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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 your 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.
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