Our Subconscient Inheritance

We pride ourselves on our independence and self-sufficiency. We believe that we make conscious choices that are ‘our own’ choices. We do not generally recognise that who we are today, and what choices we tend to make, are very much conditioned by and even controlled by influences from the past. The Buddhist concept of ‘dependent origination’ describes this intertwined relationship between the present and the past. There is a built-in genetic inheritance that provides much of the framework for the mind, life and body that we inhabit in our lifetimes, and thereby controls many events. Capacities, and incapacities take on an important role in determining how we proceed through our lives. But the inheritance does not stop with our DNA. We also inherit ways of seeing and reacting from parents, extended family, our community, our society and our educational system. Traditions, cultural folkways, prejudices and predilections all influence our ‘free choice’ at every moment. We are of course also influenced by current circumstances, information flow, etc. which are all formed based on the common past that we share with the others with whom we interact, closely or at a distance, in the society. There is also the inheritance that stems from our prenatal programming through the thoughts, feelings, experiences, consumed media and its impacts, diet, hormonal releases, illnesses, stresses and drug intakes of our mothers, and the post-natal impacts of the mix of hormones, drugs and other substances imbibed through breast milk, along with the feelings, thoughts and energies experienced by our mothers in that crucial period.

Embedded also in the DNA is the past evolutionary drives. We can see this in the animal kingdom where animals repeat patterns that were not specifically taught by their parents or community/clan. Monarch butterflies for instance take four generations to make their circuit from Central America to Canada and back, yet they fly the same route, land in the same areas, eat the same foods, from generation to generation without a conscious education taking place from the older to the younger generation. Human beings also carry similar atavistic forms of knowledge into their lives, which govern actions and reactions that have been turned into deeply embedded habits in all human beings.

People simply do not realise how deeply programmed we are by the time we reach a point in our lives when we believe we can make our own decisions and exercise our free will. All of these influences from the past, reside in the subconscient realms of our being, and from there they remain as impressions, frequently released into action when triggered by an event or circumstance that touches that unseen, hidden part of our being.

The Mother writes: “One is born with a slough to clean before one begins to live. And once you have made a good start on the way to the inner transformation and you go down to the subconscient root of the being — that exactly which comes from parents, from atavism — well, you do see what it is! and all, almost all difficulties are there, there are very few things added to existence after the first years of life. This happens at any odd moment; if you keep bad company or read bad books, the poison may enter you; but there are all the imprints deep-rooted in the subconscient, the dirty habits you have and against which you struggle. For instance, there are people who can’t open their mouth without telling a lie and they don’t always do this deliberately (that is the worst of it), or people who can’t come in touch with others without quarreling, all sorts of stupidities — they are there in the subconscient, deeply rooted. Now, when you have a goodwill, externally you do your best to avoid all that, to correct it if possible; you work, you fight; then become aware that this thing always keeps coming up, it comes up from some part which escapes your control. But if you enter this subconscient, if you let your consciousness infiltrate it, and look carefully, gradually you will discover all the sources, all the origins of all your difficulties; then you will begin to understand what your fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers were, and if at a certain moment you are unable to control yourself, you will understand, ‘I am like that because they were like that.’ “

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, Disturbances of the Subconscient, Collective Subconscious Influences, pp. 111-118