DEVELOPING A POSITIVE PERSONALITY
It is an upbeat personality in which the lofty desire to search for the Truth awakens. Moreover, only a person of positive character and positive thinking finally arrives at the Truth.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a famous French thinker. He was a champion of people’s rule over monarchy. He famously remarked: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” (Social Contract, 1762)
However, man has another problem, which perhaps is even more severe than this. Moreover, that is the problem of conditioning. Every person lives in a particular environment. Therefore, every person’s mind gets conditioned by his environment, depriving him of the right thinking. As a result, people do not remain capable of thinking naturally. In light of this conditioning problem, Rousseau’s statement can be better stated: “Man was created on divine nature, but I see him psychologically conditioned.”
When a child is born from his mother’s womb, he looks like innocence's epitome. It seems as if an angel has assumed human form. At the time of birth, man has a pure mind. His thinking is the natural thinking that should be the case in reality. However, man is a social being. He has to spend his entire life in a society made by others. Because of this, his mind receives external influences almost every waking moment. It is called ‘conditioning’. This process of being influenced by the external environment keeps increasing until man becomes wholly conditioned.
In the quest for Truth, the seeker needs to understand this conditioning, and accordingly, he should set about deconditioning his mind, taking it back to its natural state. He should make himself a man of nature rather than remaining an artificial man and a victim of conditioning.
Recently, a view that has gained tremendous popularity in psychology is called Behaviourism. In this school of psychology, it is believed that conditioning is man’s persistent condition. It is as if a man is a prisoner of his conditioning and that he is simply a passive product of it.
A deeper study of man’s personality rebuts this theory. Recent discoveries about the genetic code raise serious questions about the above theory. It has been proven that every person’s complete personality is present in the genetic code by birth. Moreover, as the child grows, its personality development, it is said, is only an unfolding of this genetic code. If this is true, it would be more proper to say that the conditioning exercised by the environment is like an artificial curtain placed over man’s natural being. It is as if a man’s character is like an onion. Inside the onion is a marrow like a pea. Over this inner ‘pea’, there are many layers of skin-like curtains. If these layers of skin are removed, the inner kernel of the onion will emerge. The same is true with man. Through conditioning, artificial curtains are placed over man’s actual being—curtains created by the external environment. If these curtains are removed, man’s true personality will emerge.
Removing these external curtains over a person’s being is called deconditioning. It is binding on the person who seeks the Truth to remove the artificial curtains of conditioning that cloud his actual being so that his real nature emerges again.
Religion tells us that man is a unique creature of God. When a human being is born, he is born with a divine personality. In terms of his inner being, he is a true and perfect being. For a person’s lasting success, a necessary condition is that he must protect his natural character. He must keep himself established in the natural state in which his Creator has created him. This struggle to remain in this state requires removing all that functions as a veil over it. Moreover, this is what is called deconditioning.
When a person is nurtured in a particular environment, he faces different negative situations and experiences daily. These situations and experiences keep making an undesirable impact on his character. For example, if someone did better than him, he may become jealous. Jealousy now enters his character. If someone misbehaves with him, he reacts with hate. Hate now becomes part of his character. If somebody oppresses him, that creates a violent streak in his character. And so on.
In this way, a person keeps encountering different experiences to which he reacts negatively. Each time he does so, a negative component enters his character and shapes it accordingly. Thus, man’s true character comes to be concealed by a curtain over time. As a result, a person now changes from a natural to an artificial person.
Deconditioning is the reformation of this artificial state of affairs. This deconditioning is a pressing need for every person. Without it, man’s character will remain deeply flawed. He will never be able to obtain the position of a perfect character.
The primary means for this deconditioning is introspection. Every person must become their inspector. First, he must closely search within himself and remove every negative item he may find. Next, he must rectify his thinking about these negative items by changing each of them into a positive thing. Then, he must include these now positive items back into his personality. This process is similar to an animal chewing cud, regurgitating it, and chewing it again, making the food capable of being digested. Through deconditioning, every person should similarly reconstruct their character.
Man’s mind has two major components: conscious and unconscious minds. For example, when a man faces an unpleasant experience, the thought related to the experience enters the conscious mind as a negative item. This negative item remains in his conscious mind for a few days. After this, gradually, it goes into his unconscious mind, when it becomes a part of his mind forever. Hence, it is necessary that on the very first day itself, or within a few days at the most, one should convert every negative item in one’s mind into a positive thing so that when this item, passing through the conscious mind, enters his unconscious or the storehouse of the memory, it is saved in there as a positive item.
This process is a decisive factor in building a person’s character. This process determines if a person shall have a positive or negative nature. A person should engage daily to rectify his negative experiences and convert them into positive items. As a result, the items will be collected as positive items in his unconscious or memory storehouse. The character of a person who regularly engages in this process will be an exceedingly positive one. Failure to engage in this rectification process will cause all the negative experiences he has faced to find a place in his unconscious as negative items. The result of this will be that his character will become negative.
Whatever action a person does, be it in thought or action or word, happens according to his unconscious. The personality of a human being is determined mainly through his unconscious mind than his conscious mind. The thoughts, words, and deeds of a person whose unconscious has become a storehouse of negative items will be negative. In contrast, the thoughts, words, and deeds of someone whose unconscious has become a storehouse of positive items will be healthy and positive due to self-effort.
Searching for Truth is the action of a positive personality. It is a positive personality in whom the lofty desire to search for the Truth awakens. Moreover, only a person of positive character and positive thinking finally arrives at the Truth.
