To Be Characterless

If I say the word characterless is very beautiful, how many of you will agree with me? Often, we have heard this word and always have a negative feeling. We see an immoral person as characterless. But have we ever thought that even an immoral person has a character, an immoral character? He is not characterless. The character is a blanket which we wear over ourselves, the blanket which is self- sieved or adorned by society. A person of character has his characteristics defined. A character of a person is armour or armature around him which defends him. When a child is born, he has no character of his own. He is pure and natural. His behaviour is spontaneous. The moment he feels hungry, he cries for food and pees in his pants without being ashamed of what people will think of him.

When the child grows up, the parents and society teach him what is right and wrong. The child is appreciated when he follows the rules, and a guilt feeling is cultivated within him when he breaks any rules. This is how the character of the person is built. So, the term character is always given by the parents and society. A person with character has a defined structure. He has his own routine of life and in order to maintain that character, he tries to cling to that routine throughout his life. He feels guilty if he moves out of that routine. He may have developed immorality, but he is not characterless. The word characterless has its own significance. The characterless is something which is not defined, which has no boundaries or routines, which has no rules to follow, and it's on its own. A characterless person will have a totally undefined new response to every moment. The characterless is the most intense quality which is built on spontaneity. What the person is going to do next, nobody knows, not even himself. Only a person of character knows what his next step is, as he has bound himself to rituals and prejudices. He is a programmed robot that sees no new excitement life has to offer. The characterless person experiences eternal freedom, freedom from the past and future, freedom from the ego of being a rule follower, and from the guilt of a sinner. The blanket of the character has its existence only in the past and future, while the characterless person is standing naked in the present. He is living the moment free from guilt and ego. The character always lies in the past because you were moral or immoral in the eyes of the society and it also lies in the future as you must again change or maintain it in the eyes of the society. The person with character will invest all his energies in the present moment to maintain it, while the characterless person would not even bother about it living with totality in the present.

A real holy person will have no character. He will have no defence or any armour around him. The characterless person cannot be classified as good or bad. He is simply a person alive in the present who has maximum alertness, consciousness and is responsible. If he must respond to a situation, he would respond out of the now, without being dependent on the past. He does not carry any preconceived notions. The character is a conscience being forced on you by society, the burden which an individual carries from birth to death. The mystics have always emphasized the consciousness and not conscience. They have always preached awareness and not character. With consciousness, the character will follow like a shadow. The person will not feel its burden because there is nothing to maintain. Even if we pay no attention to it, it will be there with us.

In summary, the chara cter should not be based on the past but should be flexible, the one which is not dead but alive, flowing like a river. The character, which sees no boundaries, which lives in spontaneity, and responds to any situation being in the present. A real person is bound to be lawless and characterless.

- Dr. Dhananjay Patel