{"id":782,"date":"2013-07-13T01:30:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=782"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:30:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:23","slug":"43-a-system-of-vedic-psychology-prefatory-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/27-supplement-volume-27\/43-a-system-of-vedic-psychology-prefatory-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","title":{"rendered":"-43_A System of Vedic Psychology – Prefatory.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\n
\nA
\nSystem of Vedic Psychology<\/font><\/b><\/span>
\n
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span><\/font>
\nPREFATORY<\/font><\/b><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n                
\n<\/span><\/font>
\nT<\/font><\/b>HE
\nsuccesses of European science have cast the shadow of their authority and
\nprestige over the speculations of European scholarship; for European thought is,
\nin appearance, a serried army marching to world-conquest and we who undergo the
\nyoke of its tyranny, we, who paralysed by that fascination and overborne by that
\ndomination, have almost lost the faculty of thinking for ourselves, receive
\nwithout distinction all its camp followers or irregular volunteers as
\nauthorities to whom we must needs submit. We reflect in our second hand opinions the weak parts of European thought equally with the strong; we do not
\ndistinguish between those of its ideas which eternal Truth has ratified and
\nthose which have merely by their ingenuity and probability captivated for a
\nshort season the human imagination. The greater part of the discoveries of European science (its discoveries, not its intellectual
\ngeneralisations) belong to
\nthe first category; the greater part of the conclusions of European scholarship
\nto the second. The best European thought has itself no illusions on this score.
\nOne of the greatest of European scholars and foremost of European thinkers,
\nErnest Renan, after commencing his researches in Comparative Philology with the
\nmost golden and extravagant hopes, was compelled at the close of a life of
\nearnest and serious labour to sum up the chief preoccupations of his days in a
\nformula of mesaured disparagement, – "petty conjectural science". In
\nother words, no science at all; for a science built upon conjectures is as much
\nan impossibility and a contradiction in terms as a house built upon water.
\nRenan’s own writings bear eloquent testimony to the truth of his final verdict;
\nthose which sum up his scholastic research, read much like a mass of learned
\ncrudity, even the best of them no longer authoritative or valid; those which
\nexpress the substance or shade of his life’s thinking are of an imperishable
\nbeauty and value. The general sentiment of European Science<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-180
\n <\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n

agrees
\nwith the experience of Renan and even shoots beyon,d it; in the vocabulary of
\nGerman scientists, the word "philology", "philologist",
\nbears a really disparaging and contemptuous significance and so great is the
\nsense among serious thinkers of the bankruptcy of Comparative Philology that
\nthey deny even the possibility of an etymological Science. There is no doubt an
\nelement of exaggeration in some of these views; but it is here that Comparative
\nPhilology, Comparative Mythology, ethnology, anthropology and their kindred
\n"sciences" are largely a mass of conjectures, – shifting intellectual quagmires in which we can
\nfind no sure treading. Only the airy wings of an ingenious imagination can bear
\nus up on that shimmering surface and delude us with the idea that it is the soul
\nwhich supports our movement and not the wings. There is a meagre but sound sub-
\nstratum of truth which will disengage itself some day from the
\nconjectural rubbish; but the present stage of these conjectural sciences is no
\nbetter but so far worse than the state of European chemistry in the days of
\nParacelsus. But we in India are under the spell of European philology; we are
\ntaken in by its ingenuity, audacity and self-confidence, an ingenuity which is
\ncapable of
\ngiving a plausibility to the absurd and an appearance of body to the
\nunsubstantial, an audacity which does not hesitate to erect the most imposing
\ntheories on a few legs of disconnected facts, a confidence which even the
\nconstant change of its own opinions cannot disconcert. Moreover, our natural
\ndisposition is to the intellectuality of the scholar (Pandit): verbal ingenuity,
\nrecondite explanations, far-fetched glosses have by far a weight with us which
\nthe discontinuity of our old scientific activities and disciplined experimental
\nmethods of reaching subjective truth has exaggerated and our excessive addiction
\nto mere verbal meta- physics strongly confirmed. It is not surprising that
\neducated India should have tacitly or expressly accepted even in subjects of
\nsuch supreme importance to us as the real significance of the Vedas and
\nUpanishads the half patronising and half contemptuous views of the European
\nscholar.
\n <\/font>\n<\/p>\n

