Falsehood

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(Mother:) “Man was created to express the Divine. His duty is therefore to become conscious of the Divine and to surrender himself entirely to His Will. All the rest, whatever the appearance, is falsehood and ignorance.”[1]


(Mother:) “Indeed it is very difficult to discriminate the impulses of Truth from the impulses of falsehood, unless one has received this special gift of discrimination that the Light of Truth has brought.
         However, to help at the beginning, one can take as a guiding rule that all that brings with it or creates peace, faith, joy, harmony, wideness, unity and ascending growth comes from the Truth; while all that carries with it restlessness, doubt, scepticism, sorrow, discord, selfish narrowness, inertia, discouragement and despair comes straight from the falsehood.”[2]


(Sri Aurobindo:) “The psychic being refuses to be deceived by appearances. It is not carried away by falsehood. It refuses to be oppressed by falsehood — nor does it exaggerate the Truth. For example, even if everything around says, “There is no God”, the psychic being refuses to believe in it. It says, — “I know” and “I know because I feel.” ”[3]


(Sri Aurobindo:) “It is indeed amazing that you should have lost yourself to an extravagant deception such as X has set on foot. It is simply the spirit of vital falsehood, dramatic and romantic, obscuring the reason and shutting out common sense and simple truth. To clear the vital, you must get out of it all compromise with falsehood — no matter how specious the reason it advances — and get the habit of simple straightforward psychic truth engraved in it so that nothing may have a chance to enter. If this lesson can be imprinted in that part of the vital which is capable of such compromises, some good will come out of this wrong movement. Put the Mother’s notice henceforth at the door of your vital being, “No falsehood hereafter shall ever enter here”, and station a sentry there to see that it is put into execution.”[4]


(Mother to students, 1954:) “There is a tremendous difference between what you know about yourself and what I know about you. What I know about you is obviously what you ought to be. So, outwardly one sees clearly what people are like, but that is just an outer phenomenon, you know. Between the two there is the vital and mental domain which is the most important from the human point of view, and it is there that in everyone the consciousness of what he ought to be should be reflected, so that he may realise it. But there is a vast distance between what each one knows about himself, what is actively conscious in him and what he is in the truth of his being. It is more difficult for me; this intermediate domain is a very cloudy one, for me it is a domain of falsehood, what I call falsehood. There are two words in English, ‘falsehood’ and ‘lie’; well, it is the sense of falsehood. It is not a lie in the sense that one tells a lie, but it is a domain of what is not true, what is not at all the experience of the truth of a being, and yet it is of this that he is almost solely conscious. Only a very few have the inner perception of what they want to be, what they want to do, of what the truth of their being is. There are not many such. Or else it comes and then gets veiled; suddenly one has a flash and then it gets clouded over. And so the questions I put are always in order to know the state of this surface consciousness, which for me is something quite unreal, something that is not true.
         There is such a contradiction between the brutal fact of your daily way of life and the picture I have before myself of what each one of you ought to be, a picture I keep there with all the power of my consciousness so that you may realise it — and that is yourself, that, yes, is yourself! It is not this ignorant being, stupid and insincere — sometimes dishonest — who is the... whom you call yourself.
         Listen, I am not quite young according to ordinary human notions. I am fairly old. From my earliest childhood I have not stopped observing things. When I was very young I was chided for never speaking. It was because I spent my time observing. I passed my time observing, I registered everything, I learnt all I could, I did not stop learning. Well, I can still feel surprised. Suddenly I find myself looking at such twisted, insincere and obscure movements that I tell myself, “It is not possible. Can such a thing exist?” Indeed, things which still come to me, day after day, “It is not possible! In the world things happen in this way?” And yet I have seen a great number of people, I began being interested in people when very young, I have seen many countries, done what I recommend to others; in every country I lived the life of that country in order to understand it well, and there is nothing which interested me in my outer being as much as learning.
         Well, now I still feel that I know nothing. There may occur in this world and in the human consciousness things which are beyond me! I don’t understand how it can be possible. For me, when someone is so twisted up, to the point of being unrecognisable, I get the feeling — I always get the feeling that this consciousness of truth which is trying to manifest is seized and completely deformed. And how one can come to such a pass, that — that I have not yet understood — how one can come to this point.”[5]


