WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

True psychology

6 April 1955

Sri Aurobindo says [...] that modern psychology has no knowledge. True psychology would be a psychology which has knowledge.

Psychology means... What is the precise meaning of logos? It is knowing, science; and psyche means soul. So it means the science of the soul or the science of the psychic, you see. This is the original sense. Now one has made of that the knowledge of all the inner movements, of all feelings, all the inner movements which are not purely physical movements, you see, all that concerns the feelings, thoughts, even the sensations in their subtlety. But true psychology is the knowledge of the soul, that is, the knowledge of the psychic being. And if one has the knowledge of the psychic being, one has at the same time the knowledge of all the true movements of the being, the inner laws of the being. This is true psychology but it is the etymological meaning of the word, not as it is used nowadays.