Personality Development

INTRODUCTION
1. What is Personality?
A: According to the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, 'Your personality is the type of person you are, which is shown by the way you behave, feel and think.' Personality, according to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, is the 'whole nature or character of a person.'
How a person Behaves, feels and thinks, how he conducts himself in a given set of circumstances is largely determined by the state of mind. Mere external appearance or a person's speech or mannerisms are only fingers of one's personality. They do not reflect the real personality. Personality development in the real sense refers to deeper levels of a person. So a study of our personality should start from a clear grasp of the nature of our mind, and how it functions.

Necessity to know our mind:

We intend to do many things-make resolutions to cultivate good habits, to kick certain Bad habits, to study with concentration, to do something with a concentrated mind. Very often our mind rebels, forcing us to beat a retreat from our efforts at implementing our resolutions. A book is open before us, and our eyes are open. But the mind has started wandering, thinking about some past events or some future plans. The same thing happens when happens when we sit for a few minutes trying to pray or think of a divine name or form. Says Swami Vivekananda: 'Free! We who cannot for a moment govern our minds, nay, cannot hold our minds on a subject; focus it on a point to the exclusion of everything else for a moment! Yet we call ourselves free. Think of it!
According to the Bhagavad Gita, the undisciplined mind acts as our enemy, whereas a trained mind acts as our friend. So we need to have a clear idea of mechanism of our mind. Can we train it to obey us, to cooperate with us? How can it contribute to the development of our personality?
The fourfold functions of the mind:

The Human mind has four basic functions. This can be illustrated by an example: suppose I meet a person whom I had met somewhere, say, about ten years before. I try to recollect when and where I met him and who is he. From the inner recesses of my mind there begins a process of scanning, as it were, to check if there are any events stored there connected with the person. Suddenly I am able to recognize the person as so and so and finally say 'he is the same person I met in such and such a place,' etc. I now have firm Knowledge about the person.
Analyzing the above example, we are able to discern four functions of the Mind:

Memory: The storehouse of the memory and impression of our past experiences presets various possibilities before the mind, this is the storehouse is called Chitta. It is in this storehouse that the impressions of our thoughts and actions---good and bad- are stored. The sum of these impressions determines our character. This Chitta, again, is what is known as our subconscious mind.

Deliberation and Conceptualization:

Not yet sure, the mind examines the many options presented before it. It deliberates on several tings. This faculty of mind is called manas. Imagination and formation of many concepts are also functions of the manas.

Determination and Decision-making:
Buddhi is the faculty responsible for decision-making. It has the capacity to judge the pros and cons of the things and find what is more desirable. It is also the discriminative faculty in a person, which enables him to discriminate between the real and the unreal, between what is to be done and what is to be avoided, what is the morally right and what is wrong. It is also the seat of the will-power so essential for personality development and this aspect of mind concerned us the most.

'I' Consciousness:

Appropriating to one self all physical and mental activities eg. 'I Eat' ,'I see', 'I talk', 'I Hear', ' I think', 'I am confused', etc., is called ahamkara or 'I' consciousness. As long as the 'I' indentifies itself with the undiscipled body -mind complex human life is dictated by events and circumstances of the world; we become happy with pleasurable events, and miserable with adverse circumstances. More the mind gets refined and disciplined; more does one get to know the real source of `I’ consciousness. Correspondingly, a person become more balanced and equipoise in his daily life. Such a person is no longer swayed by any event or circumstances of life.
These four aspects of the mind, viz manas, buddhi, chitta and ahamkara, are not watertight compartments. It is the same mind called by different names based on its functions.

More about the mind:

The Katha Upanishad describes human personality with the help of chariot allegory. Our 'I' is represented by the matter of the chariot; the body is the chariot and the buddhi the charioteer. The manas is represented by the reins to which are yoked the horses representing the sense organs-ears, skin, eyes, tongue and nose- which are the five windows in a human being that give him or her the knowledge of the objects in the world. The road on which the chariot travels is represented by the sense objects. The human being who identifies himself or herself with this body-mind system is said to be the enjoyer of objects o r the fruits of actions.
If the horses are not broken and if the charioteer is asleep, the chariot cannot reach its destination. It can even overtu
and spell the death if the master. Similarly, if the sense organs are not disciplined, and if the power of discrimination lies dormant, one cannot reach the goal of human life.
On the other hand, if the horses are broken and the charioteer is wide-awake, the chariot reaches its destination. Even so, if the buddhi is wide awake, and if sensory system together with the mind is disciplined a controlled, a human being can reach the goal of his life. What is that goal? We will come to it shortly. Another important activity of the mind that concerns personality development is our emotions. More the emotions are under control, healthier becomes one’s personality. Emotions can be broadly classified into two types, viz attraction and repulsion. Love, admiration, aspiration, sympathy, joy, veneration, pride and the like indicate attraction. Hate, anger, fear, sorrow, jealously, disgust, shame, etc., are of the nature of the repulsion. As long as one is entangled with the undisciplined mind, one’s personality does not really develop. Buddhi, the charioteer, serves as an effective instrument of self-development by controlling the emotions and raising the higher self from the hold of the lower mind.

What is character?

Every action and thought of ours leaves an impression in our mind. These impressions determine how we behave at a given moment, how we respond to a given situation. The sum total of all our impressions is what determines our character. The past has determined the present. Even so the present-will shapes our future. This is a key principle governing personality development.

What activates the body-mind system?

This is an important question, the answer to which will help us have better knowledge of ourselves. This question engaged the attention of ancient Indian seers and sages. They experimented with themselves-their sensory and mental apparatus- and after a disciplines quest they found that there is a divine element in human beings, which is the Mind of the mind, Eye if the eyes, Ear of the ears and Speech of the speech. It is this divinity which constitutes the real ‘I’ and the eternal element in our personality. This divinity survives physical dissolution of the body. This divinity remains latent in us as long as we identify ourselves with body-mind and the sensory system. The goal of the life, according to the scriptures and the great ones, is to the manifest this hidden divinity.

What was the central message of Swami Vivekananda?

Swami Vivekananda lectures, talks, letters, poems-his life work-is published in nine volumes entitled "The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda." Is there any central message of swamiji that runs through the pages of these nine volumes? Let us hear Swamiji himself: ' my ideal indeed can be put into few words and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every moment of life.' Man's inherent divinity was Swamiji's central message. The following famous quotation of Swamiji can be our mantra for personality development: 'Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal.'
Swamiji was never tired of rousing people to be conscious of their inherent divinity and perfection. He wanted to manifest in our day-to-day lives. In fact, he held this manifestation of divinity as the sole index of civilization of human kind:
" A nation my conquer the waves, control the elements, develop the utilitarian problems of life seemingly to the utmost limits, and yet not realize than in the individual, the highest type of civilization is found in him who has learned to conquer self.
“This universe is simply a gymnasium in which the soul is taking exercise; and after these exercises we become gods. So the value of everything is to be decided by how far it is a manifestation of god. Civilization is the manifestation of that divinity in man."