(Mother to Mona Sarkar:) “One tends to believe that one has risen above falsehood, that one has rid oneself of the germ of falsehood and that one is soaring in the vastness of the Eternal Truth – as if it were so easy to believe and even more easy to put into practice! That is why I say, “Do not have any illusions. It is not quite within your reach.”
         And when I give this flower ‘Surrender of All Falsehood’ knowing well their attitude or their make-up or temperament, they make a face as if to tell me: “To whom are you giving this flower? I have not even an iota of falsehood in me.” They have such an air of superiority, telling me that they have already gone beyond this domain, that they are in a region where falsehood does not touch them!
         What stupidity! What arrogance! It is childish, this hollow boasting – to believe that one has completely got rid of falsehood when one is but a puppet in its hands. This shows the level of their consciousness.
         Each spark of truth which descends into the earth atmosphere, each illumination, is engulfed by the adverse forces which oppose and which live and reign over the imperfections of the world which has based its foundation on the solid rock of inconscience and the subconscient.
         It is against this ignorant and blind falsehood that our battle as been, so that man might be delivered. It is far, the victory, but one day the transforming light will penetrate even this thick inconscience so that falsehood may be driven away, or transformed into Truth.
         That does not mean that it is already accomplished. But... it takes time. In any case, no one can declare that he is above falsehood. There is a thick layer of falsehood which covers everyone. They are enveloped by it, whatever they may say.
         That is why I proceed cautiously, since I know everyone. And I prefer not to give this flower, in order to avoid unpleasant scenes. Some persons react violently....
         There are people who say: “I have no need for this flower.” Or some others who say: “I think, I have gone beyond this stage.”
         Everyone says in his own manner: “I do not like it.” However, this is so important....
         My child, when I give this flower, I bestow a special honour on the one to whom I give it. But people revolt, make faces, when I give them this flower. Truly speaking, it is a special honour that I confer, and they do not understand it....
         I give it to the warriors who have waged a war against falsehood. But it is a difficult task and it demands a great courage.”[6]


(Luc Venet on his disillusionment with Satprem:) “All the same, it is worth stopping a few moments to dwell on this state of profound ambivalence, almost schizophrenic, in which one part of me desperately sought to salvage something from the wreckage, while the other — deeper and freer from surface illusions — already knew there was nothing to salvage. The truth was right in front of me, blindingly, and the only thing to do was to welcome it with all due respect and gratitude. Failing to know what was happening to me, this state — which I called earlier ‘the cage of illusions’ — became my dwelling place for years, and thus I know all its nooks and crannies. The cost of renting this dwelling is PAIN: the unspeakable pain of not being true to oneself, the pain of choosing appearances over being, the pain of nourishing cherished habits and sweet intoxications which are supposed to make up for the utter destitution of the slack periods.
         In the extreme, this pain can become so intense, so unbearable, that any means will seem appropriate in order to evade it. ...
         Is Satprem morally, humanly responsible for all those personal dramas, big or small, which we did our best to hide out of fear, out of shame or simply not to ‘make waves’? He was by far the most conscious among us, the one whose many years spent beside Mother should have endowed him with patience and compassion. And it is futile, or absurd, to deny the facts, which are staring us in the face. So where, in the presence of so many broken lives and abused hearts, is justice?
         Let me provide a personal answer. I believe that these events involving Satprem cannot be understood solely by the means of the human legal system. What I am trying to say is that each person must determine his own responsibilities for his actions. And that the essential freedom given to us from the start, though it may sometimes appear to play against us, must be accepted with all its concomitant uncertainties as the price to pay in order to guarantee that a real process of evolution is rooted in human soil.”[7]


(Mother:) “Only those who are capable of transmitting, along with a written word, the Divine force and consciousness, ought to give their autograph.”[8]




  1. Words of the Mother – II, p.8
  2. On Education, p.302
  3. Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, p.381
  4. Letters on Yoga - III, p.104
  5. Questions and Answers 1954, p.165
  6. Mona Sarkar, Throb of Nature: Conversations with the Mother on Flowers and Nature, p.151
  7. Luc Venet, “End of illusions”, Collaboration, Summer 2008
  8. Words of the Mother – III, p.255


See also