Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 02

Psychology is a subset of philosophy, not its substitute by Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 02

Many people treat psychology as a substitute for philosophy. If a technique calms their mind, which they believe is the purpose of psychology, they accept it without investigating that technique’s implications about what the mind is and who they are, which is the purview of philosophy.

Their apathy to philosophy reduces their life-story to a litany of trial and error experiments with feel-good pop psychology prescriptions. Most such techniques, even if they seem promising initially, disappoint thereafter. Once their newness fades, the mind stops finding them appealing, and the good feeling coming from them declines and disappears.

We need to resist the temptation to evaluate bhakti through pop psychology’s criterion: “If it feels good, I will practice it; otherwise, I won’t.”

In contrast with such non-philosophical approaches, Gita wisdom presents psychology as a subset of its philosophy. It explains the mind’s nature within the context of its broader explanation of our identity and destiny: We are not our material bodies, but are souls, who are beloved parts of God. Being his parts, we need to be harmonized with him. The Bhagavad-gita(02.66) states that those who live disconnected from him can’t have a peaceful mind.

To connect with God, the Gita offers the process of yoga, especially bhakti-yoga. For tapping bhakti’s potency, we need to practice it philosophically, not psychologically. That is, we need to resist the temptation to evaluate bhakti through pop psychology’s criterion: “If it feels good, I will practice it; otherwise, I won’t.”

Philosophy illumines the problem with this criterion. Bhakti does make us feel good ultimately, for it connects us with the source of all good feeling, God. But to sustain that connection, we need to repeatedly redirect the mind from its worldly fascinations to God. The mind rabidly resents such disciplining, making us feel bad in the process. If we draw on the Gita’s philosophy and persevere in bhakti despite the bad feeling, then everlasting good feeling awaits us.