Dec. 23, 2001

Levels of Personality One to Nine

(by Karmayogi)

v The greatest impact on the educated mind was made by 'The Adventure of Consciousness' on behalf of the Master.

v Its special value is the distinction between the mind and the vital.

v As man is subjective--a euphemism to selfishness--he never thinks about himself.

v When he reads about other men, particularly great men, he reads of the result of their work, and never has the curiosity to know what in him does all that.

v To us man is man, a whole person.

v We can think of another's personality only when we know our own personality.

v Man is entirely social, his science itself is social, his Spirit is worship of his own society.

v Religious worship or piety is mistaken to be Spirituality not to speak of those drawn towards the spirit of the body and vital.

v No attempt at any classification has ever been made because such a thing surfaces or is demanded when the present forms of worship, tapas, saturate our plane of existence.

v Suppose a well classified system is now created and presented to the public, there is no wonder it will not be looked at as it has no use.

v If a use is framed, people will prefer the earlier tools.

v At present creation of such a system will throw a great light, as the beams of a lighthouse into the dark ocean for the one who creates it. Only that this lighthouse will illuminate him inside.

v In a sense, this is as arduous as clarifying the terms of the process of creation.

v This stupendous scientific task of clarification and systematisation can be briefly stated as a summary.

Þ 1 to 9 levels must be described and supplied with a mental, vital, physical example of a well known act. Followed by a definition that is precise, it will create the table.

Þ Historical and literary characters in a good number described in their acts will help redefine the original definitions.

v The task is stupendous as the act is a whole into which all facts of personality are rolled.

v A further complication arises in fixing any act to one plane. E.g. writing. Is it mental or physical or both?

v Acts spill over often into the subtle plane.

v Complications can be confusing and confusions can be confounding, as an act can be mental at one time and physical at another time. It can be so in the same person.

v Pure philosophic thinking is an act of No.1.

v One in a coma not able to move lying down is an act of 9.

v Elizabeth listening to Wickham fully endorsing his lies is an act of No.5 Though she is not a No. 5, this act taken by itself is exclusively No.5.

v Lydia persuading Wickham to run away with her is of No.6. She is physical but No.6 is the intense physical emotion charged with physical energy.

v Mr. Collins's enlightened effusions are of No.7. Not his mind, but his brain is trained in linguistic skills.

v Wickham's arts of cunning falsehood very well fit into No.4.

v Charlotte's wisdom of the frustrated female is No.3.

v Darcy's passion for Elizabeth is the vital part of No.6 or the part of consciousness while Lydia's energy is from the substance of No.6.

v Mr. Bennet's sarcasm and manners of a gentleman born out of a sentiment to the emotions of a British husband belong to No.2, though to its unhappiest low aspect.

v Kitty is No.8 in some essential way as she is physical and does not have even the skills of No.7 to guide herself.

v Often one can witness all the faculties of 1 to 9 in the same person, though in practice we find people not soaring high above or sinking too low but hovering around one or two levels, possibly three.

v Lady Catherine's abuse of Elizabeth is an act which contains several elements.

Þ Her strength of status, big bodily frame, high education, absence of manners, skill in language and housekeeping, capacity to manage the property and strong will.

Þ Absence of manners in spite of high aristocratic education is the result of education of No.3 being received in No.7. As the high is received by a low faculty the skill in the language is great devoid of manners.

Þ Whether it is status or education, they can only foster the personality that is there. Lady Catherine may properly belong to No.6 and her status cannot raise her further but can only fortify it.

Þ Wealth can come to a person who is uneducated or with no culture as efficiency can earn wealth or it may reach him by inheritance. His rank will be high in inheriting, not in possessing, enjoying.

Þ Lady Catherine is blind to what Darcy thinks; she bases the future on her own wishes which is blind ignorance of No.9.

Þ Lady Catherine belongs to aristocracy by birth, not by character, not even by manners. She is over bearing and intolerable.

Þ In a period when England goes out of her way to court the working class so as to preserve the social structure, Lady Catherine behaves as no aristocrat would, going to Elizabeth and asking her to do what is not in her power. She is not only not aristocratic, but stupid, almost equaling that of Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins. The basic truth at all times is one is intelligent, aristocratic, or beautiful not by inheritance or by professing it, but by being so. Levels 1 to 9 are so devised. All errors in life arise by mistaking appearance for context.

Ø Monarchy became rotten by its divine right theory.

Ø The caste system in India became putrid when a perverse attempt was successfully made to supplant talent by birth.

Ø Mother wants inheritance to go for this reason.

Ø Martin Luther's protest arose when a priest was interposed in the place of a saint.

Ø Parents and adults enjoying superiority on the basis of age is vanishing. National leadership that long ago shifted to the students now has further moved away to the juveniles.

Ø Spirit itself has been displaced by the spirit of the dead man -- spirit usurps soul.

v The levels must be understood with discrimination avoiding the pitfalls of appearance.

v We see the whole man either by his appearance or by his worth. The fault is more in our comprehension than in his appearance.

v The right perception, as explained in the chapter 'Pure Existent' will enable us to see that strength and weakness, silence and sound, the solar system and anthill are the SAME. At least in understanding the human personality, we need to observe.

Ø That the inner substance is different from outer appearance.

Ø Education gives knowledge, not character.

Ø Wealth gives comfort, not status.

