Dhira's Quest- Exploring Indic Wisdom for Mapping the Inner Journey

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Tam honoured and humbled to offer an introduction to this beautiful I book-a book that invites you to deepen your awareness of who you are and who you are meant to be. I imagine this book (a 'she' in my mind) is sitting quietly on the shelf, waiting patiently for her human to pluck her down and thumb slowly through her pages. She has a twinkle in her eyes, a knowing that her ancient gifts lie just beneath the surface, and all her human needs to do is read quietly and slowly, with a simple curiosity and open heart, to find her treasures.

Who is her human? You, me, anyone being pulled by a magnetic force to explore their inner nature, their unique and universal self. Coach, teacher, seeker, healer--this book quietly waits for your questions and your courage to look fearlessly inwards. What is drawing you forward in your life's inquiry? How do you understand the pull that leads you to choose awareness over ignorance, connection over separation, or love over judgment and hate? What practices do you take to nurture your awakening, and what work do you do to nurture the awakening of others?

Based on ancient Indic wisdom and presented as a dialogue between guru and seeker, this book offers both a foundation for your cognition and intellect to understand the magnetic pulling you feel, as well as some of the perennial wisdom experiences (brought into the modern-day Upanishadic context) that have cultivated human expression over the centuries.

The book invites you to expand beyond westernized knowledge and practices typically used for self-development and teaching. From this perspective, both knowing about and knowing that are required for the critical spiral movement between churning and calm. Both types of knowing combine to inch us towards liberation. "Only by transcending the word does insight arise and one starts living by the insight" this book tells us. Overall, in the book's revival of the Upanishadic storytelling paradigm you will learn about and experience transcending time and place, religion and culture, and you will be invited into the coherence and flow of transformation.

But I'm not Hindu, and I don't know anything about Indic wisdom. Is this book for me? The simple answer is, yes! If you picked her up and are curious, something is here for you. Trust that magnetic force and just read quietly and with a light gaze. By that I mean trust that what you are yearning for will emerge and don't get hung up on understanding each separate location on the map. Stay focused on the journey. Your journey might mean reading a section of the book at a time, or it might mean that you read a bit then put the book down. You may need time to pause in silence or churn. Trust the unfolding! This can be a challenge for people like me, who are trained to define terms, identify logics, and critique inferences. And I'm not Hindu and I haven't been cultivated in a culture with a history of living wisdom. Yet I encourage you to persist in your inner inquiry, and I believe this book will invite you into a new way to understand and experience your awakening.

I also believe the book provides you with a good foundation (sections on Indic philosophy, the Upanishads, a Glossary of Terms, and the introduction of a new coaching model) as well as practical steps you will find helpful on the journey. Our protagonist is co-author Dr. Sanjyot Pethe, who shares with us her story of transforming.

an instrument of change has been a long-term philosophy of many organizational and leadership development professionals. It is believed that to bring about any change in the outer world, the change begins within. There are many pathways to explore one's life and oneself. India has a rich tradition of philosophies, practices and stories to enable inner growth. This book also has its roots in Indic knowledge systems and introspective exploration. As we begin this exploration, let us look at how the Yogic path compares with Western Psychology. We will then share with you an overview of the philosophical threads that run through a great many schools of Indian thought.

A Journey Through Western Psychology and the Path Yoga Offers The history of modern Western psychology is often traced from Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory in Leipzig in the late 19th century to B.F. Skinner's radical behaviourism in the mid-20th century. This journey charts a deepening scepticism about the inner life, a progressive movement away from consciousness and introspection toward observable behaviour and environmental determinism. Alongside this trajectory, however, there exists a parallel stream of insight from India's ancient Yoga tradition-especially the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the Upanishadic dialogues which confronts many of the same questions but offers radically different assumptions, methods, and goals.

Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology, placed introspection at the centre of his method. Influenced by the philosophical traditions of John Locke and the Mills, Wundt believed that the mind could be analysed into elemental components, much like chemical compounds could be broken into elements. His disciples in Germany and the United States, such as Titchener, attempted to catalogue these mental elements through trained introspection, asking subjects to attend to their inner experiences under controlled conditions.

However, this method soon drew criticism for its unreliability. As William James and Auguste Comte noted, introspection suffers from a fundamental flaw: the mind cannot simultaneously think and observe its thinking. Psychologist Edwin Boring pointed out that trying to describe a fleeting thought after the fact involved retrospection, not introspection, and memory fades too quickly for precise observation. These observations find an echo in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Patanjali clearly identifies the limitations of splitting consciousness into an observer and observed (YS 4.20), and the unreliability of retrospection (YS 4.21). Rather than attempting to analyse the content of thoughts, Yoga advocates a disciplined introspection and contemplation that enables one to anchor in deeper and more subtle levels of the psyche. This inner process of meditative observation slows down and stills the mind's movements altogether-citta-vrtti-nirodhah (YS 1.2). One realises the nature of Self (pure Consciousness) and cleanses the psyche of all conditioning.

Sigmund Freud explored the unconscious mind and developed a structural model consisting of id, ego, and superego. His therapy aimed at making unconscious desires conscious, primarily to strengthen the ego so it could mediate between instinct and social norms. His daughter Anna Freud refined this into a detailed system of ego defence mechanisms. Erik Erikson, building on this lineage, focused on identity development across the lifespan. Yet both Freud and Erikson remained within the domain of the evolving, adaptive ego-never touching the deeper, unchanging Self proposed in Yoga. Erikson's sense of identity remains a shifting construct; what endures through these shifts remains unexamined.