44. Question: What is the relationship between character and spirituality?

Sri Chinmoy: Spirituality encompasses everything; therefore, it includes human character, too. To have a good character is to have honesty, simplicity, spontaneity, absence of anger, pride and so forth. When an ordinary human being possesses all these qualities, we call him a man of good character. But although spirituality is inside these qualities and these qualities are also inside spirituality, real spirituality is something infinitely higher and deeper, for it deals with life-transforming and God-becoming aspiration. A man of good character need not care for the highest absolute Truth — he may remain quite satisfied with his moral achievements — but a spiritual man goes far beyond the domain of morality with his heart's inner burning cry, in order to reach the highest Truth and bring it down to illumine himself and the earth-consciousness.