FROM A SITE VISITOR: Hello, Floyd. Art here (I’ve written before but not in a long time). After further reading about a series you wrote on nine personality types, I came across a term referring to three instinctive subtypes, sexual, social, self-preservation. I am lost. It seems from what you say, we need to be rid of the self to “live naturally” but if self-preservation is instinctive, wouldn’t that make it natural? (I know—maybe too much analysis but it’s only for fun anway, right?)
F.: Hello, Art. Sure, the topic can be discussed for fun, especially since the site employs the nisarga system of yoga to point toward natural living. By definition, actions that are generated by instinctive drives differ from learned behavior among humans that follows the formation of a “mind” that is capable of recalling events from memory. Relatively speaking, are there variances in the typical behaviors of members of different species? Yes.
To use the three terms you mentioned, some non-human species in “the animal kingdom” are more sexually active than others; some are more social than others; and some are more wired for the fight and for self-preservation than others. In one fictional novel with an interwoven message of non-duality, the lead character is discussing the fact that some persons are “more destructive” than others and that even “human nature” manifests with variations. The Native American Chief responded thusly:
“…very common variations are not just limited to human nature. Note the differences in the nature of birds: that heron there, like a hermit thrush, lives a fairly solitary life, while those ducks as well as warblers flock together. Waxwings eat fruit, while those hawks over there kill other birds to survive. Grackles like the city, but the cuckoo likes the woodlands. Listen to those noisy birds in the distance, calling attention to themselves—like human narcissists—while the buntings are very shy. Those blue jays and mockingbirds by your condo are territorial, and fight for their province, while swallows and sparrows migrate, without attachment. Such is the way of “this world”…but disparity is all in the relative. As for the Absolute, no differentiation exists. There is no duality, there is but One.”
In the relative, more and more variances seem to occur as more and more experiences are embedded in the genetic coding and passed along to subsequent generations of humans via archetypal messaging. Some of what was “truly instinctive” among earlier humans is not that which is now instinctive among humans…because of archetypal images that have been accumulated for millions of years and because of the continuous warping, or blocking of, pure consciousness. While those messages are intended to facilitate “the survival of the species,” they contribute to the warping of the consciousness because they are rooted in duality:
Day is safe (“good”) but night is dangerous (“bad”); “up” is “good” but “down” is “bad”; “this is the right way to behave in order to survive but that is the wrong way to behave in order to survive,” etc. The dualities that are part and parcel of all dogma are rooted in duality, driving persons to claim that they “know instinctively that there is a heaven and a hell.” That is not an accurate awareness that is accessed via the inner guru or inner resource but is actually a learned (non-innate, non-instinctive) concept.
While certain instincts drive various species to behave in certain ways that are different from the behavior of members of other species, that which is innate and unlearned and inherited is obviously not that which was instinctive to the earliest humans. Thus, the sex drive is normal, but the “sexual personality subtype” is not.
Tomorrow, an example from an earlier posting which recounted the sexual exploits of a man who attended a session in the summer of 2007 will be offered by way of contrasting the difference in instinctive sexual behavior as opposed to sexual behaviors that are driven by a personality subtype. (He reported having engaged in over 300 extramarital affairs during the years he was married.)
Between now and tomorrow, you are invited to give some consideration to the difference in behavior that is driven by the “modern instinctive sexual personality subtype” as opposed to behavior that is generated by the “true, instinctual drive for sex.”
Consider the three basic drives for water, food and sex. What role might the warping of the consciousness play in distorting the “truly natural instinct for sex” and the "instinctual personality drive for sex"?
As you consider what might have been at play with that man to understand why something other than the basic sex drive drove him to engage in 300 affairs in a seven-year period, ask, “What might be at play if someone overeats? What might be at play if someone over-drinks? What is happening when instinctive drives for ‘survival’ become personality-based instinctual drives for excess?”
“While some conduct is affected by, or driven by, prior human experiences, what current human experiences might be warping the instincts so that they become dominated by unnatural personality subtype influences regarding sex, socialization and preservation rather than driven by that which is truly natural?” Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
