Monthly Archives: September 2012

Indian Vedas and First Sight

In his review of the book Yoga and Parapsychology:  Empirical Research and Theoretical Studies, edited by K. R. Rao, Dr. Jerry Solfvin pays special attention to a chapter by James Carpenter that summarizes some central aspects of his First Sight model of psi.  Solfvin points out that the non-dualistic stance of the First Sight model puts it deeply in tune with Indian philosophy and psychology.

As he says, “A great discovery here is just how closely attuned Carpenter’s thinking is with the Hindu Vedas. Carpenter’s first sight conception of human nature is, “each person is not contained within personal, physical boundaries, but ontologically and epistemologically extends beyond that into intimate commerce with all the rest of reality, including all other persons” (p. 99). And like the Hindu scriptures, Carpenter’s model does not deal with (or even concern itself with) “proof of the existence of psi. Neither does he try to solve the problem of the connection between mind and body – rather, “the split between them is not assumed to begin with” (p. 72). By not assuming the separation, he has no conceptual problem with the “possibility” of psi phenomena.

This is nondualism, which is at the core of many East-West misunderstandings regarding mind and spirit. Stated simply, western dualists tend to forget/ignore that “separation” is an assumption that is added on. Or, as Carpenter phrases it, “In a phenomenological approach, a dualistic split between the subjective and objective aspects of experience is eschewed, and the need for providing some sort of physical mechanism linking mind to world or present to future event is avoided” (pp. 100-101). This key foundational brick is right out of the Hindu Advaita Vedanta (= nondual philosophy) , even though Carpenter is not a Hindu devotee, nor even an Indophile.”

Rao’s whole book is an attempt to build a bridge between Western and Indian psychology, and according to Solfvin, the First Sight model may provide the ideal foundation for that effort.  Carpenter came to his own approach not through study of Hindu scriptures but by way of European phenomenology and existential philosophy and psychology.  The fact that this thinking is itself attuned to Hindu thought has been spelled out by the Swiss existential psychiatrist Medard Boss, in his work A Psychiatrist Discovers India. 

If you want to read all of Solfvin’s review of Rao’s book, you can find it here.