Unconsicousness

November, 1981

Physical

Incapacity to learn a fresh activity and make it into a habit is unconsciousness. When learnt, to possess the skill as a fresh endowment is high consciousness. To let it become a habit is a form of unconsciousness from the higher point of view. When it becomes a habit, the habit prevents the man from seeing anything other than the habit and its repetition.

Stupidity is the faculty of not being able to relate to a phenomenon right before yourself. The farmer in a delta region with copious water who is unable to think of using his land for a second crop or unable to use the water just below the surface is not merely undynamic but is made stupid by tradition and affluence. Today you receive a messenger from Cuddalore bearing a non-important information in a letter. When you suggest to the sender that he could have sent a letter by post, it never enters his head and he says he is not used to it. Again when the occasion arises a messenger comes! If a person in these days sends a messenger as of old instead of mailing a letter and is unable to break the habit, he is STUPID. Everyone of us can list dozens of activities where we are so stupid.

So also doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, tamas, inertia, laziness, pettiness, stubbornness can be described.

Similarly for the vital and the mental.

To let the physical rule the vital or vital dominate over the mind or the mind cloud the soul is a stronger formation of unconsciousness and is more difficult to get rid of.

If the faculties of one plane are not awake and their opposites rule the field, it is unconsciousness. If a lower part of the being usurps the higher part, it is a reversal of the natural position. It can have two results.

(1) The man will be very effective in his plane of action because his abilities are saturated from below. Where understanding is called for and one is expected to remember things out of understanding, a person endowed with great memory and less understanding takes the test, he is likely to excel persons with greater understanding. In floating an institution he who has a lot of money is likely to fare better than he who has a lot of ideas without money.

(2) Whenever this person moves higher up in life or work or ideals, until and unless he reverses this reversed position, every move of his is likely to produce the opposite results to the expected ones.