The Tao of Psychology

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

It would be an error to call is a scientific or an artistic study. It is something deeper that has value of both these approaches. Mr. Nirmal Kumar has emerged as one of the greatest modern thinkers … Hitherto psychiatrists have been searching for the sources of the Indian maladies in European myths and legends. Nirmal Kumar has done a tremendous job by tracing their sources single-handedly to the experience of the Indian race.

Times of India

Nirmal Kumar draws rare psychological insights from Indian epics. They may baffle many modern psychologists who swear by Freud.

Hindustan Times

The common man's plight today in India had been vividly poryrayed by Nirmal Kumar… The Author also beautifully discusses about the place of women in the past and present, ….I must compliment the author his sound concepts. …… I suggest that Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan themselves could present the salient points of his book in a special publication for school students attractively illustrated with instances and anecdotes do that the children of today would imbibe the real core of our culture stand steadfast to it.

Nirmal Kumar is one of the greatest living minds who offers a unique solution to the modern predicament. Some critics call him a classic while others are struck which carries the past into a hopeful future. He has imbibed the classical traditions of the east and the west in full measure as few modern thinkers have and yet he us not obsessed by the perennial wisdom. His originality is born of the strange agony of the modern human. Quite unlike modern prophets he has avoided to be a Guru. Perhaps he does not want to give up his freedom to grow by becoming a stereo-type Guru who has to live an image.

In this slender volume he was covered a vast range from chaos to creativity Nirmal Kumar is not an interpreter of the world but a most set on changing it.

He cannot be categorized as a metaphysician a psychologist an aesthet he id all these. His subject is man this work is indeed a proper study of man … of his institutions as well as his pre-psychical chaos which he has the choice to waste in violence or to evolve into a beautiful higher self that fulfils him.

Modern psychologists have shown an occasional interest in ancient Indian psychology. Their interest has not been more than our interest in fossils of same bygone age. There is one more myth that the modern man has to explode and that is that psychology is an exclusively western contribution to human understanding. Some of them have shown astonishment at the clarity of Buddha when he discusses mind with his disciple Ananda in Surangama Sutta. While they seem to be willing to allow any amount of spiritual clarity to india they do not seem to be so sure of her psychological wisdom. It is partly because her own children are unaware of her gifts and her legacy in psychology is shrouded in myths and parables-a certain kind of wisdom which cannot bear bright light. The ancient Indian have given a very unanimously maintained that spiritual enlightenment cannot be attained without first attaining psychological and physical enlightenment. Yoga meditation emotional culture (bhava-shuddi) and Samskaras are primay disciplines of a all Indian schools and they have nothing to do with the transcendental soul. They are only physical and psychological disciplines.

The Indian masters have divided psychology into two parts- the psychical and the pre-psychical. A living teacher disciple tradition of thousands of years had helped them to discover that the discipline free psyche. From their point of view it is immaterial what kind of a know its origin and source. Its is vain to hope to cure psychical diseases by analyzing and rationalizing the psyche. Even reason tends to become a kind of fanaticism after entering the depths of the psyche. Spiritual wisdom too, only confounds it. It takes on a perverted meaning in the psychological environment.

The body is the pre-Psychical somatic self (Bijatma) and it is as full a the metaphysical soul (Atman). The two neither supplement each other nor are they linked in any manner. Links between the two are counter-productive. They are entirely separate dimensions of our personality. One has to discover himself in each of these dimensions without any light from the other.

The mythological literature of India conceals the psychological wisdom of her sages. They had chosen indirect expression for it for fear of its getting mixed up with historicity it is only with some effort that one stats seeing the hidden meaning while others see in them fantasies and flights of imagination.

Jung had found psychological meanings in a few Upanisadic utterances. But that was not in the spirit of the Indian quest. It was like some western man going to see Himalayas and meaning did not grow and this Jungean effort could not develop into a tradition. Now that the modern psychological studies have already entered an infertile stage. It is time perhaps to stay a little while with the ancient Indians trying to know man differently reducing complexities into simplicities. Their cardinal point has been mot to add up wisdom for greed of wisdom is as harmful as greed of gold. One has to die philosophically into wisdom in order to own it. Another central point in their message has been that the various dimensions of a man's personality shouldn't be combined to make up a forceful personality Each facet is different and if mixed up with others produces confusion behaviour owes a great deal to his zeal to grow a foreful personality by mixing up all his parts. Man is not divided into several parts which if put together can bring the meaning of creation to our mind. He is a multi-dimensional adventure of nature. She has attempted many forms to express herself through man several of which have been left half way in disgust. The creative pangs of Braham are an exquisite record of the agony and frustration of nature. They have been repeated in every major purana (epic).

Man has inherited from her failures as well as misdeeds. Like a living museum they from part of his mind. Part of his mind. Part of his mental and physical energy is locked there. Unless he learns the art to release it it lives there. A bad company or immoral society is enough to initiate it and make active what otherwise lies dormant. Mixed up with his luminous and rational parts, it gives his character a dubious shade. Little knowing that this method mixes it up hopelessly with reason and has already made man distrustful of his own by mind by mixing up it dark and lighted parts.

Illumination of mind does not mean exposing everything hidden in it to light. Illumination of its dusky and sky parts can be attained only in their nocturnal night it is likely to get perverted. It is perhaps for this that the Veda says: Beyond the realm of reason there is the realm of Darkness where speech is captured by demons and gods listen not there has to be a science that can help man pass through these dark areas of his mind and reclaim the energy locked there for then no atmosphere would be able to activate the frustrations of nature that he has inherited along with her successes.

The ancient masters of India had mastered this science and called it Samskaras, i.e. culturing of spontaneous physical impulses and reflexes. This science was lost due to the inhuman stress and disculturing created by her innumerable proud invaders. No land has been plundered invaded and raped so repeatedly to rob her of her inner meaning and memory. She stands today like a virtuous woman raped and dishonoured turned demented, naked the on crossroads she sits making mockery of herself repeating dementedly the action of her proud invaders.

In the melee of history this ancient science of Samskaras was lost. Such losses are not like material losses. Such losses are mutilations. Loss in the somatic and psychological worlds means disintegration deformation and conversion into the very opposite of oneself. This book could be treated as an effort to revive howsoever faintly the memory of what it was like before this mass-scale perversion. It is in this memory that the power to cure a sick perversion. It is in this memory that the power to cure a sick psyche lies. That is why perhaps the sages called the epics memories (Smritt). It is said that they assemble as guiding spirits in the nervous centres if somebody seriously decides to know. Again the day has come, O Masters when in Naimisharanya a great many sages have assembled - so opens the ancient epic.