K. Ramakrishna Rao

The anomaly called psi: recent research and criticism

Over the past hundred years, a number of scientific investigators claim to have adduced experimental evidence for “psi” phenomena – that is, the apparent ability to receive information shielded from the senses (ESP) and to influence systems outside the sphere of motor activity (PK). A report of one series of highly significant psi experiments and the objections of critics are discussed in some depth. It is concluded that the possibility of sensory cues, machine bias, cheating by subjects, and experimenter error or incompetence cannot reasonably account for the significant results. In addition, less detailed reviews of the experimental results in several broad areas of psi research indicate that psi results are statistically replicable and that significant patterns exist across a large body of experimental data. For example, a wide range of research seems to converge on the idea that, because ESP “information” seems to behave like a weak signal that has to compete for the information-processing resources of the organism, a reduction of ongoing sensorimotor activity may facilitate ESP detection. Such a meaningful convergence of results suggests that psi phenomena may represent a unitary, coherent process whose nature and compatibility with current physical theory have yet to be determined. The theoretical implications and potential practical applications of psi could be significant, irrespective of the small magnitude of psi effects in laboratory settings.

Handbook of Indian Psychology: Yoga Psychology: Theory and Application

Yoga in its origin is a native Indian psycho-spiritual craft, used for personal transformation and to alleviate suffering in the human condition. In a sense, yoga is pan Indian in that it is not restricted to any particular religion or sect, region or location. While it is central to Brahmanism, Buddhists as well as Jainas have practised some kind of yoga. “Yoga constitutes a characteristic dimension of Indian Thought,” concludes Mircea Eliade (1969) in his influential book Yoga: Immortality and Freedom , “to such a point that wherever Indian religion and culture have made their way, we also find a more or less pure form of yoga” (p.359). There are good reasons to think that yoga is a pre-Aryan native Indian practice(s) that was later assimilated into the Vedic tradition (Narain, 1980). References to yoga practices date back to at least Upaniṣadic times. Explicit mention of yoga occurs in Maitrāyaṇī, Śvetāśvatara and Kaṭtha Upaniṣads among others. Yoga has now acquired pan human relevance going beyond the Indian community. For example, it is today a billion dollar business in the United States of America. Etymologically, as is well-known, the word “yoga” is derived from the root “yuj,” which means “to bind” or “to yoke”. Inasmuch as there is ambiguity as to what precisely are the things to bind or unify, a wide variety of forms of yoga came into existence. Many of these are unsystematic and some are mystical and esoteric (Eliade, 1969). However, three levels of binding can be discerned from the practices. The first level is connecting the body and the mind.

Psychology in the Advaita Vedanta

There is voluminous literature on Advaita Vedānta available at different levels of scholarship. Much of it, however, is basically philosophical with a sprinkling of psychology here and there. We believe that psychological issues are at the base of Advaita and in a significant sense constitute its core. In this chapter we are attempting to convey psychological concepts and methods of Advaita with a focus on the concerns of modern psychology, and present them in contemporary language and idiom. Also, wherever appropriate, we will try to build conceptual bridges across disciplinary and cultural divides, and attempt interpretations rather than mere translations. The two topics at the very core of Advaita system are consciousness and the self. Centrality of consciousness in human condition is the defining characteristic of Indian psychology (Rao, 2004). They were also issues central to modern psychology as viewed by its founding fathers, Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and William James in America. However, with the advent of behaviourism, both these topics were virtually banished from psychology for decades. Such banishment turned out to be a relatively temporary aberration; both consciousness and self have returned to the re-drawn boundaries of psychology during the last few decades of the twentieth century. From a psychological point of view, there is more to Advaita than consciousness and self, since it offers a broad perspective on the nature of human beings, a perspective of the kind that modern psychologists call “theories of personality”. According to the Advaita, the person ( jīva ) is conceptualized as an individual who thinks, feels, and acts. As such, the individual is seen as being in possession of three fundamental capacities: cognition, emotion, and action.

