Indian Psychology – An experiential approach

When I started reading the book, one of the first questions I had was, “Will the author be able to do justice to the extremely diverse traditions that make up Indian philosophy and psychology?” The author has been associated with Sri Aurobindo Ashram for over 40 years, so the content could have been restricted purely to Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Psychology. But it was a pleasure to discover that not only does Huppes write about the Vedic tradition and Integral Psychology, but she also refers to the shamanic tradition of Buddhism and Jainism. In fact, in some of the chapters, she even encourages students to study modern thinkers, such as Eckhard Tolle and the Buddhist nun Kelsang Nyema.

This openness with respect to content is matched by a writing style that is lucid and coherent. This will surely help beginning readers understand the complex ideas packed into the four sections of the book: philosophical foundations, the structure of the human being, self-discovery and self-perfection. The annotated bibliography at the end of the book will be a valuable tool for interested readers.

The last part of the book, “An overview of Integral Living”, sits a little uncomfortably with the rest of an otherwise splendid book. This part is a compilation of PowerPoint slides and notes on each slide. This content might work in a “talk” on Integral Living, but doesn’t seem to fit into a book for serious, especially postgraduate, students of psychology. The poor design of this section is a little puzzling, given the thoughtful design that has gone into the main sections of the book.

The only drawback of the book is the occasional over-simplification of ideas. For example, the vedantic tradition is classified into advaita (non-dualist), dvaita (dualist) and Integral, thereby avoiding the nuances of Abhinavagupta’s saibadvaita (Saivik non-dualism), Ramanuja’s visistadvaita (qualified non-dualism), Nimbarka’s dvaitadvaita (doctrine of dual non-dual) and Vallabha’s suddhadvaita (pure non-dualism). Perhaps this kind of simplification is necessary because the main content of the book, not including the study guide sections, is written in about 70 pages. Some of the finer nuances of the Indian psychological tradition could have been addressed if the book length had been expanded a little further. 

Indian Psychology: An experiential approach, available from Indian Psychology Institute (ipi.org,.in), and VAK bookshop, Pondicherry, 

Price Rs 290.