The Building of a Positive Personality

But man is faced with another, perhaps more serious problem, and that is, conditioning. All men and women are influenced by their immediate environment. Because of this, their minds become conditioned, as a result of which they are deficient in right thinking. A person is not therefore able to think realistically. In view of this problem, we need to rephrase Rousseau’s dictum: Man was created on the pattern of divine nature, but I see him psychologically conditioned. When a child is born out of his mother’s womb, he appears to be the embodiment of innocence. It seems as if an angel has taken the form of a human body. At the time of birth, man’s mind is pure. His thinking is as natural as it ought to be. But man is a social animal. He has to spend his whole life in society along with other people. Because of this, he continues to receive external influences at all times. This is known as conditioning. This influence goes on increasing until a time comes when he becomes conditioned to the ultimate degree. When one reaches adulthood, i.e. the age of maturity, every man and woman must make an effort to understand this conditioning, and by de-conditioning one’s mind, one should take oneself back to the natural state in which one was born. Instead of being an artificial person, one should become a man or woman whose nature is in its pure, pristine state. The conditioning of the environment acts as an artificial veil over the real man’s eyes. The human personality is like