Library Development in India

Libraries would have but a minor role in the culture of a nation unless there were literature and a heritage of writing native to the people of that nation. There must be a love for reading and a respect for book learning cultivated through long ages and finding expression in an abundance of worthwhile publications. There must be a propensity for recording as well as for reading and always a practice of preserving these records for future generations.1

Applied Indian Psychology

In this chapter we present an overview of a variety of applications in Indian psychology in the fields of mental health and psychological well-being. A most prominent application is found in the Yoga-Sūtras of Patanjali. Its aim is to provide a radical remedy for suffering (duḥkha) that pervades the human condition. Persistent effort (abhyāsa) in attaining control over the constant fluctuations of the mind, and cultivating the habit of non-attachment (vairāgya) are suggested its basic means along with physical postures and breathing exercises. According to Patanjali, suffering results primarily from misconstrued notions of the self, and when the fluctuations of the mind are completely controlled, the true self, which is blissful in nature, is revealed. There are several implications of this basic model, which are explained in subsequent sections of this chapter. The first implication is that the realization of the blissful true self, and the resulting cessation of suffering, suggests itself as a supreme goal for human development. A pedagogic implication which naturally follows from the above is that self-realization should be recognized as the highest good (niḥśreyasa) over and above self-actualization and resulting worldly success and prosperity (abhyudaya). Correspondingly, an implication for therapy is that it should aim at a complete transformation of the individual leading to the transcendence of the ego, rather than a mere adjustment of the ego. After a brief account of ways for preventing illness as presented in Patanjali’s Yoga and in the medical system of Āyurveda, we present a brief discussion of the potential relevance of Indian psychology to psychotherapeutic practices as explained particularly by Michael Miovic and Alok Pandey. The last section points out the convergence between Indian psychology and the newly emerging field of positive psychology.

Meditation and Applied Yoga

Various techniques of meditation of Indian and Tibetan origin are getting increasingly popular in the practice of clinical psychology in the past few decades. Also, there is burgeoning literature on clinical and neuropsychological research on the practice of meditation. Before examining the outcomes of this research we first examine what meditation means as described in basic texts of two traditions that are currently popular, namely concentrative methods based on Yoga and vipaśyanā, a Buddhist technique often known as mindful meditation. Of these, the technique of Transcendental Meditation (TM) developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as a variation of the traditional yogic method is arguably the most popular. Since the start of research on TM the emphasis has been on neurophysiological concomitants of meditation. As this line of research continues, there is a parallel trend investigating the psychological aspects of meditation—cognition, attention, anxiety or lack of it. There is an emerging interest in the more positive effects such as kindness and compassion. Against this background we present a detailed discussion of the spiritual, psychic, conative, and emotional effects of meditation as revealed in a wide range of research reports. Then we discuss the various therapeutic applications of the practice of meditation for general health, anxiety disorders, hypertension, and so on. Finally we present an overview of what all this means.

Cultural Climate and Conceptual Roots of Indian Psychology

This chapter sketches the cultural background of Indian psychology going back to the earliest times. The ṚgVedic counterpart of the Biblical myth of genesis is briefly described, and its basically agnostic conclusions are noted. Its implications for psychology are pointed out against the backdrop of the history of Western psychology, where the debates between Biblical and Darwinian perspectives and the mind–body problem continue to be divisive. It is pointed out that since the time of the Upaniṣads the predominant view of the relationship between humans and nature is one of man-in-nature, as distinguished from the Biblical as scientific perspectives imply a man-over-nature attitude. The Doctrine of Karma, which presumes the ongoing and inevitable effect of willed action on experience and behavior of persons, is explained and its implications for positive as well as normative views of psychology are pointed out. The concept of dharma is briefly explained, and its main conceptualization as a society’s dominant ethos, rather than as a “religion” analogous to Abrahamic faiths, is pointed out. It is recognized that, insofar as social norms shape individual behaviors, dharma is a persistent factor influencing behavior. Hence, the concepts of dharma and karma form a foundational pair in Indian psychology. Finally, the concept of duḥkha as pervasive suffering in human life is explained, and the goal of its removal is recognized as the theme shaping the applied aspect of Indian psychology.

