When Should You Tell The Truth?

I was asked the question “When should you tell the Truth?” and so this is my reply. The Vedic culture had a wonderful perspective on this subject. They were totally focused on being always truthful because this is in all of our interests, to be honest and truthful. Truth was seen as an integral part of becoming enlightened and dishonesty has the pernicious effect of covering people's hearts and minds in ignorance. Yet truth should not be used as a cudgel to cause pain or injury to others.

Transcript

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya So welcome everyone.

Tonight the topic that we're going to discuss is when should you tell the truth?

So I was asked this question by James in Christchurch.

He says my question is a three part question but I imagine the answer is or the answer is linked together.

When should you tell the truth and to what degree?

The second is does the motivation to tell the truth matter?

And thirdly and when should you keep a secret?

So this is quite interesting questions and it sort of requires a really a bit of consideration.

For those who are on the spiritual path motivation or the reason behind doing anything is pretty much everything.

In spiritual life and material life often the same activities are undertaken but the motivation and the reason for doing them may be completely opposite or completely different and therefore the two activities one performed in material consciousness and one performed with spiritual intent and in spiritual consciousness they produce completely different outcomes.

Truth is somewhat similar.

In the Vedic teaching truth or satyam was considered really important that people must and should pretty much always speak the truth.

Attempts to be deceitful or to lie were considered and are factually normally undertaken by some body who is wanting to directly or indirectly cause harm to someone else or to hide something from someone and quite often to protect their false image or false idea or false thoughts about who they are.

And so in that context not speaking the truth and lying is generally something that is done completely immersed in bodily consciousness.

There is no recognition of myself as being an eternal spiritual being and others as being an eternal spiritual being.

And so because in the old Vedic culture life was seen as part of a journey towards actual spiritual liberation for those that were enlightened or those that were thoughtful or those that were soft-hearted their life and their undertakings were seen as part of a spiritual journey.

And so the speaking of truth was considered a really important thing and lying was considered incredibly low-class and even demonic.

So it was just people would tell the truth even if it meant misfortune would come their way because they felt that speaking the truth was practically more important than anything.

When we consider though the speaking of truth there are kind of two ways that the ancient Vedic teachers or spiritual teachers would present truth and the application of truth.

One is in a social setting and the other one is in purely a spiritual setting.

And of course in a purely spiritual setting the truth is always presented in a completely straightforward way.

But there was a consideration given that in certain environments,

Social type environments that one needed to take great care in speaking the truth not to cause harm to others or not to cause distress to others.

So I'll just read there's a very famous Vedic literature known as the Manusamita.

The Manusamita is pretty much the guidelines for how people should live,

How civilized people should live.

In the Manusamita it states in speaking about this principle of truth and in the fourth part of the book in 138th shloka or text it states,

He shall speak what is true and he shall speak what is agreeable.

The word agreeable here is the older usage of the word and fundamentally means pleasant.

He shall speak what is pleasant.

And he shall not say what is true but disagreeable nor shall he say what is agreeable but untrue.

This is the eternal law.

So here we have these two things that everybody should speak in a truthful manner.

And people should only speak that which is pleasant.

We should not speak in a way that causes pain or discomfort or suffering to others that is unpleasant in other words.

But the provision is made here that a person shall not say what is true but disagreeable or unpleasant.

That within certain social settings even if something is completely true a person might or perhaps even should refrain from speaking if it is going to cause pain or disturbance to others.

But then one is also told that one should not say things that are pleasant but are untrue.

So these were the guidelines for within broader society how one should conduct themself when speaking.

So from a purely spiritual perspective we have two references that I will read.

One is from the Bhagavad Gita in the 17th chapter where Lord Krishna is speaking about the nature of different types of austerity.

And he says in the 15th verse,

Austerity of speech consists in speaking words that are truthful,

Pleasing,

Beneficial and not agitating to others and also in regularly reciting Vedic literature.

So here this is a confirmation of what was the verse that I read earlier.

And I'll read one more before talking about it.

This is from the Bhagavad Purana where it says that truthfulness means to speak the truth in a pleasing way as declared by great sages.

So I thought I would read something that Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada wrote one time to one of his disciples.

He said regarding your questions,

Your first question was should the transcendentalist always speak the truth to everyone in all circumstances?

