"Character - the balance of the inner and the outer tendencies of existence."

Sow an act, you reap a habit; sow a habit, you reap a character; sow a character, you reap a destiny. A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion. It is not inherited from parents; it is not created by external advantages; it is the result of one's own endeavours - the fruit and reward of good principles manifested in the course of virtuous and honourable action. A good heart, benevolent feelings and a balanced mind lie as the foundation of character. It must be capable of standing firm in the world of daily work, temptation and trial and be able to bear the wear and tear of actual life.

My Master was always emphasizing that more than love and devotion - which are very necessary you see - character is necessary. In fact he quoted Lalaji who has said, "Even the highest evolved person is not really evolved if he has no character." It is an illusionary evolution. It is an evolution without becoming his. It is like a man having money which he loses and he is again without money. It is not something which is part of you. It is not something, as the Upanishad says, which cannot be robbed, which cannot be stolen, which cannot be lost, which even death cannot separate us from. To make that ours, we need the binding force of character which keeps the spiritual content, the wealth that the Master has bestowed upon us as ours.

You cannot borrow character from somebody like you can borrow money. Anything that a human being values must be his. His in such a way that it is always his. It is his during sleep. It is his when he is awake. It is his when he is at home, when he is abroad. No passports, no money no travelers' cheques. These are all things which are stolen, lost, destroyed. So a character has to be a personal character.

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT IS NOT CHARACTER BUILDING
Personality by definition comes from the ancient word 'persona' meaning a mask. It was in the old Greek tragedy, when the actors used to have masks depicting the various characters they were playing, that we have the word 'personality', which by inherent definition means, we are trying to appear as something we are not. So the modern connotation, "He has a nice personality", is a suspect word. If only, people really know what personality means, they would not use the word so much. Because it is like saying, "He appears rich!" Now, we don't say that to a rich man. Or, "He appears educated!", to an educated man. So, personality means, "He appears to be something which he is not!" When you say a man has a good personality, it means that: "I say, the fellow looks to be something which he is not!" "He appears good, may be he is bad!" So, personality by definition is something we put on outside, which we are not inside.

So we are all parading under different masks, and I dare say, the professional mask is one of them. When a doctor comes home, he is no longer a doctor. He is a husband to his wife, a father to his children, and a son of his father. Where is this personality of the doctor? It is left at the doorstep, you see. When he goes out, putting on his Burberry and his top hat and his briefcase in hand, he is the doctor again. It is like the stage - you know, a man walks onto the stage and he is strutting. As Shakespeare said, "All the world is but a stage, and all men and women are nothing but actors."

So personality is false. Character is truth, it is reality, it is something you have to build from scratch. Spiritual science says, "My dear friend, you are born as a human being. If you are born as animal you have no choice. There is no ability to exercise your intelligence, or your choice, or even any selective procedures. We are subjected to instinctive drives. An animal is not in control of itself." So try to be human, try to be what you are inside, not flaunt yourself outside. Do away with personality development and start with character development.

There are two sides to our character, to our behaviour: one, which we have as a human being and one which we have to openly show outside in our work, in our contacts with the public, what we call our image. Now in some professions, in some calling, in some fields of activity, there seems to be - at least that is the accepted public theory or feeling - the need for greater and greater divorce between what we are and what we have to appear to be: especially in professions or calling where an essentially gentle person, one who is very humane in his outlook, charitable by disposition, loving, kind, affectionate has to put on fierce airs in the name of discipline.

Now it is my submission that it is an image, it is a falsity and it is a lie. So, in any system where we have been drawing upon some symbol of authority which is not inherently in us, it is a suspicious thing. And those who depend on this prop to their personalities, some day they are going to collapse under situations which they would find very detrimental to their health, wealth and most of all to their egos. Because these things only build up our ego, without building up our character. This is true of any situation where an individual has to fight himself in the carrying out of his job, in the fulfillment of his responsibilities. So spirituality says, 'integrate yourself'.

WHAT DOES CHARACTER REALLY MEAN?
It is always nice to expect from others that things should be done for us. But I keep recollecting the old advice, "Do unto others as you would be done by, and charity begins at home." I think these two precepts are fundamental to our character formation. There is a general widespread misunderstanding that a good character means abstaining from drinking, smoking, womanising - the three cardinal events. This is a very superficial understanding of character.