Mind–Body Complex

This chapter presents the various ways in which mind and body are conceptualized in the Indian traditions since the time of the Vedas. A wide range of schools of thought are covered: Sāṁkhya-Yoga, Advaita Vedānta, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Buddism, and Jainism. Since the Vedic times the mind is seen as clouding pure consciousness. The idea that the mind consists of cognitive, emotive, and volitional dimensions also goes back to ancient times. In Sāṁkhya-Yoga, the focus is on the continuous fluctuations of the processes of the mind (citta vṛttis), and ways for controlling the fluctuations are developed as a means to attain liberation (kailvalya). The Advaitic idea that perception involves the “going out” to the object via senses is briefly explained. The similarities between the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika ideas of the nature of mind and other major systems of Indian thought are pointed out. In Buddhism mind is often viewed as “that which thinks of its object”, and a variety of aggregates of bodily and mental states are identified and clearly defined. After presenting an account of the ways in which the sense organs are viewed in Indian thought, we present an overview of a model of the mind-body complex. An important distinction made in Indian thought between two ways of knowing: knowing through the mediation of sensing, as opposed to an unmediated knowing or a direct realization of truth in pure consciousness. Finally, some important differences as well as complementary aspects of Indian and Western views of the mind are pointed out.

Scope, Substance, and Methods of Study

This chapter is devoted to explaining what Indian psychology is, and to clarify what it is not. It is not psychology as it is most commonly practiced in India, nor is it about people in India. Rather, it is a broad approach to psychology which is informed and shaped by the long and rich intellectual and spiritual traditions of India, and by the predominant ethos of the Indian cultural tradition. Although Indian psychology is influenced by its cultural origin just as “indigenous” psychology of India is, it is different from the latter in being potentially applicable across cultures, and not being restricted to people of India. Indian psychology involves the study of the person, and the person is conceived as a composite of body, mind and consciousness. Leaving a discussion of this basic theme to later chapters, we offer an overview of the sources of ideas in ancient texts as well as a brief discussion of more recent publications about historical contributions. We then turn to a discussion of methods of study appropriate for studies in Indian psychology. The applicability of various methods currently in vogue is examined along with the limited relevance of the grounding of many of them in the physicalist world view of logical positivism. Finally, we point out how Indian psychology is different from the currently prevailing Western approaches.

Centrality of Consciousness

This chapter involves an in-depth discussion of the nature of consciousness, which is arguably the central theme of psychology in the Indian tradition. Given the return of consciousness as a major topic of interest in a broad interdisciplinary setting, Ramakrishna Rao presents his taxonomic model that covers a broad spectrum of the varied states of consciousness. Against the backdrop of this wide canvas major perspectives on consciousness in a variety of schools of Indian thought are described. The first one covered in this context is the Advaita perspective, followed by its traditional rival in the Buddhist tradition. It is noted how the Advaita perspective originating in the Veda and the Upaniṣads is enriched mainly by Śaṅkara in his Brahma-Sūtra Bhāṣya. The Advaita view makes a clear distinction between the ordinary state of wakefulness on the one hand, and the extra-ordinary Fourth State (turiyā) characterized by existence (sat), knowledge (cit) and positive emotion (ānanda). The Buddhist approach presents a detailed phenomenological description of ordinary as well as extra-ordinary states of consciousness. It is pointed out that, regardless of the sharp contrasts between the Advaita and Buddhist perspectives in terms of their metaphysical assumptions, both systems accept the great value of the transcendental states in realizing the ideal states of variously described as mukti and nibbāna (nirvāṇa). The last section of the chapter is devoted to the discussion of psychology of consciousness in Sāṁkhya-Yoga.