The Calculus of Consciousness: Understanding Our Mindset
“Mind is your Kin, Mind is your wealth, / Mind is your Father and your Mother, / It is the mind that is -The divine / Yet you don't recognise..." – Abhiram Pramhans
We constantly discuss having a "positive" or "negative" mindset. But before we learn how to change it, we must grasp the arithmetic of consciousness.
The Number Line of Being
Imagine a number line for our consciousness.
* Positive Integers (Sattva): Values greater than zero—representing purity, goodness, and wisdom.
* Negative Integers (Tamas): Values less than zero—representing darkness, inertia, and ignorance (Hatred, Lust, Greed).
* Zero & Around (Rajas): The point we naturally hover around. This is the state of action, passion, and selfish desire—being positive but with a negative, self-serving core.
The average human being hovers near zero. We have the potential to be highly positive or highly negative, often oscillating between the two.
An act of kindness offers a momentary surge into the positive, making us feel expansive. An act of hatred plunges us into guilt and negativity.
Cultivating a profoundly positive mindset requires immense energy, consistent practice, and time. Conversely, accumulating a negative mindset is frighteningly easy. We are constantly surrounded by forces that feed Tamas: jealousy, malice, vengeance, narcissism, and greed. Selfless action, honesty, and compassion, the seeds of Sattva, are far less commonly witnessed.
The Power and Peril of Positivity
When we successfully cultivate a positive mindset:
* It empowers right decision-making, fostering productivity and creativity.
* It generates an aura of inspiration, which can lift an associated negative mindset merely by proximity.
However, a highly positive individual is not immune. A brilliant light can attract shadows. History is full of accounts of spiritual masters (Sadhus and Saints) who fell from grace after being overcome by the negativity surrounding them.
A Cautionary Tale
Consider a Saint who, through years of rigorous discipline, attains a consciousness value of +1000.
He associates with a small group of seekers: 52, 40, 5, 2, and 1. Their combined group mindset is {1000 + (50 + 40 + 5 + 2 + 1) = 1100}.
He inspires two disciples (+40 and +52) to deepen their practice, and they return with +1000 each. The collective is now strong.
Then, the two weakest disciples (+2 and +1) introduce a "business plan"—exposing the Saint's teachings to the masses for wealth and fame. With every worldly association, the Saint and his group lose positive value to ego, money, and lust.
* The Saint realizes he must return to his core practice.
* Disciples +2 and +1 become hopelessly corrupt: -700 and -500.
* The once-elevated disciples (+1040 and +1052) regress, back to their base values of +40 and +52, now inflated with the ego of being more experienced than their master.
Seeing the decay, the original Saint silently departs. He seeks solitude, dedicating his life to accumulating such profound positivity that his consciousness tends toward infinite. He eventually returns, not to build a cult, but to quietly guide the true seekers who understand the price of purity.
The Divine Zero
If God is the ultimate number line, then the Divine is both infinitely positive and infinitely negative at the same time, yet remains utterly unattached to either.
We humans are tiny, finite points on this line. We move based on our desires and the effort we commit. The mathematics of consciousness is simple: You get what you cultivate and what you work for.
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