go to ipi website (Indian Psychology Institute in Pondiherry. they were in the process of producing textbooks. don’t know how far it has reached

Oh, i’m more than delighted to withdraw your (not so?) honorary doctorate:>) As we say here in the states, my having a Ph.D means my knowledge is “Piled High and Deep”.

I should go back to school and get a degree in challenging authority. Let’s see, what classes shall I sign up for?

Don, you did give me an extra degree. No, I don’t have a PH D, and frankly, i wouldn’t like to play by western academic rules… I have high respect for people who have PH Ds in the science field, but sorry to say, not in humanities. It unfortunately seems to give them “authority” even if their views are highly biased, especially when it comes to western “Indology”. This authority needs to be challenged.

I wonder now, how much progress has been made in India. Here in the US there are major university departments (UCLA, Emory, Brown, NYU, and many others) exploring “mindfulness” and first person research, but I’m afraid it is quite superficial compared to the riches of Indian psychology.

I’ve been comoderator – for the past 8 months – of an online forum dedicated to Bernardo Kastrup’s work challenging materialism in science and society. He’s doing wonderful work, but again, compared to Indian psychology, it barely scratches the surface.

My wife and I are now immersed in creating music and videos for our website, http://www.remember-to-breathe.org (which, though not using Indian psychology terms, follows very closely Sri Aurobindo’s model of integral psychology). We hope by 1 or 1 1/2 years from now to have time to focus fully on supporting this emergence of an integral indian psychology.

My plan is to take Dr. Cornelissen’s two volume work on Foundations of Indian Psychology, go through it chapter by chapter and show links to other work in psychology and philosophy of science going on now in universities and scientific institutions around the world.

The closest project I am aware of in the West to this indian psychology project is “Beyond Physicalism”, the product of 14 years of yearly meetings at Esalen of a remarkable group of scholars (I have an extensive review of the book on the Amazon page for Beyond Physicalism). Readers here may be interested to know there are some excellent chapters that deal directly with Indian psychology. Dr. Wirth (I assume you are at the doctorate level? Forgive me if I gave you an extra degree:>)) mentioned Kashmir Saivism, and in fact, there is a wonderful chapter in BP on Abhinavagupta. Dr. Eric Weiss has a very interesting chapter also on Whitehead and Aurobindo, and the concluding essay on panentheism by Michael Murphy draws a great deal from Sri Aurobindo.

Thank you again for the article.