Importance of Truthfulness - 23rd June 2016

Fatma says, "Father, reading 'End of Your World' and there is the whole portion about truthfulness that Adya has written about. How important is it to be truthful, especially to yourself, in this seeming journey? Can you talk about this, Father, a little bit?"

Various levels of truthfulness, isn't it? So the first level is the phenomenal level or the worldly level of truthfulness. When mostly we talk about being truthful, they're saying you're not lying about the appearance which came to you. So first is this worldly level. Your mother says, "Don't lie, don't lie," that now you came first in class or something. So in terms of the appearances playing out, one is that level of truthfulness: that this is what actually happened in my day-to-day life, and we are being truthful about that.

Now there is a deeper level of integrity which sages like Maharaj have spoken about very often. And this integrity means two aspects. One is using the minimum amount of words to just report on what is your direct experience, with as little mental interpretation as possible, you see. So when you're talking about integrity and truthfulness on this seeming spiritual path, you're talking about remaining as true to our direct experience as possible, knowing that words do not fully express the truth, but keeping them as empty of mental interpretation as possible. So this is the first part of integrity.

The second part of integrity is to not be in denial of what you are experiencing. Because very often what can happen is that the spiritual ego will deny it to yourself and to the rest of the world that some sense of suffering, some sense of resistance is coming, some ideas are still being believed in. So what will happen is that we might still be believing ideas about ourselves, and it could be very spiritual ideas like "I'm awake" and "I'm special" and "I am free" or something like this. Or it could be ideas about relationships or any other worldly phenomena. But actually, there is belief in them; there is conditioning about them. But what is happening is because we have heard concepts like "I am nothing" or "I am That" or "There is no doer," then we are just using concepts as denial for what is our direct experience.

So suffering is experienced; we resist even the resistance called suffering, thereby making it worse by being in denial of it, using some Advaita or spiritual concept, you see. So when we're speaking about truthfulness, they're talking about both these aspects: staying true to your direct experience of what is, and not denying that which seems to be contrary to your beliefs about who you are. So in this way, then, when we stay with this and we are open, you're not using concepts for any sort of denial. Because all the greatest Advaita sages actually have said also that Advaita can be the best excuse. Kabir himself says that Advaita is the best excuse for bad behavior because "there is no doer," you see. So in this way, then, this is not integrity. This is just—to use another of his terms—this is just being a spiritual jerk.