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A miracle in the form of unexpected invitations from both Indonesia and India to lecture on psychiatry enabled Dr. Boss to visit Asia and “properly to grasp the essence” of Indian philosophical and psychological insight into the fundamental nature of man and his world. Reading translations of Indian writing had not been satisfactory to him because most translators seemed “closed” from the outset to the resources of Indian thought. “It never occurred to them to ask whether Indian thought, precisely because of its alien quality, might possibly supplement Western science and open up new fields of inquiry for it.”
Boss had the opportunity of meeting with, questioning and learning from a great many Indians ranging from “westernized university professors to sages and holy men who still adhered to the traditional way of life.”
Throughout the book he compares and contrasts Western positions on religion, philosophy and psychology with those of the East. He further makes clear that the dichotomies of the West, e.g., between enlightened humanism and reason on one hand, and irrationality, selfishness, and materialism on the other, are increasingly to be found in the East as well. One particular thing struck him in India, namely, “a sense of profound inward rootedness and repose.” He wondered if India with its “long continuing ancient rootedness in this spiritual tradition” might ultimately “stem the universal onslaught of soul-less technology.”
Boss devotes much time to his observations of psychiatric practices both in India and Indonesia and touches on similarities and differences between the Western and Eastern methods. He illustrates his findings with brief case histories. After months of examining people he concluded: “in none of all these people, no matter how assiduously I searched and probed, could I discover one single human problem, one single impulse and mode of behavior, any kind of phantasy, dream phenomenon or neurotic fixation, or any psychotic syndrome, which was fu