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.: If one understands the nine, basic personality types, the linkage between assuming personas and attaching to dualistic beliefs and being dominated by fears and desires becomes clear:
Type Ones desire to know it all; Types Twos desire to be loved by all; Type Three desire success and respect from all; Type Fours desire isolation (or solitude, depending) from it all; Type Fives desire to understand it all; Types Sixes desire security; Type Sevens desire to escape from it all; Type Eights desire to control it all; and Type Nines desire to be able to avoid it all, including reality.
Consider that if Full Realization is to happen, then a shift from accumulating to de-accumulating must also happen. (For example, concepts must be de-accumulated; false identities must be de-accumulated; and personality/personalities/personas must also be de-accumulated.)
De-accumulation can only happen if free of (1) a false sense of need and (2) a sense of ego that drives persons to accumulate to impress. If trapped in the desires of personality, persons will experience a sense of lacking which inspires more accumulation, blocking any possibility of Realizing and then de-accumulating.
Entrapment in personality also guarantees that persons will experience a sense of fear:
Type Ones fear being wrong; Types Twos fear not being loved; Type Threes fear failure and loss of admiration by the masses; Type Fours fear that their creativity will never manifest; Type Fives fear looking foolish; Types Sixes fear…everything; Type Sevens fear emotional pain and boredom; Type Eights fear being weak or dependent; and Type Nines fear conflict, work, pressure, and discipline.
To be trapped in the fears of personality is a guarantee that persons, even while seeming to have occasional respites, will more often experience a sense of dis-ease. Who that is afraid can possibly relax and take it easy and be at peace? Persons in fear can never know freedom.
Since he/she who is not free cannot be happy, freedom from personality is one of the prerequisites for the manifestation of consistent happiness. Liberation can only happen if one is liberated from beliefs and concepts that drive persons to accept limited identities as real. You are invited to understand that “Liberation” is, as much as anything, about liberation from the effects of personality.
Next, recall that it is generally by the age of five or six that most children have developed the personality type that will drive them not only throughout childhood but throughout adulthood...throughout their entire relative existence.
Some ask, “If personality can be so detrimental, why do humans even develop it at all?” You may as well also ask, “If drug abuse or alcohol abuse or food abuse etc. is so detrimental, why do persons develop those dependencies at all? Why not just choose to stop when the ill effects manifest?”
The answer to why persons do not discard personality (and why persons do not discard any other “tools” or addictions that they are using which have detrimental effects, relatively speaking) is the same:
The warping of consciousness—or the blocking of the pure consciousness—has become so widespread that what is natural has been lost, what is functional has been lost, and what was once normal has been lost…planet-wide.
As a result, persons across the globe are using any means available in their (futile) efforts to try to cope with the dysfunctional, the abnormal, and the unnatural (which includes all ideas and concepts that are based in “magical thinking”…also known as “beliefs regarding the supernatural”).
Consider: personality is a tool that children develop in order to try to cope and manage and survive in unnatural, dysfunctional, and abnormal settings. The abuse of substances is a tool that children and adults use in order to try to cope and manage and survive in unnatural, dysfunctional, and abnormal settings.
Obviously, the irony is that while personality might serve the child’s interest early on, it is a liability when a childhood tool continues to control an adult’s thoughts, words, and deeds; likewise, some report that their addictions “worked” for a time to bring some sense of comfort and ease but later “turned on them” and proved to be a liability.
Is it becoming clearer why Realized Advaitins suggest that personality be discarded? Persons become addicted to their personality (or personalities) and addicted to anything that seemingly fulfills the desires of personality or that alleviates the fears generated by personality.
Therefore, you can take personality (or any other attachment or addiction) to be like the blankets that persons wrap themselves in on cold or hostile nights: while their blankets might provide some temporary sense of warmth and familiarity and comfort, persons do not realize that their blankets are infected with contaminates that, in the long haul of the relative existence, will bring about sickness and chaos and pain and suffering.
Like the plague-infected blankets that Europeans gave to the indigenous peoples of the lands now called “The Americas,” adults and leaders today are handing out beliefs and concepts and programming and conditioning that drive persons to think (and therefore behave) in ways that generate chaos and misery and suffering.
To see the most immediate sources of misery is the first step to being free of their effects. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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