There is a proverb that says that changing human nature is like trying to straighten out a dog’s tail. As soon as the hold is taken off of the tail, it reverts to its usual shape. When we reach the level of the material consciousness, we are at the point where the ‘solidity’ of matter makes change much more challenging than in the more flexible levels of the mental consciousness, the vital consciousness, etc. Another proverb says that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks.
We all can recognise that training the body to enhance the capacity or skill set, or overcome some limitation is a process that takes time and much consistency in order for it to be achieved. There are, however, embedded deep in the physical consciousness, layers of material consciousness that are so dense and solid that they do not respond to our normal mental and vital methods of exerting pressure for change. At this level are what can be called ‘reflexes’. The action is virtually automatic: when a stimulus is applied in a certain place the material consciousness responds with a known and predictable response.
Some of these reflexes or mechanical reactions are embedded in what we call instincts. There are birds that build a nest in a very specific manner from generation to generation. Salmon are known to return to the exact location where they were born to spawn the next generation. Monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles from Mexico to Canada and back, going and coming to specific locales from generation to generation, in migrations that span 4 to 5 generations of the Monarch. These types of instinctive behaviour are illustrative of the way Nature has fixed certain routines. The individuals are replaced, the formations remain the same.
In a similar way, the human being also has some deeply embedded behaviours that defy our attempts to modify them. Alpha male behaviour and the response to that by others in the society, pecking orders, fight or flight reactions, responses to trauma, the flood of various hormones and neuro-transmitters under specific conditions, all represent virtually automatic reactions. Then there are the automatic reactions based in attraction/repulsion, the ‘survival instinct’, disgust or revulsion, trust and fear, hunger and thirst, all of which can arise without our conscious intervention when certain forces impinge upon us.
These, and other similar long-established habits of the nature, are part of Nature’s process to ensure that change does not devolve into chaos. It establishes a conservative principle to make change take place through a long period of modification, testing and establishment of a new principle of action. This occurs both at the individual level and at the level of society.
At a certain point, however, this conservative principle can lead to stagnation and decay if there is no opportunity for change, growth, development and modification. A fixed and unchanging response, which lacks adaptability and flexibility, eventually fails the test of Nature. Nature thus has developed also progressive principles that can lead to new manifestations and changes in these deeply embedded responses. Changes at this level can seem to be impossibly slow, but eventually they take hold. The conservative nature and principle of this mechanical consciousness will eventually adopt the modification and then, in its turn, make it into a fixed routine or dogmatic approach, until the next phase of development finally can break through the dense tamasic formation that is created at that level.
We can appreciate that the vital force has a limited, yet real, power to effectuate change in material nature. The mental power has shown a greater capacity to bring about change at the level of Matter and the material consciousness, although this too is limited. We can understand that a new higher power of consciousness and action, embodying the next phase of the evolution of consciousness, may be able to create a faster and more supple response to understand and break through the resistance of the material consciousness, while at the same time ensuring that this is not simply wild change for the sake of change, but is actually bringing our existence to its next level of fulfillment.
Sri Aurobindo notes: “What you describe is the material consciousness: it is mostly subconscient, but the part of it that is conscious is mechanical, inertly moved by habits or by the forces of the lower nature. Always repeating the same unintelligent and unenlightened movements, it is attached to the routine and established rule of what already exists, unwilling to change, unwilling to receive the Light or obey the higher Force. Or, if it is willing, then it is unable. Or, if it is able, then it turns the action given to it by the Light or the Force into a new mechanical routine and so takes out of it all soul and life. It is obscure, stupid, indolent, full of ignorance and inertia, darkness and slowness of tamas.“
“It is this material consciousness into which we are seeking to bring first the higher (divine or spiritual) Light and Power and Ananda, and then the Supramental Truth which is the object of our Yoga.”
Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, Physical Consciousness — Subconscient — Sleep and Dream — Illness, pp. 83-84
Sri Aurobindo Studies 