used it to explore with stunning persistence and rigour the enormous range of different types of consciousness and being that exist between the absolute Ineffable beyond the manifestation and the embodied human mind.3 As we saw in the chapter on the ongoing evolution of consciousness, it is this exploration that gave Sri Aurobindo his exceptionally detailed understanding of the types of consciousness that must have created the universe and towards which humanity appears to be evolving at present with such an amazing speed and intensity.

How is all this relevant to ordinary mortals like us?

The issues that arise at the end of the spiritual journey of the really great may look too far beyond where ‘most of us are most of the time’ to even bother or dare to bring up within mainstream psychology, but is that hesitancy justified? Is the gap really bigger than the gap from flint arrow heads to modern cell-phones? The growth humanity has gone through in the physical domain is staggering, and would have been entirely impossible to predict ten thousand years ago. Is it really asked too much to do the same with our inner life, in which at least some people have already walked way ahead of the rest of us? Why would psychology only have sub-divisions for clinical psychology? Is it not high time to create departments for advanced psychology? For in the end, is that not what spirituality is all about?

Collaborating to develop inner knowledge

In this last section, we have tried to show why a shift of our centre of identification from the ego-based mind to our highest Self can make it possible, at least in principle, to perfect the three inner ways of acquiring knowledge which we discussed at the beginning of this chapter. But, seeing the immense difficulties that arise when one tries to link the finite elements of our little chunk of Nature, prakṛti, to the Infinities to which the Self, the puruṣa, belongs, one might well doubt whether it is realistic to think of using this approach to make ordinary, mainstream psychology more effective. One of the reasons it might help even "down here" is that even a gradual shift in the direction of the mental puruṣa, without opening fully to the inner infinities, can already help considerably to observe what happens in one's inner and outer nature since it will help knowledge of type three (3_e) to become more precise and less biased. This is probably the most widely achievable, and as such most suitable method to initiate the kind of joint projects between mainstream psychology and those who try to follow the yogic path. But doing so is not enough. We also need a more dynamic approach that can deepen and expand knowledge by intimate direct contact (2_e), a type of knowledge that is already used in many different fields of applied psychology. And finally, we need a further opening inwards to increase our access to knowledge by identity (1_e).

As discussed earlier, these three ways of developing knowledge of the inner domain are closely related. There is a gradient of intermediate forms of knowing in between them, and an increasing proficiency in one often, though not always, leads to mastery in the other. Still, for the sake of mental clarity, it is good to distinguish them, if only because they belong to two entirely different epistemic realms. Even the most expert modes of knowledge by separative and intimate direct contact are still, just as sense-based knowledge and introspection, the result of a contact, however direct and subtle, between the self and what is ordinarily not considered to be 'oneself'. As a consequence, they are in the radical language of the Vedic tradition, still considered to be a form of avidyā, no-knowledge or ignorance, even though they can know other people, animals, 'things' and events by an effortless, and in some sense perfect inner knowing. They lead to a kind of semi-spontaneous, horizontal expansion of what one knows directly from inside, and they are the source of most forms of 'extra-sensory' perception that are studied by parapsychology.

Knowledge by identity, on the other hand, is the pure faculty of knowledge, vidyā, that is inherent in all being. In humans, it is to be found in its pure form only in the puruṣa, in our silent, innermost Self. As we have seen, it exists according to the Indian tradition because in its deepest essence, everything is still One, is Brahman. While it is considered in principle possible to know in this way everyone, everything, every event, past and future with a total perfection ‘in the way God knows it’, it is good to realise that at our present stage of evolution, at best tiny bits of this knowledge will come to us, and even that only at the end of a very long journey. In other words, while the knowledge of these two innermost types is by itself perfect, to become aware of that knowledge in one's outer consciousness, to share it, and especially to do anything with it, one's outer nature needs an extremely radical transformation, and to express them fully and perfectly may not be achievable yet. What actually happens is that little bits of this intuitive knowledge occasionally enter our system and then get mixed with our ignorantly constructed outer knowledge. Interestingly, even this much can have a life-changing effect, and with sufficient effort, the occurrence of such inflows of higher types of knowledge can increase and gradually retain more and more of their original quality.

The origin of these little bits of true knowledge is a vertical series of gradually 'more truly true' types of knowledge which different spiritual traditions have tried to systematise in slightly different ways. As we will see in the chapter on Advanced Psychology,4 Sri Aurobindo calls them Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind, and Supermind, and warns that there are always projections or shadows of the higher planes within the lower planes which people tend to mistake as proof they have reached much further than they actually have. What makes our gradual inner development not only misleading but dangerous, is that the higher forms of knowledge also give higher powers. As a result, there are serious risks involved in a premature opening to these inner realms before the outer nature is sufficiently purified, and it is not for nothing that the Yoga Sutras put so much stress on the first two steps of its eightfold path: it is these two that deal with the necessary purification. Still, in spite of these risks, it appears crucial to me that humanity pursues the inner knowledge with all the energy and all the sincerity it can muster, because having the physical powers physics has given us without any solid inner knowledge may well be even more dangerous.

Where do we take it from here?

At the end of the chapter on the evolution of consciousness I hinted at the higher ranges of consciousness and what they can do for us. Here, I've brought them in mainly to provide a context: to give a direction to our efforts and show why it is worth studying the inner domain with all the enthusiasm and all the rigour science can provide, so that we can, even collectively, begin to develop a more comprehensive, more integral understanding of reality in all its miraculous beauty.

As we all know, all journeys, however long, start at home, and so we'll now have a more down-to-earth look at how mainstream academics can make a beginning with the study of the inner domain. Obviously we don't suggest we should stop studying behaviour, neurology, ancient or modern texts and so on. All that has its use, but something has to be added. We also have to learn how to study the inner reality, and as we have tried to argue throughout the previous chapters, one of the best ways to do so may well be to engage with the technology of consciousness developed by the Indian traditions to finetune our own inner instruments of knowledge. So, in the next chapter, we'll have a look at how the knowledge systems of science and yoga can collaborate in the development of sophisticated scientific knowledge in the domains of psychology and spirituality.

Endnotes