What is the role of personality? | Mohanji
What constitutes personality?
While you have the life experience, what you project outside, is what is your inside story. This is what you are inside, and that’s the personality that you brought forward. Personality is also a projection. What you’re projecting is your personality. When you are in a sleep state, there’s no personality, right? When you’re in a waking state, what you project is your personality, and that’s part of your orientation – what you’re oriented to.
Please understand – your physical body is just like a rent-a-car. Why have you taken this body? Just for the sake of experience. Why do you take a rent-a-car? Why do you rent a car? To move from one place to the other. Right? Like that, you’ve taken the body from birth till death to experience many things of life. It’s simple.
What you project through that, that’s your personality; that’s what you brought forward. You brought it with you. The body cannot give you personality. Your behaviour – how you are, your orientation, inclination, and desires – gives you personality. Is this clear? Is it understood?
So, don’t blame the body for it. The body is just a vehicle. If you don’t have a body, you don’t have experience. What experience? The life experience. You need the body to have life experience. While you have the life experience, what you project outside is what is your inside story. This is what you are inside, and that’s the personality that you brought forward.
Inclinations and Desire Patterns
You brought it, and it changes. You can see a particular personality in childhood; it sometimes changes in adulthood. But inclinations don’t change; tendencies don’t change. Desire patterns don’t change. Personality changes. Have you observed it? Look at your own life; you’ll know. But desires don’t change, right? Most of the desires are similar. Of course, what you liked at the age of 10, you may not like at the age of 20. That’s different, but the pattern of desires, the pattern of inclinations, they are more or less the same from birth till death. So, this you can experience also.
Don’t believe what I say. You should check it with your own life. I always believe that nobody should follow anybody blindly. Why? Because you have been given the faculties. See, in the scriptures, it says, “Don’t tell that I didn’t know the tiger will bite and go and hug the tiger. And don’t say that the snake will bite and put the snake on your lap.” This intelligence has been given by life – existence.
So, always, when you walk the path of spirituality, you should always check with yourself, “Hey, does this resonate with me? Is there any truth in this?“ You should investigate, ask questions, then perfect it. That’s the step to evolution. Otherwise, “Oh, Mohanji said it, so it must be true.” No, no, it’s not so. It might be true for me. Is it true for you? That you have to check. If you don’t find that out, ask again, “Why did you say this? Give me clarity or clarification.” That way, we can be on the same page.
Transcribed by Ilinka Regodic
Proofread by Yogesh Pandit