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Personality IV

July 5, 1999  

 When we want to understand a subject there are a few ways by which the effort can be exhaustive.

  1. To try to write a book about it, first gathering all the books on the subject.
  2. To think of that subject in the context of his own past experience exhaustively.
  3. Having done so, one can go in and meditate on the subject. The inner concentration will enlarge the energy of the enquiry, which will make the future observation resourceful.
  4. To gather all existing ideas on the topic and review the positive ones in terms of logic and rationality and frame answers to all negative ideas.
  5. It is said the universe comes to us in terms of our human contacts. If this is so, a new topic, examined in this context, i.e., in terms of our relations with each person we know, will give us all that we need to know from the world on that topic.
  6. To list out all our ideas and endeavour to surrender one after the other to the Mother. Ideas will arise in the causal plane according to the Divine Law from Supermind.
  7. If two or more people meet on this topic, if each person tries to know the other man's point of view, soon the subject will be exhaustively covered.

No 1, 4, 6 will not work on the topic of Personality as this is not a topic the world has focused on. Character has been studied exhaustively not from its psychological composition as a trait or power but as an expression of human character through literary characters. As all great writers fully possess an exhaustive knowledge of character and their main effort was to express it through their own characters, they did not attempt a monograph on character. Writers on psychology do not have that knowledge. That is why a perceptive professor asked his students to study Shakespeare to know more of psychology. Shakespeare does bring out character in all his characters. He brings out personality through Falstaff, Shylock, Hamlet, as Dickens does through Micawber, David's father who eternally awaits a windfall.

            Sri Aurobindo in his writings gives all the philosophical bases of human personality but treats it yogically as a product of Nature. He has not treated it psychologically.

            I shall approach the subject of personality as a human endowment and try to trace it from its earlier versions of behaviour, etc.

            Silence exists at all levels, the approach can be used here to say everything and everyone and every level has its own Personality. Having fashioned a formula for personality - the capacity in human beings to draw upon the energies of the unorganised parts of his being to express it through the most organised part - we can set about to discover the personality of everything.

            Personality can be found in the intermediate layer between character and being.

            Personality is that ability which combines the strength of character and energies of the being to new-create.

  • Manners are of the surface of the surface mind in effective and pleasant relationship with the environment.
  • To express what one's surface personality deeply believes in is the trait of behaviour. In that sense behaviour is the truth, and manners is the appearance.
  • Character is of the subconscient, the physical, the truth of the embodied being and what we really are.
  • Personality is the resource of our unorganised being - the organised part being the character - that can lend the capacity of character to its will.
  • In the realm of creation Sat, the Self-Conscious Being, the very first thing the Absolute has put out - Sat Purusha - is the Person.
  • His power is impersonality, which is universality.
  • The gods rise up to the personality of the higher aspect from below.
  • Manners make for social survival when the external appearance of the surface rises to the occasion.
  • Manners that can beneficially and resourcefully draw up the energies of the formed behaviour is most powerful as manners.
  •  Behaviour that can tap the hidden energies of character achieves remarkably.
  • Character that can readily allow itself to be fed by the energies of the being and that submits itself to the work on hand, generates personality.
  • Churchill, Roosevelt, Gorbachev are characters who rose to their own level of personality and have become Personalities.
  • [Strength of character that draws upon the energies of (the being) personality.
  • The energies of personality that can stand on the strength of character]
  • Churchill, etc are social versions of personalities.
  • Shankara, Shivaji, Napoleon, Alexander, Caesar, represent their ages while Churchill, etc represent their centuries. They are personalities in Time. The others belong to Timelessness, the same difference between the politician and the statesman; the wise man and the sage; the learned professor and the wise man; the rich man and the man of wealth.
  • The infinite capacity reveals itself when the strength of the lower plane combines with the energies of the higher plane.

 

 

Native endowment

Field of expression

End results

 

 

1) Ford           

 

 

2) Sloan

 

 

3) Edison

 

 

 

4) Gandhiji

 

 

 

 

5) Nehru

 

 

 

6) Rajaji

 

 

7) Churchill

 

 

 

8) Roosevelt

 

 

Strength of work        

 

 

Mental resources

 

 

Inventive mental resources of practical curiosity

 

 

Vital, moral strength

 

 

 

 

Wealth, Power of idealism

Passionate commitment to the cause of freedom

 

Clarity of thought. Original thinking

 

Inherited native courage of purity

 

 

Traditional wealth, experience common sense, maybe horse sense

 

 

Organisational resources of  the period.        