If you come down to these precepts, that do unto others as you would be done by, we begin to behave towards others as we would like them to behave with us. We will not hit a man below the belt because we don't want to be hit below the belt ourselves. We will not rob the pocket of another because we would not like our pocket to be picked. We would not call others names because we don't want to be called names ourselves. It teaches us in a more subtle way than just by giving instructions: Always tell the truth.

Lalaji Maharaj and Babuji Maharaj have emphasised so much on character formation. The beginning, the first step, I would say, is to treat others as if they were you. Love them as much as you love yourself. Love first. One who cannot love himself, cannot love others. This is not a joke, it is the truth. All those who talk here about the inability to love the Master, why love a Master, love a wife, love a husband, anything? Love is love. The object may change. One who cannot love something, cannot love anything else, precisely because they have not love for the self. Like charity begins at home, be charitable to yourself, be compassionate to yourself. Can you forgive yourself for a mistake that you have made, or you castigating yourself, chastising yourself, feeling miserable about it. Or are you able to say, "Forget it. You are after all a human being. How dare you think that you are beyond the mistakes?" Are you so perfect that you can say, "I will never make a mistake?"

Therefore, our characters have to be strengthened progressively to go on deeper and deeper. All this tradition of the amrita manthan of the kshira sagar, so many things come out of it, including the famous poison, and they had to tolerate it. It is not as if there was some ocean of milk and they were churning it. It is our heart. We have to churn it. This the Master does for us with his cleaning, with his spiritual love for us, mercy for us, and we have to be able to tolerate everything that comes.

HOW CAN CHARACTER BE BUILT?
Babuji Maharaj said, "Spirituality is my business. Character formation is your responsibility." Spiritual science says, Character building cannot be undertaken by just reading books: "How to build a character by ten easy lessons" - there are many books. Character building is a brick-by-brick process, like we build a house. And, in that process, it is important to realise that we are not building a personality. When a man of character stands before you, you don't need to say, "He is a man of personality". Often, they have no personality whatsoever. If they just slip out of this room, you wouldn't even recognise them. I know because my Master was like that - a man in a simple dhoti and a simple kurta; if he walked out on the street, you could not distinguish him from anybody else! Because character is not something, which is external. It may be reflected in your activities and your words, yes. But it does not show on you face. It does not show in the way that you are dressed. It is like the sunlight. You know, the sun is not aware that it is shining. A man of character has not even the awareness that he is a man of character. It shines in everything that he does. Therefore such people attract, like, they say, the moth to the candle. You cannot possibly accuse or praise the candle for attracting the insect; it is what it is, and being responsive to what it is, the rest of the insect life flocks to it. We flock to the light when we are in darkness. The truth behind the spiritual statement is: "Be yourself, and you will achieve much more than flaunting a false personality."

When a child takes a fly and rips off its wings, you can hardly accuse the child of being evil. You can say there is something in its nature, in its inner tendencies, which gives it this destructive tendency. Some children are always throwing cricket balls and tennis balls and breaking the neighbour's windows. So, that is where you know, the character building comes, precisely because we come here with a balance-sheet, where the tendencies of the past inhere in me, as what we call samskaras. And, if they are necessary to be developed, we allow them to be developed. If not, they are removed. Like you know in a lawn we remove the unnecessary grass, and what grass is to grow, it is allowed to grow. So character essentially is this aspect.

When we do cleaning and we remove the samskaras and our different personalities fall off bit by bit, which we call change in character - aggressiveness goes, greed goes, lust goes. One by one, all these samskaras go and our personality changes. It is as if peeling an onion. You take off skin after skin. You can say it is the peeling of the personality. What is the result? When everything is taken from the onion, what is the result? We can say, nothing. But when we take away everything from ourselves, what is the result? I think we reveal what is within.

At each moment we must reexamine our internal and external selves. Try to weed out the shortcomings by cleaning, take the preceptor's assistance, or write to the Master, whatever you have to do. And make sure that we are free from internal and external shortcomings. Internal and external shortcomings are removed. Now comes the time for a positive buildup of character. I have stopped lying, but have I started telling the truth? So the negative must go and the positive must come in its place. Otherwise there is a vacuum. So that is not desirable.