       
\nWhat are those views? They represent the Veda to us as a mass of
\nnaturalistic, ritualistic and astrological conceits, allegories and metaphors,
\ncrude and savage in the substance of its<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-181<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

thought but more artificial and ingenious in its
\nparticular ideas and fancies than the most artificial, allegorical or
\nAlexandrine Poetry to be found in the World’s literature, – a strange incoherent
\nand gaudy jumble unparalleled by the early literature of any other nation, – the
\nresult of a queer psychological meeting of an early savage with a modern
\nastronomer and comparative mythologist.<\/font><\/p>\n

       
\n<\/span>Is there or can there be a system of Vedicpsychology? To us who are
\ndominated today by the prestige of European thought and scholarship, the Vedas
\nare a document of primitive barbarism, the ancient Vedanta a mass of sublime but
\nindisciplined speculations. We may admit the existence o.f many deep psycho-
\nIoical intuitions in the Upanishads; we do not easily allow to an age which we
\nhave been taught to regard as great but primitive and undeveloped the
\npossibility of a profound and reasoned system in a subject in which Europe with
\nall her modern scientific knowledge has been unable to develop a real science. I
\nbelieve that this current view of those Vedic forefathers is entirely erroneous
\nand arises from our application to them of a false system of psychological and
\nintellectual values. Europe has formed certain views about the Veda and the
\nVedanta, and succeeded in imposing them on the Indian intellect. The ease with
\nwhich this subjugation has been effected is not surprising; for the mere mass
\nof labour of Vedic scholarship has been imposing, its ingenuity of philological
\nspeculation is well calculated to dazzle the uncritical mind and the audacity
\nand self-confidence with which it constructs its theories conceals the
\nconjectural uncertainty of their foundations. When a hundred world-famous
\nscholars cry out, "This is so", it is hard indeed for the average
\nmind, and even minds above the average but inexpert in these special subjects
\nnot to acquiesce. Nor has there been any corresponding labour of scholarship,
\ndiligence and sound enquiry which could confront the brilliant and hazardous
\ngeneralisations of modern Sanskrit scholarship with the results of a more
\nperfect system and a more penetrating vision. The only attempt in that
\ndirection, the attempt of Swami Dayananda, – has not been of a kind to generate
\nconfidence in the dispassionate judgment of Posterity which must be the final
\narbiter of these disputes; for not only was
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-182
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nthat great Pandit and vigorous disputant unequipped with the wide linguistic and
\nphilological scholarship necessary for his work, but his method was rapid,
\nimpatient, polemical, subservient to certain fixed religious ideas rather than
\nexecuted in the calm, disinterested freedom of the careful and impartial thinker
\nand scholar. Judgment has focussed on the Veda and Vedanta by default in favour
\nof the scholastic criticism of Europe which has alone been represented in the
\ncourt of modern opinion.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

       
\n<\/span>Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the
\ndarkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and
\nthird hand and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into
\nthe meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes we shall, I think,
\ndiscover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is based upon nothing more
\nsound or true than a foundation of loosely massed conjectures. We shall question
\nmany established philological myths, – the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of
\nIndia from the north, the artificial and inimical [?] distinction of Aryan and
\nDravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of
\nthe homogenous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a "henotheistic"
\nVedic naturalism; the ingenious and brilliant extravagances of the modern sun
\nand star myth weavers, and more… the hasty and attractive generalisation
\nwhich, after a brief period of unquestioning acceptance by the easily-persuaded
\nintellect of mankind, is bound to depart into the limbo of forgotten theories.
\nWe attach an undue importance and value to the ephemeral conclusions of European
\nphilology, because it is systematic in its errors and claims to be a science. We
\nforget or do not know that the claims of philology to a scientific value and
\nauthority are scouted by European scientists, the very word, philology, is a
\nby-word of scorn or pseudo-scientific cant. Beyond one or two generalisations of
\nthe mutations followed by words in their progress through the various Aryan
\nlanguages and a certain number of grammatical rectifications and rearrangements,
\nresulting jn a more or less arbitrary view of linguistic…,, modern philology
\nhas discovered no really binding law or rule for its own guidance. It has fixed
\none or two sure sign-posts; – the rest is speculation and conjecture. We are
\nnot, therefore,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-183<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

