In essence, all human psychological effort has three major directions, like three steps, each bringing us closer to our psychological being:
1. Self-awareness and Self-knowledge
2. Self-development and Self-mastery
3. Self-integration and Self-perfection
Present-day psychology is still very far from understanding humanity fully. All we do in the name of self-development is a manipulation of external behaviour and study of the chemical control of impulses. The inner consciousness still remains unchanged. A true psychology cannot accept these limits and ought to move on till it discovers the truth that sets man free as master and not merely as a glorified beast.
The method therefore has to be in accordance with the whole truth. It cannot afford to exclusively deal with animal behaviour transplanted onto man. Nor can it afford to linger long in the dubious tracts of the brain where a change in chemicals alters the experience or perhaps vice versa. It should rather try to discover all possible truths in their essence, so as to integrate man as a whole and link him to the entire creation. For this, it cannot depend upon statistical methods alone which conveniently leave out the most valuable data of psychological experience. The unseen often holds the key to the seen. The immeasurable is the secret origin and birthplace of the measured and quantifiable.
A new psychology would benefit from the experience gathered in works of insight, discovered by intuition and introspection. As we have said earlier, the study of psychology can-not be confined to a controlled laboratory — the whole of life is a laboratory. Especially valuable are the works of yogic psychology. Above all, the psychologist should be an experimenter, researching and discovering these truths in himself by laying his own life bare to the scrutiny and understanding of his intuitive wisdom and discriminating intelligence. Thus the psychologist himself has to constantly work towards self-development and self-integration. All knowledge is an extension of self-knowledge. He becomes the reader of the book of life and studies the secret script of wisdom engraved in the heart of human nature. His eyes open wide to his own nature and indeed the soul of others who are equally himself. His degree becomes the level of his own self-development. His qualification is the quality of his own psychological being.
