Adhyatmavidya is the sanskrit work for 'inner science'.
To quote Robert Thurman PH.D. "what humans must (do with this inner science is) turn a scientific, systematic attention to the mind, master its energies, ameliorate its qualities, and, if possible, enable it to achieve a permanent endowment of the real happiness all seek."
The current model of western civilization again to quote Dr. Thurman is that "(Materialistic philosophy and mechanistic science tell us) we can't know anything that really matters: Consciousness is an illusory epiphenomenon of the brain, the brain is a material entity, and a material thing cannot know itself."
But some of us westerners scratch our heads asking ourselves 'why take on such a dogmatic approach?'
The Indic civilization created and mapped (over 2.5 thousand years ago) a science of the soul, and they did so in a very practical way. Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is a prime example.