DEVELOPING A POSITIVE PERSONALITY

It is a positive personality in which the lofty desire to search for the truth awakens. 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. It is the problem of conditioning. Every person lives in a particular environment. Therefore, every person’s mind is conditioned by his environment, depriving him of right thinking. As a result, people do not remain capable of thinking naturally. Given 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 the epitome of innocence. It seems as if an angel has assumed human form. At the time of birth, man has a pure mind. His thinking is 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. This 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, returning it 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 state. It is as if a man is a prisoner of his conditioning and is simply a passive product of it.

A deeper study of man’s personality disproves this theory. Recent discoveries about the genetic code raise serious questions about the above hypothesis. 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 pea. Over this inner ‘pea’ 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 personality 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 may emerge 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, protecting his natural character is necessary. He must keep himself in the natural state his Creator has created him on. This struggle to remain in this natural state requires removing all that functions as the artificial veils over it. This is what is called deconditioning.

When nurtured in a particular environment, man 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. Violence, thus, becomes a part of his character. And so on.

In this way, a person encounters different experiences to which he reacts negatively. Each time he does so, a harmful 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 his own 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 them into positive ones. 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 on positive lines.

Man’s mind has two major components: conscious and unconscious. 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, where 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