Ø Status gives power, not respect.

v This discrimination extends in an act to sifting the physical from the mental, surface from the depth, consciousness from the substance, the formed from the unformed and finally the higher in the lower from the lower in the higher. E.g. Writing in a child is the hand learning to write directed by the mind. In an adult, it is mind making the hand write. The child's writing is a physical act while the adult's writing is a mental act.

v In the act itself, there is the spearhead and the substratum.

v An act must be subdivided into one of impulse, in the subtle plane, the causal act where no thinking goes into it and the serious one where by premeditation mind compels the body to act.

v As the divisions go on, we arrive at the core of the pure act and further the pure personality. Levels 1 to 9 concern only the personality. It is true that the ACT itself can thus be classified. It is a further classification we do not consider now. Such finer divisions can be of direct use when the nine levels are further subdivided.

v The value of these levels lies in the clarity that sifts appearance from reality and assigning the level to the reality and not the appearance.

v Ostensibly, the purpose of learning the value of these levels is to raise one's efficiency.

Þ Raising the efficiency is in other words raising the work from the physical to the Spiritual, which is evolution.

Þ That is the path of Self-discovery for JOY.

Þ That purpose will be accomplished by our knowing these levels as precisely as possible making all distinctions and avoiding all confusions.

v Efficiency arises by man learning the skills of efficiency till they become capacity to accomplish, not by another offering it to him.

v Here, in this story, social grace offers, chases, thrusts on those who are unaware of it just as grace chases man.

v Therefore the problem reduces to giving with strength and receiving with the comprehension of culture. That is true of us whose varying intensities can be best understood by carefully studying these characters, their actions in the light of the results.

v One who does so for several historical and literary characters will know himself.

v The power lies not so much in the positive forces opening to us as the negative forces removed with full, spiritual understanding,.

v To sum up, analyse the character and his action, separate the levels, sift the subtle from the gross, the surface from the depth, the consciousness from the substance and assign the number to the person and to the act.

v A person's endowment has a minimum where the effectivity is the maximum and a maximum reach where there is no effectivity or the effectivity is minimum.

v The minimum is vested in the physical substance and therefore the effectivity is maximum. The maximum is the mental understanding where effectivity is minimum. We may say the effective understanding is full.

Þ Elizabeth is at bottom a reasonable, logical, good girl, who can still be clouded by vital adoration, yet outreaches everyone in understanding. In this context, she does not allow her mind to understand as it is clouded. The cloud in the mind is removed by the abuse. Abuse is vital educating the mind. One may abuse another but it does not follow that the abuse will result in understanding. It is rare that the abuse results in action of changing one's attitude. That Elizabeth does so is because of the awakened Spirit in her. Darcy does so compelled by the force of social evolution. As it is social evolution, the force accomplished in Elizabeth the social upward movement. Her infatuation for Wickham remains as the force is not psychological or spiritual.

Elizabeth is a mental character whose sentiments are organised around the social propriety of the society she was born in and the rationality and logic her education had given her. Therefore she is a No.2 who can descend to No.6 if pressed by the alluring circumstances. If No.2 is her maximum and No.5 or No.6 is her minimum below which she would not fall, we are free to ask hypothetical questions which will not contribute to solid scholarship. When the scholar is rational, it may help. We may raise such questions without answering as it will create complications of confusion.

Ø Would Elizabeth marry Wickham after he was exposed if he returned to her?

Ø Would her heart race, as he was her first love, at his approaching her under assumed repentance?

Ø Would her prayers rise for his prosperous future?

Þ Mr. Bennet is a No.3 essentially by virtue of his composition of personality as one organised by his mental intelligence to maintain the property inherited by him. Confronted by a wife who is saturated with physical energy and the skills of No.7 that could act only as she was trained, not as she was required in a new situation, he was immobilised. He knew not how to handle her. In our view, he could handle her if he could see the wisdom of her energetic movements in his life or his own similar corresponding folly in having chosen her as his wife. In the absence of both, one falls back on his individual personality and social culture. His own evolutionary response which no one expects him to give would have accomplished in his early life what the social forces accomplished for him later. That was out of question.

Knowledge is powerless against the power of physical energy in

action. He waits patiently.

Þ Jane has excellent manners, good understanding but the centre of her personality is not mind, not even vital but physical. She is not endowed with the skills of the physical like her mother. She has some desirable skills on the fringes of her personality. That will not quality her for 1 or 2 or 3. She belongs to 8. Because she is Bennet's daughter she has those desirable endowments.

A further question arises, what makes her eligible for luck. The good will of Elizabeth qualities her for that in spite of her native stupidity. On another note her attractiveness is more due to her stupidity than her good looks. It is a truism of life that deceitful men are attractive to women and stupidity in women is a source of great attraction to men, other things like beauty remaining true in themselves.

Þ Mary is physical, has a mental element though she reads like Mr. Collins. Obviously, she has no vitality which her younger sisters have. Even in the physical, she has no skill of No.7 , which her Mother has.

Þ As we analyse individuals, we can analyse acts, assigning different parts to different levels.

v In our own selves, as we know the origin of thoughts and acts, we can OBSERVE the course of acts and how our personality is centred in one place and moves in a range between a maximum and a minimum.

v The minimum fixes our culture.

v The maximum announces our possibilities.

v Our sensitivities prevent us from sinking below our minimum.

v Our courage helps us avail of our opportunities. Elizabeth was courageous with Lady Catherine, bold with Darcy at his proposal. Darcy was all admiration about her courage subconsciously. Lady Catherine 'admired' her courage and wanted to 'reward' her inversely. That was why she called on Darcy to report her encounter with 'that head strong selfish girl'.

v The cultural sensitivities of the Longbourn family prevent them from complaining against the lost sheep. That magnanimity opened further possibilities.

v A person does a bold act. As he is bold, he does it. As the act requires boldness he does it. Both meet at a Time fit for boldness which shows the character of that hour which is further determined by the place, environment, etc. Darcy proposing to Elizabeth in the house of Mr. Collins who was earlier refused by Elizabeth and in the premises of Lady Catherine who is inimical to such a proposal naturally expresses his aunt's anger and Mr. Collin's angry pride.

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