 

Created ORGANISATION as a resource          

 

Physical organisational base           

 

 

 

Submissive organisation            

 

 

 

 

Government leadership at the national level

 

 

Government leadership at the state level

 

Government leadership that is world leadership

 

 

Government leadership that is world leadership

 

 

 

 

Mighty Organisation.

Great wealth.

 

Premier organisation

Wealth for the company

 

Powerful organisation

Personal wealth          

Endless in motivation

 

Power of national movement. World fame and standing that exceeded government power.

 

 

Power of government by unanimous national consent. Idealism for the world.          

 

Nominal power at the centre. Original Ideas for society.

 

Capacity to save the nation by

Personal courage

 

 

Capacity to save the nation by

strength of mental clarity

 

                                                         

 

In all these cases we see the strength of the existing endowment capable of drawing upon the energies of the non-existent (unorganised) plane of the being yielding phenomenal results.  

  • Thinking can issue out of work, observation, judgment, memory, imagination or clarity.
  • Original thinking rises from a plane where these formulations don't exist. When mind rises above its formed faculties, one thinks originally.
  • Strength of the present best organisation when given to the energies of the higher parts of our being, mind enters into the zones of social creativity in the field of organised work.
  • All these are transcended by MINDS that have learnt to call Mother recognising the superiority of Her consciousness. That consciousness which is organised as consciousness for achieving results through work (as against the consciousness of the Purusha that gives unorganised potential) needs a clean slate. The present strength (of character formation) by submitting itself to the incoming consciousness opens its structures to it and dissolves, allowing the higher to form a new structure for work and result which is the

Personality of the Cosmos orr the World that can accomplish at the universal or world level.

Points at which personality or our daily acts can release boundless energy which, if one can use beneficially by his capacity for organisation, can render his work successful all over the world.

  • Energy is usually released by movement.
  • Movement in the vital is caused by thought as it issues from the next higher plane of mind.
  • Thought acting on the body can release much more energy, as they are 2 planes apart.
  • Energy is also released by personality accepting impersonality.
  • Impersonality is universality. In life universality or impersonality is law.
  • The judge is more bound by the law than the criminal.
  • Law binds the criminal. Judge binds himself to the law of his own creation.
  • A man can be good by impulse and do his work well. But if he can accept the law that demands his work, he would do a lot more. When the law is enforced the result is minimum.
  • When he submits to the law, the result is maximum.
  • Law to which a good man willingly submits can release more of his energies than his individual good nature as in the former case the individual renders law operative.
  • At all times of the day, in all acts we perform, we have this CHOICE of creating the minimum result or maximum result.
  • In a work in international affairs, this principle will help the work more effectively.
  • Kosovo cease-fire is welcome. The leaders there can act in such a way that the fighting there stops or to stop all fighting all over the world.
  • It all depends on from what conviction they act.
  • Knowledge of the Theory and its significance can make itself self-evident here.
  • Political diplomats, leaders by their skill can bring about the cease-fire. It is a desirable, practical, concrete result in the field.
  • Suppose these leaders had an occasion to know the theory of conflict and the theory of conflict resolution and are emotionally convinced of its validity, the cease-fire they bring out will lead to the cessation of hostilities all over the world.
  • In either case the strategies and methods used would be the same.
  • The difference will be a mechanic repairing a machine and a mechanic understanding the principle of operation repairing it. The former will be a mechanic forever. The latter will move to be a designing engineer.
  • Knowledge of the theory of process has the power to raise the local agent to the effectivity of the chairman.
  • Suppose someone who brought about the Kosovo peace understands the process, he will soon be recognised by the world and the world can get rid of conflicts.
  • Successful strategy is Personality. Knowledge of the process is Law or universality or Impersonality.
  • Moving from personality to Impersonality has the power to change the finite into the infinite.



story | by Dr. Radut