bound to
\nworship at the shrine of Comparative Science and Comparative Mythology and offer
\nup on these dubious [?] altars the Veda and Vedanta. The question of Vedic lore
\n[?] and the meaning of Veda still lies open. If Sayana’s interpretation of Vedic
\ntexts is largely conjectural and likely often to be mistaken and unsound, the
\nEuropean interpretation can make claim to no better certainty. The more lively
\ningenuity and imposing orderliness of the European method of conjecture may be
\nadmitted; but ingenuity and orderliness though good help to an enquiry are in
\nthemselves no guarantee of truth and a conjecture does not cease to be a
\nconjecture because it is laboriously justified or brilliantly supported. It is
\non the basis of a purely conjectural translation of the Vedas that Europe
\npresents us with these brilliant pictures of Vedic religion, Vedic society,
\nVedic civilisation which we so eagerly accept and unquestioningly reproduce. For
\nwe take them as the form of an unquestionable truth, in reality they are no more
\nthan brilliantly coloured hypotheses,<\/span> –<\/span>
\nworks of imagination, not drawings from
\nthe life.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

       
\nWhen the ancient thinkers of India set themselves to study the soul of man in
\nthemselves and others, they, unlike any other nation or school of early thought,
\nproceeded at once Their object was to study and arrange and utilise the forms,
\nforces and working movements of consciousness, just as the modern physical
\nsciences study, arrange and utilise the forms, forces and working movements of
\nobjective Matter. The material with which they had to deal was more subtle,
\nflexible and variable than the most impalpable forces of what the physical
\nsciences have become aware; its motions were more elusive, its processes harder
\nto fix but once grasped and ascertained, the movements of consciousness were
\nfound by Vedic psychologists to be in their process and activity as regular,
\nmanageable and utilisable as the movements of physical forces. The power of the
\nsoul can be as perfectly handled and as safely, methodically and puissantly
\ndirected to practical life-purposes of say, power and light as the modern power
\nof
\nelectricity can be used for human comfort, industrial and locomotive power and
\nphysical illumination; but the results to which they give room and effect are
\nmore wonderful and momentous than the results of motor-power and electric
\nluminosity. For <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Page-184<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

there is no difference of essential
\nlaw in the physical and the psychical but only a difference and undoubtedly a
\ngreat difference of energy, instrumentation and exact process. For, the Supreme
\nExistence which expresses itself equally in soul and matter moves on one
\nfundamental principle on all its seven-fold levels and even one set of medial
\nprocesses; but it varies their minute arrangement and organic functioning to
\nsuit the material which it is using and the objective which it has set before
\nItself in Its divine movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

               
\nExact observation and untrammelled yet scrupulous experiment are the method of
\nevery true science. Not mere observation by itself, – for observation without
\nexperiment, without analysis and new combination leads to a limited and
\nerroneous knowledge; often it generates an empirical classification which does
\nnot in the least deserve the name of science. The old European system of
\npsychology was just such a pseudo-scientific system. Its observations were
\nsuperficial, its terms and classification arbitrary, its aim and spirit
\nabstract, empty and scholastic. In modern times a different system and method
\nare being founded; but the vices of the old system persist. The observations
\nmade have been incoherent, partial or morbid and abnormal; the generalisations
\nare far too wide for their meagre substratum of observed data; the abstract, and
\nscholastic use of psychological terms and the old metaphysical ideas of
\npsychological processes still bandage the eyes of the infant knowledge, mar its
\ntruth and hamper its progress. These old errors are strangely entwined with <\/span>a
\nnew fallacy which threatens to vitiate the whole enquiry, – the fallacy of the
\nmaterialistic prepossession.<\/p>\n

(Incomplete)<\/i><\/p>\n

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