TRUTH

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

TRUTH
Is there any one thing that can be helpful in making our life God-oriented, in making our
thoughts, words and actions helpful, favourable, supporting and assisting our upward ascent
towards our glorious, supermundane, cosmic spiritual origin which is our natural state, a state of
eternal freedom, fearlessness, perfection, lacking nothing?
Yes, there is one thing that can be actively helpful, a positive assistant, a plus factor in taking
us towards the goal, and it is one of the direct ways. That factor is adherence to truthfulness.
Truthfulness is God manifest in the human world. God is the great Truth in the dimension, on the
plane, of the supermundane spiritual world. Truthfulness is His direct manifestation in this relative
plane of this human world.
A person of truth and integrity speedily progresses towards the great goal of
God-realisation. Grace will shower and support his sincere aspiration for truth and bless him with
success in this great adventure of the Spirit that leads to divine perfection.
If a person has great knowledge, wisdom and talents, if he shines with many abilities and
capacities, if with all these endowments he is dishonest, untruthful, then he has a long way to go.
God is far, far away from that person’s life, because he has removed God from his life.
There is a great popular saying: “In that heart where love abides, there God is; and God
dwells not in that heart where love is not.” And the same can verily be said about this great virtue of
truth: “In that heart where truth abides, there God is. God dwells not in that heart where dwells
untruth, falsity, concealment, cheating, dishonesty, hypocrisy, pretence, cunningness and
crookedness which are all various shades of asatya or untruth.”
Our ancients knew the great importance of truth and insisted upon it as a prime value to be
practised if one wants to even enter the portals of spiritual life. Bhishma, in the Santi Parva, speaks
about the glory, the greatness and the indispensability of truth in the life that would attain God. Sri
Ramakrishna again and again used to say: “God loves a guileless nature.”
And in our day, this is what worshipful and beloved Gurudev had to say about truth: “There
is no religion higher than truth. There is no virtue higher than truth. There is no dharma higher than
truth. There is no treasure higher than truth. Truth is God. God is truth. Where truth exists,

non-violence also exists. Where there is perfect non-violence there is truth also. Truth and
non-violence are the two aspects of the one Reality. Truth is duty. Truth is peace. Truth is yoga.
Truth is the Absolute. Truth is the supreme refuge. Make prostrations unto truth with great
reverence.”
This is what Gurudev had to say about truth. And the greatest prostration we can make unto
truth is to practise truth, to manifest truth, to live for truth in our daily life—in our subjective inner
life and our objective outer life, in our mental life, our verbal life and active life. This is the greatest
prostration, the greatest reverence we can give to truth.
The attainment of the Truth depends upon our practice of truth. One cannot dwell in
falsehood and attain to Truth. This is a simple statement of fact. This is self-evident. One should be
sincere and earnest and yearn with all one’s being to become an embodiment of truth. Jesus said:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Unless we hunger and thirst for
something, unless we yearn and long for something, it does not come of itself. It is a plain fact that
without pain one does not have any gain. We wish to avoid looking at this truth, this fact; we want
all things to come to us by themselves.
We have also to surrender our false ego, our guileful, crooked, cunning nature to the
Supreme Being and supplicate Him—whom we regard as our goal, whom we regard as our friend,
protector, light, liberator, saviour and redeemer—and say: “Make us walk that path, the path of
truth, the path of purity and goodness that will bring down Your grace. Take away from us all that is
contrary to this great virtue. Take away from us all untruth, all falsehood, all dishonesty, all
double-dealing, all hypocrisy. Remove from us all that is unspiritual, undivine, all that is contrary to
Your supreme, all-pure nature. We place ourselves in Your hands. We surrender unto Thee.
Remove everything that stands between us, and bless us that we may walk the path that finds favour
in Your eyes.”
Let us, therefore, abide by and adhere to the great central law of truthfulness by which we
know we shall find our light and the freedom that we seek. Let your life support this great principle,
this noble and sublime principle, and let this noble and sublime principle support your life. One is
invulnerable if one stands by truth. Truth becomes not only one’s shield, it becomes one’s fortress.
Truth can be all this and more for those who enshrine it, for those who embody it, for those
who protect it and support it in and through their lives and actions. This is the greatness of truth. No
wonder, for it is God that is manifest as truth.
If we will make ourselves embodiments of That from whom we have our being and who is
within us, if we make ourselves a personification of That, then all things will come of themselves.
All things will come if we establish ourselves in that great Truth, knowing whom one becomes free!