Consciousness—Responsibility

January 04,  2002

• This phrase expresses in terms of individual psychology one's social sense of citizenship.
• This means one accepts the entire responsibility of any work done in his family, community or organisation.
• Practically it means a member of a group can successfully monitor the entire group.
• When a thing goes wrong in a group of twenty, actually everyone can see in himself his own contribution.
• To see that is to be mentally conscious, to accept is the sincerity of mind that opens to the psychic. To be able to change it is the power of changing the inner consciousness of the entire group.
• In concrete practice of physically material work, one who change like that rectifies any error the entire group made.
• It is the WILL of the universe the individual has access to.
• To understand one's past,

- One can assume that every good thing that ever happened in his own knowledge, happened because of him. Then he will find in the event an answering response.

- To assume the opposite that every bad thing has happened because of him will open self-knowledge.

- Neither is the complete vision.

- The choice he made in each event will reveal the individual he was.

- It will SHOW him the immense power at his disposal to determine the collectivity he is in.

- From this point of view self-giving, selflessness, selfishness will reveal their psychological limits.

• To understand one's part, is to determine one's future.
• Any discipline can only be begun where one is.
• Life at once, the same minute, will throw up occasions.
• Let us consider availing of opportunities, not solving problems.
• My family faces an expenditure where everyone has a rightful share; a big opportunity is offered to my family where I am not the principal recipient; the country opens an enormous opportunity for my client where I am only a consultant, etc.
• No one will ask me to shoulder the entire burden of the family, but very rarely I will be prevented from doing so.
• An Indian industrialist, one of four brothers who are not affluent, paid for his mother's treatment fully and was raising a question whether he should ask his brothers to share the expenses or accept it if offered.
• From the point of view of this article.

- It is goodwill to pay when one is able to pay while others are not.

- The mother gets the needed relief whoever pays.

- Self-respecting brothers will pay themselves. That way their self-respect survives.

- Consciousness-Responsibility in such a situation presents a few options.

One paying for all, when others cannot, shifts the responsibility as well as the benefits to him.

Not to interfere with family traditions preserves it in this individual.

To offer to pay, if it will offend, is not right.

To inwardly decide to pay, if permitted, will give him consciousness Responsibility.

• One who does not have that much money but takes that responsibility will discover that that capacity comes to him.
• It will come as long as the need is there. In that case, it is the personality of the family that grows to meet its needs. And it did so in one receptive individual.
• If it continues, the person made ALL the progress he would make on that occasion.

Consciousness-Responsibility enables consecration.