Today's Psychology Lacks Entirely Knowledge of the Soul

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 12 pages

The complaint is that the twin sciences of psychology and metaphysics have fared worse than any other, and have been so separated in Europe as to have become, in their ignorance, mortal enemies. Modern psychology is called a misnomer — the name promising a science of the soul while the discipline studies something else — even though it is claimed to have reached conclusions of great generality and truth regarding all that can be known to man.

The charge that gives the running head its bite follows from that: the modern psychologist, dealing only with the superficial brain-consciousness, is far more materialistic than all-denying materialism itself — the materialist at least being consistent, where the psychologist studies the shadow while using the name of the substance. Brain-consciousness, or personality, is then defined precisely: the consciousness inhering in the lower portion of the mortal manas-mind, correlated with the physical brain, and a mere instrument for harvesting experience on behalf of the immortal Buddhi-Manas, to which it imparts the aroma of consciously acquired experience. The distinction is the same one drawn in Materialism, Spiritualism, Monism in Confusing Words, where the brain-consciousness is granted to be bound up with cerebral matter and yet held to be mortal.

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