The answer is yes,

One should always speak the truth but a qualified devotee will be able to always speak the truth in a way that is very palatable to everyone so that it will sound pleasing even to his enemy.

That is the art of speaking truth.

It is certainly so that we must speak the truth to all people but how you say it,

That is another thing.

So I think these are probably the guidelines that sort of like answer much of what you've asked me,

James,

In this question.

It's not that in ancient times or since ancient times that transcendentalists would mislead.

Transcendentalists never mislead anyone but in certain circumstances sometimes it is better not to disclose the truth particularly when someone cannot do anything about the situation and it might be a very critical time that someone is about to undertake something of critical importance and they need their composure and concentration and then at that moment if you were to blurt out something that was incredibly unpleasant or really disturbing for them and they could not then perform the task at hand properly in the right state of mind they might even end up,

You know,

In the case of somebody flying an airplane or driving a car,

Put somebody else's life in danger and so sometimes it is better to wait for an appropriate time or to present enough that a person can grasp the situation but not be overly disturbed by it.

So the consideration here is always the well-being of others and for one who is trying to live a spiritually directed or focused life one of the big things that we should always really focus upon is doing good to others.

To put somebody into illusion or to mislead them somehow or confuse them is not good.

To present untruth as being true is not good.

This is very harmful and so speaking the truth is important but we must consider three things must be considered.

This is Kala Patradesha,

The time,

The place and the circumstances.

According to the time,

Place and circumstances one would present or speak to another person and that which is one should never speak the untruth to lie but in certain circumstances one may not speak,

One may withhold some information if it is in the other person's interest or well-being and that is not the same as lying or misleading or saying or doing something that actually causes harm to someone else.

So it's not like there is one hard and fast rule apart from being truthful.

There is not one hard and fast rule that fits all circumstances and all situations.

We must learn to apply things and again it goes back to leading a life of mindfulness,

Of being consciously aware of our speech and our actions in different situations.

It was accepted in spiritual culture that a teacher for instance could speak a lot more directly to a student either to chastise or criticize,

To try and help them develop along a good path but one would not speak in the same manner to someone that they met in the street.

So according to the time,

Place and circumstances there were different situations one should speak and act appropriately and appropriately means fundamentally to be truthful but to be truthful in a way that people can actually hear and understand.

If you know there is this tendency for people to use the truth as like a club to bludgeon someone with that they may not like them or they may have been offended and they want to hurt them somehow rather and they will say something that is actually truthful but it is spoken for the purpose of causing pain or difficulty to someone else.

That is not acceptable.

One cannot say but I was just speaking the truth.

No that's not acceptable.

There will be a karmic reaction that one will have to carry from speaking in this way.

So to your second question,

Yes,

Intent is really important.

Speaking the truth is very important but your intent is also important and when you have the intention to be beneficial and to help people move forward in life then one must choose carefully how things are to be presented and to what degree.

And in some circumstances it is better to maintain something in secret.

To maintain something in secret again you can have the two motivations,

The motivation to cause harm or the motivation to do good.

And so one may choose to withhold something that is actually true because it's not the appropriate time,

Place and circumstance to speak of it with that particular person.

And there might be a way in which one would be able to speak it to them in another situation that will help them grow individually and move on a more spiritual direction in their life.

So I hope that that has been helpful James and I've actually answered your question and I'd just like to let everybody know if you do have a question that you want to send me then you don't have to use the public chats or the feeds where the talk is taking place.

You can message me directly on my own Facebook and I would be very happy to try and answer any queries that you may have to help you in your spiritual life.

So thank you very much.

So I'd invite you again to now join me in in Kirtan.

We will be using the Hari Bol Nithayagor Mantra.

Hari Bol Nithayagor Nithayagor Mantra Hari Bol Nithayagor Nithayagor Mantra Hari Bol Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithayagor Mantra Hari Bol Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithayagor Hari Bol Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithayagor Nithaai gho,

Nithaai gho,

Maha Nithaai gho.

Reviews

It's spiritually healthy to be truthful about ourselves to each other. Hiding aspects of ourselves seems like a form of lying and a low vibrational way of interacting with others. Thank you for this talk.

This was indeed truthful and agreeable.