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Mahatma Gandhi’s Pragmatic Spirituality: Its Relevance to Psychology East and West

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Abstract

M. K. Gandhi is no academic psychologist; but his philosophy and practice of pragmatic spirituality have important implications for psychology in general and Indian psychology in particular. Psychology as taught and practised in India is mostly Western and not Indian psychology. Indian psychology is an emerging system of psychology with its roots in classical Indian thought. According to Gandhi, the person is instinctively brute, but inherently spiritual. Consequently, he/she has on the one hand natural attraction to sensory gratification and indulgence, selfish desires and craving. On the other hand, he or she aspires for self-realization. Human development is a dialectical process where people seek to find a workable synthesis between sensory indulgence and spiritual aspirations, between egotistic selfishness and altruistic urges. Gandhi’s life provides an excellent case study of the ways of spiritual development. The techniques he crafted like satyagraha and the strategies he followed in his public life give us insights into how spirituality can be applied to improve human condition. The applications are not India specific, but universal. Therefore, psychologists from the East as well as from the West can join in exploring Gandhian ideas and techniques of psycho-spiritual development and their relevance to today’s troubled world.

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Notes

  1. We use in this paper the term ‘man’ as gender neutral to refer to human beings. Gandhi always used it in that way.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GITAM University, 35 Daspalla Hills, Visakhaptnam, Andhra Pradesh, 530 003, India

    K. Ramakrishna Rao

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  1. K. Ramakrishna Rao
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Correspondence to K. Ramakrishna Rao.

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Ramakrishna Rao, K. Mahatma Gandhi’s Pragmatic Spirituality: Its Relevance to Psychology East and West. Psychol Stud 63, 109–116 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-017-0394-x

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