Western psychologists have studied the mind in terms of characteristic action and behaviour. This approach is due to the way in which their attention was first drawn towards the mind. Western psychologists were primarily doctors. They started to work in the hospitals where treatment of various ailments and diseases was being studied and improved upon, but they found that certain diseases could not be cured by all the medical and therapeutic measures and, in this way they stumbled across the fact that the causes behind many of the diseases were mental. From this discovery, they proceeded to investigate the mental functions and found that there were certain clear connections between the functions of the mind and those of the body. Right from the start, the investigations of these Western psychologists centred around sick people—people whose illnesses defied medical treatment. We could say, therefore, without exaggeration that the study of the mind in the West originated in a sort of morbid psychology. The diseased mind was the focus of the psychologists’ attention.

Out of their observations was evolved a great science, but in its development, the scientists were at a great disadvantage, for they were unable to study the mind as it was. They observed the diseased mind, rather than the mind of the perfectly healthy individual; they investigated the peculiar and the abnormal mind, rather than the mind of the representative person. In the East, on the other hand, the great Masters studied the universal man. The mind as an inner centre of life, and in its universal aspect, was the object of their study, and not mind in “this condition” or “that condition”, ill or well. The Eastern Masters also considered both matter and spirit and carefully correlated their facts. They delved into themselves, and through introspection and meditation, uncovered amazing facts about this inner instrument we call the mind. Theirs was a pure subjective study. In meditation, the Eastern masters reached the very heart of their subject matter and there they had the Truth revealed to them. Thus they have authoritatively declared what has to be known about the mind. In this manner, the Eastern origin of this science was so totally different from the origin of Western psychology.