Process of Decision-Making

• Cosmic Determinants, the Decision-Making Process of creation is defined by Sri Aurobindo as The Infinite's Self-conception of Form that carries the Force.
• Sri Aurobindo explains how that decision translates into an act through a rhythm and a process.
• What is true of creation is true of the Individual as well as any other event national, organisational or international.
• Michael Brecher of Canada studied the two successions of power in India in 1964 and 1966 in such minute detail and collected a wealth of details that are empirically valid.
• He has also conducted similar studies in 421 international crises from 1918 to 1979. His classification of the forces involved and systematization in terms of the preceding forces, energies, and attitudes is as rare a document as Darwin's is in his field.
• Empirically one needs no more data. They are of the externals.
• Correspondingly there are inner origins of attitudes, collection of energies, direction of forces, organisation of inner power of decision and the results that issue from inner skills.
• One who knows the definition of Sri Aurobindo can observe in his own self the inner process.
• To construct the inner process and reconcile it with the outer one is to arrive at the whole secret of Decision-Making Theory.
• Brecher has distinguished between war and tension, confrontation and conflict, violence and its preceding status. He has traced each force to its previous status, that is, violence to tension. It is exhaustive in its scope.
• Several of our recent decisions and some of the present ones are fresh or even vivid in our memory. As a decision takes shape in our minds, we can detach ourselves from it and observe it.
• The exact moment of decision and precise form will clearly announce themselves to us.
• When tracing it backwards, one can similarly see the same precision.

- The inner mental skill that converts the power into results.

- The formation of that power, its extent, intensity, its colour, shape, and flavour will be self-evident inside.

- It is a power of our mental will.

- That will will have its vital, physical components that will reveal only to deeper patient insight.

- The power of the will can be further analysed for each of its components. Further its origin in our mental knowledge as mental attitudes, opinions, information, data and belief that made them possible can be fully seen in their final shapes, formative energies and original direction.

- They can be still traced to earlier acts of the same type. Persisting, one can land on the very first act that initiated them.

- All this will be tempered by family, caste, community, nationality, religions, and such considerations.

- Still the personality and Individuality will be dominant by the Freedom of their Choice.

- There comes a moment when we perceive that we are moved by external factors and even inside by forces that dominate us.

- When man's self-conception becomes Self-conception, the man who is dominated changes into one who now determines the outer as well as the inner forces.

- It is a decisive moment in one's life.Once he reaches there, he becomes the master of his own destiny.

• Secured thus, it is a personal tool.
• A person in management will largely benefit by such a tool.
• In a downward market of unhelpful forces, in an unorganised setup, one who has acquired such a tool will be seen to exercise a restraining influence on each of these forces.
• Brecher is objective, rational, and scientific. He classifies his facts under various heads, systematises their inter-relations, and presents them in frequency tables, diagrams and graphs of several descriptions. He is a scholar who does this out of intellectual concern to contribute to the subject of Decision-Making.
• A businessman can be narrow and would be interested only in his profits. That is not quiet flattering.
• He can be a good person who is interested in the welfare of his staff, the satisfaction of his customers.
• He can be a devotee who is riveted to the higher values of life.
• One can practise Self-giving going beyond self-giving.
• We see that as one changes his vision, his values and strategies too change.
• There are striking occasions when someone gratuitously does a great good turn to us leaving us baffled for the moment.
• In the best of us, it evokes a thrill of gratitude in the very sensation of the body.
• In the least of us, the material benefit overwhelms.
• In between there are varieties of grades.
• We will surely fit into one such.
• In such contexts, there are rare occasions that reveal to us a past event that bears an exact one to one correspondence in all the minute details. For example, a parcel of books that arrives from a friendly book seller as a gift reminds us of a very small parcel of books that we sent years earlier to a friend.
• Such an event, well understood, will reveal the principle of correspondence between the past and present events.
• A gradual discovery of the whole of the past that now determines the present will enable us, by conscious decision, to win freedom from that determinism.
• In that measure, one becomes conscious.
• Consciousness is mastery.
• As the past determines the present, the present determines the future.
• He who can create positive determinism of the future by the present wins a rare mastery through a rare freedom.
• The ideal will be to be free of any determinism of Nature and remain conscious all the time.
• In such a transition every value matters, every strategy too.
• One who has been using consecration with advantage will now be able to see the vast practical concrete difference between accumulated reading and the veritable power of action in the field.
• An ounce of action, he will be able to see, is better than a ton of reading and understanding.
• Our aim is the same in ascent and descent and can be stated in two ways.

