Changing or Eliminating a Habit of the Physical Consciousness

The physical consciousness is very much driven by habit, routine and fixed response patterns. We can observe this in our eating routines, our sleep routines, and other habitual actions. The mind and the vital can influence the physical consciousness through programming routines or habits into it, essentially training the physical to respond to specific stimuli and act in a certain manner when presented with the situation. All forms of physical exercise and repetitive activity are building new habits into the physical consciousness. When we undertake a diet, or begin fasting, or take up bodybuilding, or swimming or any other activity that requires physical training, we are working to break established patterns of caloric intake, or timing of meals, or find ways to upgrade the responsiveness of the physical being to achieve what it is being called upon to do, etc.

Once we understand both the nature of the physical consciousness with respect to its habitual patterned action, and the manner in which the mind and vital can train or retrain the physical nature to acquire new habits, we can actually initiate various changes in the physical consciousness.

If we look at any form of training, we understand that it takes precise instruction from the mind, repetition of the action and time for the body to form a new habit of response. Similarly, if we look at breaking or changing an existing habit, such as set mealtimes, snacking routines, or any other physical habit, we see that this also takes consistency and time to bear fruit.

Recognising this process, we have both a “negative” and a “positive” method to put into practice. To the extent that the mind or the vital nature approves and supports the habit, it will continue and actually be reinforced. Even if we give in to it, time after time, it should not be with consent but with a patient and quiet will to reduce or eliminate the unwanted response or habit. For example, one has a craving for some snack, say a piece of chocolate. One feels the ‘urge’ to get a piece of chocolate. The mind, observing this impulse, can turn down the request, or at least can send forth a ‘directive’ to the physical that it really does not want to support this request. If the urge is strong, and repetitive, it may overpower the mental will for a time, but eventually the mental will can prevail and change the habit. Many people who formerly consumed meat diets have switched to vegetarian or vegan diets in this way. Even if they gave in to an impulse or craving at some point along the way, the direction and force was set, and eventually they succeeded.

On the positive side, the mind and vital can send affirmative statements to the physical being encouraging it to do positive things that support the aspiration, improve the health and well-being of the body and make it more capable of achieving the intended result. In such case, it is important for the mind and vital to recognise the process and the time and not injure the body through taking it far beyond its current limits; rather, using the process of repetition over time to inculcate a new set of responses and habits.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “You should not allow yourself to be discouraged by any persistence of the movements of the lower vital nature. There are some that tend always to persist and return until the whole physical nature is changed by the transformation of the most material consciousness; till then their pressure recurs — sometimes with a revival of their force, sometimes more dully — as a mechanical habit. Take from them all life-force by refusing any mental or vital assent; then the mechanical habit will become powerless to influence the thoughts and acts and will finally cease.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, Physical Consciousness — Subconscient — Sleep and Dream — Illness, pg. 86

The Material Consciousness and Its Resistance to Change

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