Types of knowledge and their roles in psychology
Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: 10 May 2021

section 3
four knowledge realms

The Four Knowledge Realms

Once we recognise how much the naïve and expert modes of these four types of knowledge differ from each other, it becomes clear that there are actually eight clearly distinct forms of knowing 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 methods 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 consciousness (OWC). Normally only an extremely limited, vague and often confused sense of the deeper realms of inner knowledge and self-knowledge can be obtained while one is in the OWC. 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 the Indian tradition, this inner work is often referred to as yoga and in the context of epistemology, we use the word "yoga" in this broad and general sense.

Table 2.1.3 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 knowledge types work themselves out into eight types of knowing that can be used to explore eight different aspects of reality.

Table 2.1.3. Four knowledge realms

 

The four 'knowledge realms' indicated in column 1 of table 2.1.3. can be described as follows:

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 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; the senses are extended by instruments that have been constructed with the help of knowledge of this same type; the reason is extended way beyond its normal capacity in the form of mathematics. Modernity is the scene of an almost incredible collective growth of this type of knowledge.

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: a basic awareness of our own self-existence (type 1_n); experiential knowledge, which deals with processes we intimately identify with (type 2_n); introspection, which is a naïve attempt at being 'objective' about oneself (type 3_n). All three are limited in scope and all that 'subjective knowledge' can contribute to science is what people think about themselves, not what is actually happening in people. 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 consists of the sophisticated, expert variety of the two types of knowledge of which subjective knowledge uses the naïve variety.

• The expert variety of type two, knowledge by intimate direct contact (type 2_e) is, as already mentioned, used by professionals in an extremely wide variety of fields — dance, music, theatre, athletics, sport — but it could be taken further, as it may well allow one's consciousness to align with the consciousness in others and even in things, so that one can know these too by an intimate, unmediated direct contact.
• Expert knowledge of Sri Aurobindo's type three is the pure, detached witness consciousness (type 3_e). It can be expected to play an increasingly central role in psychology, as it allows precise and unbiased, 'objective' knowledge of whatever happens in one's own inner nature.

Self-Knowledge

This is the expert variety of knowledge by identity (type 1_e), that, when perfected, can give us the knowledge of 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, in Christian mysticism and European philosophy it is described as knowledge of the ineffable Transcendent, while the Indian traditions use terms like moksha, nirvana and nirbija samadhi. Though high, and hard to fully "realise", these aspects of the ultimate self-knowledge are in their own way, still exclusive to the extent that Buddhism describes the ultimate reality as sunya, emptiness. The Vedic tradition does mention the other, all-inclusive form of this highest type of knowledge. It calls it the knowledge that "once known makes everything known", yasmin vijñāte sarvam sarvamidam vijñātam (Śāṇḍilya Upaniṣad, 2.2). In the end this is the knowledge that must have created the world. And as we already discussed, it must also be the secret origin of whatever there is of real truth in all other types of knowledge. But all this is a long way to go and we'll come back to it in the chapters on self-development.

The need for yoga-based research in psychology

Because we have made such tremendous progress with the expert variety of objective knowledge in the physical domain, we tend to rely on it also for our public affairs, government, education and so on, even though it is actually not suitable for those areas. Mainstream culture hardly acknowledges the possibility of genuine inner knowledge and self-knowledge, and there is a solid and to an extent understandable distrust against them because they are so often encrusted in irrational and self-contradictory religious dogmas and beliefs or held within small groups of people at the margin of the global civilisation. It impresses the scientific mind as the kind of intractable mixture of partial truths and total confusion that science has struggled with since its beginning.

Only where objective knowledge can clearly not provide the answers, for example on issues that demand a value judgment, society accepts that we have to fall back on subjective knowledge, but we are not good at it. The incredible political chaos we see at present all over the world shows that, as of now, humanity has simply not found a satisfying method to deal with the inner, psychological domains.

It is true that to attain high quality inner knowledge and self-knowledge, we need an exceptional level of inner purity and a difficult to achieve mastery over a whole range of different types of consciousness, and that both require an inner discipline and persistence of which few people are capable. But in itself, this is not a problem: not everybody can study physics or become a professional sportsperson either.

Another difficulty is that within the Euro-American cultural tradition, which as of now strongly dominates the social sciences, there is not enough serious knowledge and know-how in this area to even start. While there have been mystics and other especially gifted individuals in all times and cultures, within Europe there have been too few of them and they appear to have left too little starting capital to help much at this stage of our exploration. Within the Indian tradition there is much more detailed knowledge since the Indian civilisation has specialised in this area for millennia. Unfortunately, over 800 years of foreign domination and plunder have left the Indian civilisation in a state of considerable disarray, and much of the ancient spiritual knowledge of India is at present encrusted in exactly that kind of religious and communal confusion that science tries to stay away from. So from both sides, a lot of flexibility, openness, sincerity, humility and genuine good-will will be needed to build the new consciousness-centred knowledge system that humanity so badly needs at present.

In the next chapter we'll have a closer look at the basic principles that can make the three inner types of knowledge accessible in a reliable manner, but before we get to that, a little more conceptual mopping-up is required.