Character building is the duty of the abhyasi and, therefore, of the preceptor too. We have to build our own characters. The Master creates the inner condition. We have to allow it to express itself in our life. And expressing it in our life means behaving rationally, behaving with courtesy, behaving with generosity, behaving with love. Eventually one hopes that we should all become like the Master himself - no longer expressing love but being love.

We may have problems which we may not be willing to discuss with another preceptor or abhyasi. We may be so ashamed that we cannot talk to anybody else. But there is a saying that before one's tailor, one's lawyer and one's doctor there can be no shame. I would add that before one's Master there can be no sense of anything at all, neither of shame, nor pride, nor of any such thing. Surrender implies that we go to the Master with those problems which we cannot solve ourselves. But this does not in any way remove our responsibility to correct ourselves. After all, drunkenness and immorality are easily cured. As they are easily acquired, so also they can be easily lost. So the duty of an abhyasi is to try to correct himself or herself. But where we are not able to do it, we should go to the Master and pray for his guidance, and pray that he may correct us by changing our behaviour and our character. It is Master's duty to do this for us when we are sincere in our approach.

HOW DO WE EVALUATE A PERSON'S CHARACTER? How does prejudice develop? By what are we conditioned in our interpersonal relationships? The answer to all these questions is that a man's antecedents are what guide us. If we can develop the ability to look on a person at this instant as a fresh, unknown entity, unconditioned by any past, then we will develop the capacity to see the real person, and not merely the external, tortured human being that everybody sees. Then an objective ability develops, which penetrates beyond the external veils and sees the truth within. A person's past may have been anything. What is he now? This is the most important thing. But we, most of us, rarely ask this question because we are preeminently worried only about the past antecedents. Thus we miss the real person and see only a tangled and superficial web of trivialities enclosing the individual like a fly in a spider's web. This is why all new acquaintances are so glamorous, so welcome, while old friends are the ones with whom we quarrel and from whom we often part. Living in the present unites us, while living in the past can tend to separate person from person and, as history records for us, even nation from nation.

TRANSCEND CHARACTER AS WELL
Character is again something pertaining to the temporal life - life in this world, in the world of mutual relationships. Light is needed when there is darkness. If you go by what the Vedas say, at the time of Creation, there was neither sunlight nor darkness. It was a state like dawn. No heat, no cold. No light, no darkness, no 'dwandwas' as we call it, no dualities. So the Ultimate spiritual effort is to bring that into our life. When there is no personality, there is no character.
When we come to a still higher level of character, there is something called INTEGRITY. Integrity means, "Being true to yourself". Being true to your values at any cost. I must uphold my truth as I see it. May be it is wrong today. But I prayerfully do it. Because you know if you study the lives of great men, even politicians, like President Abraham Lincoln for instance, he used to meditate before he took any major decision. He did not consult his cabinet. He meditated in the knowledge, in the wisdom, that essentially the decision is his. The inner voice is infallible, it is ever true.

So, transcending character comes integrity. Because you find sometimes men of character also misbehave. It can be a momentary passion or momentary misdeed. The law recognises that a premeditated murder is not treated in the same way as an unpremeditated murder. One is hanged and the other gets a life-sentence. So, that is a moment of passion. Viswamitra is another example. He was a saint, a rishi, but at the moment of meditation a Menaka came along, something in him responded to her presence, and the whole thing after it.

So, character is the ability to make decisions, after examining the pros and cons. Integrity gives you the ability to do it. If morality and moral values are instilled in you then you transfer the ability and the need to judge also to Him to whom you have given room in your heart. Now I am only an instrument. So there is no question of doer-ship, there is no question of culpability, because 'I' am no longer acting, 'I' am no longer doing, 'I' am also no longer responsible. This is the final stage of surrender. Then the body is just moving like a puppet in the hands of a puppeteer. He who is inside me, is making me move and act and do whatever is to be done. And largely the saints are supposed to be like that, they are unconscious of what they say, they are unconscious of what they do. They respond to the situation in the most unique way because such actions are never repeated.

So, the first need is the moral values. The second need is integrity. The third is character. Fourth is the strength of will to enable me to go ahead with what I decide as right, notwithstanding the circumstances.

"In the hands of a man of character, power is good. In the hands of a man of character, wealth is good. Everything is good in the hands of a man of character."