In this book I try to convey an understanding of human psychology from the viewpoint of the individual who wishes to learn about the human being in the interests in self-inquiry. Self-inquiry implies getting practical knowledge of oneself. This does not mean a mere theoretical or 'scientific' knowledge of the make-up of the human being, nor does it exclude these. However, self-inquiry unavoidably involves us in the process of self-improvement, including both the discovery and avoidance of personal psychic problems (so-called 'mental illness'), as well as the understanding upon which all recovery of selfhood is based.

Self-inquiry is not limited to one's psychic condition, for it also inevitably goes to the heart of those subjects through which alone we can understand our personal identity and expand and purify our personalities by discovering our spiritual nature. These are questions approached in every genuine philosophy and spiritual tradition throughout human history and the many cultures or religions.

No psychology can have any deeper meaning to us or give adequate explanations of human behaviour if it is not sound in its fundaments. I also therefore examine, in as concise and popular language as a serious treatment of the subject allows, the basic assumptions that are unavoidable in any system of psychology, because these are also equally crucial to a person's own understanding of reality, of the self and of others. As one thinks or believes, so one eventually experiences and becomes. This suggests the essential role of self-knowledge in all understanding, which will here be studied in depth.

Any psychology will tend towards one of two quite fundamental and opposite perspectives on human life: the moral view regards us as basically having a measure of freedom of action and responsibility for them, the other science-based view denies that human volition plays any significant role in life and that all our behaviour is explainable, even though science has not yet succeeded in finding all the operative causes.

Here I view these two perspectives as complementary - neither one being wholly false or wholly true. An overall view of 'the human whole' insists that all of us are partly the product of past events, partly the welders of our own destinies... though which part dominates varies greatly with different persons and circumstances.

In the cluttered field of modern psychology, some theories like behaviourism, psycho-analysis and object relations theory have long assumed an importance and generality of application in professional work that is out of all due proportion to palpable achievements. The variety of psychological science and psychotherapy is not excluded from consideration, though over-technical language and methodological complexity is avoided in viewing the psyche from the perspective of philosophical psychology - that is, an epistimologically 'higher' psychology - as largely derived from Vedantic traditions of spirituality. The emphasis of their vision is that the whole self can properly be understood only through personal practice of certain precepts. This also involves me in some critical assessment of some very central concepts and methods in Western psychology and of various purposes they fulfil.

The present outline of the human psyche, its development and functions (or also dysfunctions) provides a very general frame of reference for integrating the understanding of self and others. It also consists in practically testable ideas developed by observations which open for further development and experiment. (i.e. by empirical hypotheses or by active engagement in personal trial and error). However, because the aim is holistic and hence very embracing, the reader's intuition and experience is always important in grasping to which circumstances general ideas may or may not apply, for no text with such an overall aim can specify so very concretely. Besides, all explanations must cease at some point. Ideally, a truly holistic conception would provide for the future unification and consistent interpretation of otherwise incommensurable types of study and therapeutic theories, as well as the integration and comparative evaluation of psychological insights - both facts and values - from the literature of all world cultures.

The sources that have influenced my views here are very widely distributed in time and place, by hypotheses, theories, and insights first met in a wide literature and not least observations from my own experiences of human relations in varied capacities, such as different kinds of group work and of teaching at all levels. These have naturally become modified and even transformed in the same manner that our understanding develops in the mill of life with its fresh starts, re-clarifications, withdrawals from dead-ends, trial and error and reflections after the fact. So I am not here concerned so much to substantiate any given theory by detailed documentation or systematic demonstration, as clearly to outline practical methods within a clear conceptual framework.

Support for this theory of psyche and human development is found at least in part in the so-called 'perennial philosophy'. This originated in ancient India and informs the scriptures known collectively as the Vedas, from which many variants took their departure, including the practical philosophical Vedanta, Buddhism and to some extent also the Essene tradition, classical Greek philosophy, Sufism and not least various mystical traditions from yoga up to certain present-day forms of spirituality.

"However good the clinical observation of the great psychologists of our time may have been, their deductions therefrom have been whipped up into a great froth of words, by means of which they have progressively described the indescribable. A student of today who needs to know this field will find innumerable books in maddening variety and confusion, often using the same words but with different meanings, with masters and followers riven by disagreement with every other theory than their own. Confusion in any field of knowledge could hardly have become more confounded than is our case today.

To present the universe as a scientific system is to destroy it. To present an illness as a clinical entity is, in the long run, to destroy the patient. To present a psychological system supposedly derived from clinical observation by scientific method is monstrously presumptive and quite impossible. Every such system must produce the opportunity for the 'unconscious' emergence of the inadequacy of our own egoic view-point. Until all psychological experience and opinion can be checked against a more adequate philosophic and metaphysical system at the back of it, psychology will remain in the state of the disreputable confusion which it is at present." Dr. Graham E. Howe. "Cure or Heal" (London. 1965)

Go to Chapter 1: Introduction to 'Higher Psychology'