FROM A SITE VISITOR: Like Raja, I’m new to Advaita--but never had any religious training. It is easy enough to know that I am more than a body but why do you say I should not have a personality? Thank you.
F.: An understanding of the root of personality should provide further clarity around why Advaitins suggest being free of the influences of personality and the assumption of personas.
Recall that the traits and behaviors that typify each personality type are used by children to adjust to dysfunctional or difficult circumstances. Actually, the development of personality in response to such dysfunctionalism is a sensible survival technique.
(What is not sensible is when adults continue to use those same childish tools throughout their adulthood and are thus driven to think and feel and behave as children. Because that has become the planet-wide “norm,” the result is a global population that is tied to personality’s dualistic “assets” and “liabilities,” forever trapped in relative fluctuations, instability, immaturity, and chaos.)
Another side effect of developing personality and using it as a survival tool is this: since personality is used by children for self-preservation, it reinforces in adults the childish beliefs about what “self” is. That, in turn, blocks most persons from ever finding the truth about their false identities or the truth about any "Real Identity." Thereafter, the child/adult is set up for life—for the entire relative existence, that is—to allow personality to inspire false-self preservation.
The earliest sensations experienced by children deal only with body (body discomfort, body hunger, body wetness, body dirtiness, body cold, body warmth, body heat, body comfort, body pleasure and body pain). Connecting the use of personality with body survival reinforces a child’s identification with body and inspires children to carry that same limited identity with them into adulthood and throughout the entire relative existence.
The effect of that is a global population fearfully preoccupied with body issues and desiring body continuity. Those fears and that desire set persons up to believe all sorts of nonsense, especially including dogma if the dogma comes with a guarantee of “eternal salvation” or “eternal body-mind-personality continuity" (that in spite of the fact that all dogma is rooted in magical thinking and ancient superstitions).
And some six billion persons on the planet—trapped in the fears and desires of their personality—cling to those beliefs, even though the carriers of that message of continuity cannot explain the exact nature of eternal continuity and cannot answer such basic questions as:
“Will my body be in tact literally, or will I be more like some transparent, filmy soul floating about in a gauzy state?” or “I must have an eternal physical body since I’m going to have sex with virgins, right?” or in these times of broken promises, “Will I spend eternal bliss with my first spouse, my second spouse, or my third spouse?”
While claiming that the answer to every question is available in their "holy scriptures," the purveyors of dogma nevertheless dodge some of those most basic questions by amending some of their claims with “God works in mysterious ways” and “We can’t understand everything about the afterlife, but we know by faith that it is real.”
To see how personality sets persons up to accept magical fiction as truth, realize that fifty percent of all persons are Personality Type Sixes; therefore, fifty percent of the earth’s population will always be in fear and will always be looking for protection, searching for something or someone to care for them, to defend them from all threats (sometimes real, but more often merely perceived), and to provide for their economic and physical “needs.”
With fifty percent of the entire earth’s population living in fear and looking for protection, the vendors of creeds and doctrines have a captive audience for their message when it plays on those fears and when the vendors simultaneously dangle before those Personality Type Sixes an assurance of earthly protection combined with promises about eternal existence.
(Note how churches in the U.S. were filled to capacity in the days following 9/11 and how a month later they were back to their regular attendance levels. Note how often leaders are guaranteed at least a fifty-percent approval rating during times of war or widespread fear. That rush to, and from, church as well as that built-in 50% is accounted by the personality of the masses, not by any logical conclusions drawn after a study of the relevant evidence and facts.)
If persons do not find a sane and sound and reasonable philosophy that offers answers to the inherent questions that are repeatedly raised by confused and fearful and desire-driven humans, then those persons will be vulnerable to buying into the various ideologies that are set forth by the ignorant and the self-serving. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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