Truthful To Yourself – In Gita Verse 18.30 O son of Pṛthā, that understanding by which one knows what ought to be done and what ought not to be done, what is to be feared and what is not to be feared, what is binding and what is liberating, is in the mode of goodness.
Krishna says through this verse that be Truthful To Yourself.
Truthfulness means authenticity, to be true, not to be false, not to use masks. Whatsoever is your real face, show it…and at whatsoever the cost.
Remember, that doesn’t mean that you have to unmask others. If they are happy with their lies it is for them to decide. Don’t go and unmask anybody, because this is how people think. They think they have to be truthful, authentic; they mean they have to go and make everybody nude – “Because why are you hiding your body? These clothes are not needed.” No. Please remember, be truthful to yourself. You are not needed to reform anybody else in the world. If you can grow yourself, that’s enough. Don’t be a reformer, and don’t try to teach others, and don’t try to change others. If you change, that’s enough of a message.
To be authentic means to remain true to your own being. How to remain true? Three things have to be remembered.
One, never listen to anybody, what they say for you to be. Always listen to your inner voice, to what you would like to be; otherwise your whole life will be wasted. Your mother wants you to be an engineer, your father wants you to be a doctor, and you want to be a poet. What to do? Of course the mother is right because it is more economical, more financially helpful to be an engineer. The father is also right: to be a doctor is a good commodity in the market; it has a market value. “A poet? Have you gone mad? Are you crazy?”
Poets are people who are cursed. Nobody wants them. There is no need for them; the world can exist without poetry. There will be no trouble if poetry is not there. The world cannot exist without engineers; the world needs engineers. If you are needed you are valuable; if you are not needed you don’t carry any value.
But if you want to be a poet, be a poet. You may be a beggar. Good! You may not get very rich through it. Don’t worry about it, because you may become a great engineer and you may earn a lot of money, but you will never have any fulfillment. You will always hanker, your inner being will hanker, to be a poet.
Remember, be true to your inner voice. It may lead you into danger; then go into the danger, but remain true to the inner voice. Then there is a possibility that one day you will come to a state where you can dance with inner fulfillment. Always look for the first thing that is your being and don’t allow others to manipulate and control you. There are many: everybody is ready to control you, everybody is ready to change you, everybody is ready to give you a direction you have not asked for. Everybody is giving you a guide for your life. The guide exists within you; you carry the blueprint.
To be authentic means to be true to oneself. It is a very, very dangerous phenomenon; rare people can do that. But whenever people do it, they achieve. They achieve such beauty, such grace, such contentment, you cannot imagine. If everybody looks so frustrated, the reason is that nobody has listened to his own voice.
Always listen to the inner voice, and don’t listen to anything else. A thousand and one are the temptations around you because many people are there peddling their things. It is a supermarket, the world, and everybody is interested in selling his thing to you; everybody is a salesman. If you listen to too many salesmen you will become mad. Don’t listen to anybody; just close your eyes and listen to the inner voice. That is what meditation is all about: to listen to the inner voice. This is the first thing.
Then the second thing – if you have done the first thing only then does the second become possible: never wear a mask. If you are angry, be angry. It is risky, but don’t smile because that is to be untrue. But you have been taught that when you are angry, smile; then your smile becomes false, a mask…just an exercise of the lips, nothing else. The heart full of anger, poison, and the lips smiling; you become a false phenomenon.
Then the other thing also happens: when you want to smile you cannot. Your whole mechanism is topsy-turvy because when you wanted to be angry you weren’t, when you wanted to hate you didn’t. Now you want to love; suddenly you find that the mechanism doesn’t function. Now you want to smile; you have to force it. Really, your heart is full of smiles and you want to laugh loudly, but you cannot laugh, something chokes in the heart, something chokes in the throat. The smile doesn’t come, or even if it comes it is a very pale and dead smile. It doesn’t make you happy. You don’t bubble up with it. It is not a radiance around you.
When you want to be angry, be angry. Nothing is wrong in being angry. If you want to laugh, laugh. Nothing’s wrong in laughing loudly. By and by you will see that your whole system is functioning. When it functions, really, it has a hum around it, just as a car, when everything is going good, hums. The driver who loves the car knows that now everything is functioning well, there is an organic unity – the mechanism is functioning well. You can see: whenever a person’s mechanism is functioning well, you can hear the hum around him. He walks, but his step has a dance in it. He talks, but his words carry a subtle poetry in them. He looks at you, and he really looks; it is not just lukewarm, it is really warm. When he touches you he really touches you. You can feel his energy moving into your body, a current of life being transferred…because his mechanism is functioning well.
The second thing: don’t use masks. Be true whatsoever the cost.
The third thing about authenticity: always remain in the present – because all falseness enters either from the past or from the future. That which has passed has passed; don’t bother about it. Don’t carry it as a burden; otherwise it will not allow you to be authentic to the present. All that has not come has not come yet. Don’t unnecessarily be bothered about the future; otherwise that will come into the present and destroy it. Be true to the present, and then you will be authentic. To be here-now is to be authentic. No past, no future: this moment all, this moment the whole eternity.
These three things, and you attain what Patanjali calls truthfulness. Then whatsoever you say will be true. Ordinarily you think you have to be alert to tell the truth. I’m not saying that. I am saying: you create authenticity; whatsoever you say will be true. An authentic man cannot lie; whatsoever he says will be true.
In Yoga we have a tradition – it may not even be possible for you to believe it; I believe it because I have known it, I experienced it: if a real, authentic man lies, the lie will become true, because an authentic man cannot lie. That’s why in the old scriptures it is said, “If you are practicing authenticity, be alert not to say anything against anybody – because it can become true.” We have many stories of great seers who said something in anger, but they were so authentic….
You must have heard the name of Durvasa – a great seer, authentic man. If he says something, even he cannot cancel it. If he curses you, the curse is going to come true. If he says, “You will die tomorrow!” you will die tomorrow, because from that source of authenticity the lie is not possible. The whole existence follows an authentic man and then even he cannot cancel it.
Be authentic and whatsoever you say is going to be true.
Krishna says be authentic so that your action will be in mode of goodness.
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