        1. Each act must endeavour to know the thought basis that gave it birth.

        2. Each idea must express itself in that right act where its expression fully signifies harmony.

• By a token act, I mean an occasion to personally observe, comprehend, record each act and its significance, of every salesman and every customer in a detail comparable to the study of Brecher. This is the significance of a token act.
• A token act undertaken in this spirit cannot but succeed. Its success is not the result, but the collection of all facts without missing one. If one can study 421 international events spread over 60 years all over the globe, to do so in our own establishment in one event must be eminently possible.
• Life will reveal the significance of tiime, space, person, name and product, even in the very word of the past.
• A great proposal coming to us at 8.30 a.m. will remind us of doing a similar good turn long ago exactly at 8.30 a.m. to another.
• If we had delivered that on the phone earlier, now it will come to us through the phone.
• The very pen with which we now sign our name will evoke memories of another signature put by another person by a similar pen.
• Names of people will carry a power beyond our comprehension.
• The patterns in the names are the patterns of life.

- A positive act comes to us through one who carries the name of a positive person in our life.

- An act that comes to us through a name known to us to be of bad influence, in spite of the best of circumstances, will turn out to be of no value.

- Names, Sri Aurobindo says, are no mere words, but they carry a formation representing an inner significance.

- When a good act is delivered to us by a name totally unfamiliar to us, we will see behind him another name totally familiar to us which means that that name can play only a secondary role in our life.

- The strangest phenomenon here is the evolutionary principle of extreme attraction to a name of one who is determined to destroy us.

- No name is a mere unmeaning word that we can afford to ignore totally.

- What is true of name is true of all aspects of an act.

- Names we have loved, the names of those who loved us will not desert us until their natural impetus works itself out. It is true on either side for love and hate, for our love and another's love for us.

• An event or an act is a universe in miniature.
• Observation as a true science will be clear to us when we try to observe events for their components.
• As hearing is primary and listening is secondary, looking and seeing is different from observation.
• Observation is seeing components of acts in their basic pattern of organisation.
• Observation can be subjective or objective.
• Observation can be casual or rational or intelligent.
• One must be able to discriminate between physical observation, vital observation and mental observation.
• That a thing is near the wall is physical observation.
• How beautiful or how ugly it is, is vital observation.
• Why an object is placed in a certain place is mental observation.
• In each of these observations - physical, vital, mental - it is easy to see there are two parts. One is the object's and the other is ours.
• To observe there are endless points of view. That is why we say it is infinite.
• To observe all the possible aspects of an object is the observation that brings the Infinite out of the finite.
• As in observation, there are infinite dimensions in our relation with an object.

- Physical sensation.

- Vital impression.

- Mental comprehension.

- Spiritual communion.

- Supramental identification.

- Each of the above can subdivide itself into endless ways.

• In an integral way of life all our existences must be integrated with each other.
• Complete possession of all facts of observation, conception, perception, sensation from physical, vital, mental, spiritual, supramental is needed for such an integration.
• It is helpful to distinguish between cooperation, coordination, inter linking, integration of forces, and so on.
• Such integration exists on all the levels - the six levels.
• Language which is not a conscious development, often reflects an incredible number of grades that we overlook.
• When we after years of research and observation arrive at subdivision of comprehension, we will be surprised to know that already words, distinct words, exist in the language to represent each shade of significance we now have discovered.
• What the language has collectively but unconsciously grown into, we must now consciously discern for a scientific study.
• A linguistic equipment will thus go a long way.
• From the language of speech, to the diction of thought and concept, to the shades of impressive senses and to the concrete acts in the physical plane, we will move and see such moves are pilgrimages in scientific discovery.
• A token act is only a first step.
• It is to discover the process.
• Process is the middle term and essence is final.
• To possess the essence, to express it in the process and use the individuality is totality of existence.
• Totality is made possible by integrality.
• Integrality is not only in consciousness but it consummates in substance.
• Our aim is to arrive at all these only in mind, leaving the vital and physical to yoga.
• Achieving this in mental substance is luck.