Emergence of Psychology I: Psychological Thought in the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism, Sufism and Integral Yoga, and Academic Psychology in India
2. Buddhism: suffering, the constructed self and the training of attention
Buddhism is perhaps the most explicitly psychological of the four systems: it begins from an analysis of suffering and prescribes a training of the mind to end it. The Four Noble Truths have a clinical shape — a diagnosis (dukkha: life as lived is unsatisfactory), an aetiology (samudaya: suffering arises from craving, tanha), a prognosis (nirodha: craving can cease), and a treatment (magga: the Noble Eightfold Path).
| Idea | Content |
|---|---|
| Three marks of existence | Anicca (impermanence), dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), anatta (no permanent self). |
| Five aggregates (skandhas) | Rupa (form, body), vedana (feeling-tone: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral), sanna (perception, recognition), sankhara (mental formations, volitions), vinnana (consciousness). What we call a "self" is a process built from these. |
| Eightfold Path | Right view and right intention (wisdom, prajna); right speech, action and livelihood (ethical conduct, sila); right effort, mindfulness and concentration (mental discipline, samadhi). |
| Dependent origination | Twelve links by which ignorance (avijja) conditions formations, consciousness and so on through contact, feeling, craving and clinging to birth and ageing — a causal model of how suffering is generated moment by moment. |
| Abhidhamma | The scholastic "higher teaching" that classifies moments of consciousness (citta) and the mental factors (cetasika) that accompany them — wholesome and unwholesome — often called the first systematic Buddhist psychology. |
Buddhist practice distinguishes samatha (calm, concentration on a single object) from vipassana (insight into impermanence and not-self by observing experience as it arises). Sati (mindfulness) is the bridge into modern psychology: Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (1979) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (Segal, Williams and Teasdale) both adapt it, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy draws on Zen practice.
3. Sufism: the nafs, the heart and the path of love
Sufism, the mystical tradition within Islam, carries a developmental psychology of the self. Its central term is the nafs — the lower self or ego, with its appetites — which is to be purified through stages. The qalb (heart) is the organ of spiritual perception, the ruh the spirit, and the aql the intellect. Progress on the tariqa (path) is guided by a murshid or pir (master) to whom the murid (disciple) submits, a relationship often compared with the therapeutic alliance.
- Nafs al-ammara — the commanding self that incites to evil and is ruled by impulse.
- Nafs al-lawwama — the self-reproaching self, in which conscience awakens and the person blames themselves for lapses.
- Nafs al-mutma'inna — the tranquil self, at peace and settled in the divine. Many Sufi teachers add further stations between and beyond these three, up to seven.
Two pairs of terms recur. Maqamat (stations) are stable levels won by effort — repentance, abstinence, patience, trust, contentment — while ahwal (states) are passing experiences given by grace, such as nearness, love, fear and hope. At the summit are fana (the annihilation of the separate ego in God) and baqa (subsistence, a return to the world transformed). The practices are dhikr (rhythmic remembrance of the divine names), muraqaba (contemplative meditation) and sama (listening to music and poetry — the qawwali of the Chishti order in India). The major orders in the subcontinent were the Chishti, Suhrawardi, Qadiri and Naqshbandi.
4. Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo's psychology of consciousness
Integral Yoga was developed by Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) together with the Mother (Mirra Alfassa) at Pondicherry, and set out in The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine. It is "integral" in two senses: it synthesises the paths of works, knowledge and devotion, and it seeks the transformation of the whole nature — body, life and mind — rather than liberation from it. Behind the evolution of matter into life and mind Aurobindo saw a prior involution of consciousness, so evolution continues beyond mind.
| Element | Aurobindo's account |
|---|---|
| Parts of the being | Physical, vital (life-energy, desires, emotions) and mental, with the psychic being — the evolving soul-element — behind them; an outer (surface) being and an inner being; the subconscient below and the superconscient above. |
| Planes above mind | Higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind and supermind, in ascending order. |
| Triple transformation | Psychic (the psychic being comes forward and guides the nature), spiritual (descent of higher consciousness into the being) and supramental (transformation by the supermind). |
| Method | Aspiration, rejection (of what obstructs) and surrender — a psychology of growth through self-observation rather than technique alone. |
5. Academic psychology in India, decade by decade, and its three issues
| Phase | What happened |
|---|---|
| Pre-independence | Psychology begins as a Western transplant. The University of Calcutta introduces experimental psychology in 1915 and opens the first separate department in 1916; N. N. Sengupta, trained at Harvard under Münsterberg, sets up the first laboratory. Girindrasekhar Bose, India's first psychoanalyst, founds the Indian Psychoanalytical Society in 1922 and corresponds with Freud. M. V. Gopalaswamy, a student of Spearman, builds psychology at Mysore from 1924. The Indian Psychological Association and the Indian Journal of Psychology follow in the mid-1920s. |
| Post-independence (1950s–60s) | Rapid expansion of departments and research, overwhelmingly replicating Western (mostly American) theories and tests on Indian samples — what critics later called imitative or "borrowed" psychology. |
| 1970s: social issues | A turn to national problems — poverty, deprivation, rural development, population, social change — and the demand that psychology be socially relevant. Durganand Sinha called this the problem-oriented phase. |
| 1980s: indigenization | Adapting concepts, methods and tools to Indian culture. Sinha's Psychology in a Third World Country: The Indian Experience (1986) and J. B. P. Sinha's nurturant-task leader (1980) are landmarks. Sinha distinguished indigenization from without (modifying imported concepts) from indigenization from within (building on indigenous thought). |
| 1990s: paradigmatic concerns | A disciplinary identity crisis: questions about whether a positivist, Western-derived science can capture Indian experience; cultural and social-constructionist critiques (for example Misra and Gergen, 1993, on the place of culture in psychological science). |
| 2000s: Indian psychology | Indian psychology emerges as an academic field drawing on Indian traditions as sources of theory, not only as culture to be studied: the Pondicherry Manifesto of Indian Psychology (2002), and the Handbook of Indian Psychology (Rao, Paranjpe and Dalal, 2008). Key figures include K. Ramakrishna Rao, Anand Paranjpe and Girishwar Misra. |
The document then names three issues. The colonial encounter: psychology arrived as part of colonial education, its categories and tests were Western, and Indian thought about the mind was treated as religion or philosophy rather than psychology. Post-colonialism and psychology: the critique that colonial power shaped selves as well as institutions — Ashis Nandy's The Intimate Enemy (1983) is the classic statement — and that a genuinely decolonised psychology must question its imported assumptions. Lack of a distinct disciplinary identity: Indian psychology long lacked a recognisable voice of its own, oscillating between imitation of the West and a return to tradition, which is the problem the indigenization and Indian-psychology movements set out to solve.
Key takeaways
- The Gita offers the three gunas as a typology, the sthitaprajna as an ideal of equanimity, nishkama karma as outcome-detached action, and a chain from contemplation of objects through desire and anger to ruin.
- Buddhism analyses suffering clinically (Four Noble Truths), deconstructs the self into five aggregates, and trains attention through samatha and vipassana — the source of modern mindfulness therapies.
- Sufism charts the purification of the nafs from ammara through lawwama to mutma'inna, distinguishes earned stations from granted states, and culminates in fana and baqa.
- Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga posits a psychic being and planes of consciousness up to the supermind, and aims at a triple — psychic, spiritual, supramental — transformation of the whole nature.
- Academic psychology in India runs from Calcutta (1915–16) and Bose's psychoanalysis through post-independence replication, 1970s social relevance, 1980s indigenization and the 1990s identity crisis to the Indian-psychology movement of the 2000s.
Practice questions (10)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
In the Bhagavad Gita, the person of steady wisdom who remains unshaken in sorrow and free of craving in pleasure is called:
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Answer: A — Sthitaprajna
The sthitaprajna is described in Chapter 2 of the Gita as one whose wisdom is steady — equanimous in pleasure and pain, beyond attachment, fear and anger. A murid is a Sufi disciple and a bodhisattva is a Mahayana Buddhist ideal.According to Bhagavad Gita 2.62–63, which of the following arises DIRECTLY from anger (krodha)?
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Answer: D — Delusion (sammoha)
The chain runs: contemplation of objects → attachment → desire → anger → delusion → confusion of memory → loss of discrimination → ruin. Desire and attachment come before anger, not after it.Which of the following is NOT one of the five aggregates (skandhas) of Buddhist psychology?
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Answer: C — Atman (permanent self)
The five aggregates are rupa, vedana, sanna, sankhara and vinnana. The doctrine of anatta holds that there is no permanent atman beyond them — the self is a process built from the aggregates.In Sufi psychology, the stage of the self in which conscience awakens and the person blames themselves for their lapses is:
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Answer: B — Nafs al-lawwama
Lawwama means self-reproaching. Ammara is the lower self that commands to evil, mutma'inna the tranquil self at peace, and baqa the subsistence that follows fana, not a stage of the nafs.Which of the following are correctly paired in Sufi terminology? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — Maqam — a stable station attained by effort; C — Dhikr — rhythmic remembrance of the divine names; D — Hal — a passing state granted by grace
Maqamat are earned and lasting, ahwal are given and fleeting, and dhikr is the practice of remembrance. Fana is the annihilation of the separate ego in God; the disciple is the murid.In Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, the evolving soul-element that stands behind mind, life and body and can come forward to guide the nature is the:
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Answer: B — Psychic being
The psychic being is the soul-principle that grows through lives; its coming forward is the first of the three transformations. The overmind is a plane above mind, the vital is the life-and-desire part of the nature, and the subconscient lies below the surface mind.Arrange the planes of consciousness above mind in Integral Yoga in ascending order.
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Answer: D — Higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind, supermind
Aurobindo's ascending series is higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind and supermind. The overmind is the highest plane still marked by division; the supermind is the truth-consciousness that the supramental transformation brings down.The first separate department of psychology in India was established in 1916 at the University of:
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Answer: C — Calcutta
Calcutta introduced experimental psychology in 1915 with N. N. Sengupta's laboratory and opened a separate department in 1916. Mysore followed in 1924 under M. V. Gopalaswamy.Assertion (A): Durganand Sinha distinguished indigenization from without from indigenization from within. Reason (R): Indigenization from without modifies imported Western concepts and tools to suit Indian conditions, while indigenization from within builds theory from indigenous thought and culture. Choose the correct option.
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Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Both statements are true, and R explains A: the distinction exists precisely because the two routes start from different sources — adapted Western psychology in one case, Indian thought in the other.Which of the following belong to the 2000s emergence of Indian psychology in academia rather than to earlier phases? Select all that apply.
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Answer: B — The Handbook of Indian Psychology edited by Rao, Paranjpe and Dalal; C — The Pondicherry Manifesto of Indian Psychology
The Pondicherry Manifesto dates from 2002 and the Handbook from 2008, both marking Indian psychology as an academic field. Bose's society (1922) and the Calcutta laboratory (1915) are pre-independence.