Falsehood

“. . . for all falsehood is merely a wrong placing of the Truth.”

Sri Aurobindo, [The Secret of the Veda]

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…now the time of Falsehood is over, this is the Reign of the Supreme. — The Mother

Truth is the rock on which the world is built. Satyena tishṭhate jagat. Falsehood can never be the true source of strength. When falsehood is at the root of a movement, that movement is doomed to failure.

— Sri Aurobindo

One who lives in falsehood is an enemy of mankind. — The Mother

What is Falsehood?

Falsehood is not the negation of Truth: it is the imitation of Truth, aping the Truth: it is the caricature of Truth.

This earth is still governed by ignorance and falsehood. But the time has come for the manifestation of Truth.

• Falsehood is Truth distorted (Vrjinam) as it is Truth but the life taken out of it, it is dead Truth and a wrong life put into it, it becomes Evil Truth.
• All in us that veils or distorts or prevents the manifestation of the Divine is the falsehood.

- Disharmony and confusion are spread all over the world because of the resistance of the falsehood to the action of the Truth. Here as the action of the Truth is more conscious and concentrated, the resistance is exasperated. And in this great turmoil, most of the individuals are moved about like puppets by the forces in their conflict.

• The World is false not because it is non-existent, but because it exists in a wrong form. It is Maya, where the rope is taken for a snake.
• All the rest is falsehood — falsehood, falsehood, and falsehood that must disappear. There is only one reality, there is only one life, there is only one consciousness: the Divine.
• One thing you must know and never forget: in the work of transformation all that is true and sincere will always be kept; only what is false and insincere will disappear.
• …but generally the falsehood is much more in the vital than in the physical — because after all, the physical has been utilized by bodies belonging to enlightened beings. — The Mother
• …the only falsehood is the deformation of consciousness.
• …only Falsehood is unreal, not the world. And this is most interesting — the world has its own reality, independent of Falsehood.
• A veil of Falsehood covering Truth. Itis not the world’s unreality: only Falsehood is unreal.

How it is created?

“It [falsehood] is created by an Asuric (hostile) power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. *It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces.* Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the Truth of things, that is the Falsehood, *in the yogic sense, mithyā, moha*.*

Even in jest falsehood should be avoided, because it tends to lower the consciousness.” — Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram: A Note on the Terminology of The Mother

Characteristics of falsehood

1. Widely and deeply spread:

The falsehood is so widely and deeply spread that the result would be a wholesale destruction. Yet the Grace is infinite, it may find out a way.

— The Mother

2. Distort the Truth:

There is one Truth but a million ways of distorting it in the attempt to express it.

In all human beings is not falsehood always mixed with Truth?

3. Ally of Death

Falsehood is the great ally of Death. — The Mother

Three Types of Falsehood

The Mother: Falsehood is something very serious. The world, as it is, is in a state of falsehood it denies the Eternal Truth. There are three chief categories of Falsehood:

1) People who aspire for the Truth but are not sincere enough in their aspiration to discriminate between the Truth and the Falsehood, they fall always into trouble and misery and get out from the path leading to Truth.

2) This category is dangerous. People who can very well discriminate between Truth and Falsehood, who know that Truth is better but have no strength to resist the temptation and fall constantly into falsehood.

3) The last one is the most dangerous of all. People who are aware of the Truth but refuse to recognise the Truth and choose deliberately the falsehood. They have a kind of hate for the Truth and reject It violently.

These, on the list of the Eternal can be marked “Missing Souls” ‐ as it is written in Savitri:

So might one fall on the Eternal’s road

Forfeiting the spirit’s lonely chance in Time

And no news of him reach the waiting gods,

Marked “missing” in the register of souls…

(Book Two, P. 239)

Happily there are very few like that who deny the Truth and choose the Falsehood.

Disadvantages of falsehood

• Pain is the very essence of Falsehood. — The Mother

The Mother:

The lords of Falsehood hold, at present, almost complete sway over poor humanity. Not only the lower life-energy, the lower vital being, but also the whole mind of man accepts them. Countless are the ways in which they are worshipped, for they are most subtle in their cunning and seek their ends in variously seductive disguises. The result is that men cling to their falsehood as if it were a treasure, cherishing it more than even the most beautiful things of life. Apprehensive of its safety, they take care to bury it deep down in themselves; but unless they take it out and surrender it to the Divine they will never find true happiness.

• Indeed the very act of bringing it out and showing it to the Light would be in itself a momentous conversion and pave the way to the final victory. For the laying bare of each falsehood is in itself a victory — each acknowledgment of error is the demolition of one of the lords of Darkness. It may be an acknowledgment to oneself, provided it is absolutely honest and is no subtle regret apt to be forgotten the next moment and without the strength to make an unbreakable resolution not to repeat the mistake. Or it may be the acknowledgment to the Divine embodied in the Guru. As a result of direct personal confession to the Guru, your resolution remains no longer your own, because, if you are sincere, the Divine’s fiat goes forth in your favour. To give you an idea of what this means I shall relate an experience of mine when I first met Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. I was in deep concentration, seeing things in the Supermind, things that were to be but which were somehow not manifesting. I told Sri Aurobindo what I had seen and asked him if they would manifest. He simply said, “Yes.”

And immediately I saw that the Supramental had touched the earth and was beginning to be realised! This was the first time I had witnessed the power to make real what is true: it is the very same power that will bring about the realisation in you of the truth when you come in all sincerity, saying, “This falsehood I want to get rid of”, and the answer which you get is “Yes.” — CWM — Vol. 03

Why We Need to Reject Falsehood

• Difficulties perish

Once falsehood is conquered, all difficulties will go.

• Success of falsehood is Temporary, not permanent

The success of falsehood is only short-lived…

How to Reject Falsehood:

Once falsehood is conquered, all difficulties will go.

• Worship Truth

Worship Truth. It will cure you of Falsehood. — The Mother

• Stop Telling Lies:

It is never good to tell a lie, but here its results cannot but be disastrous, for falsehood is the very symbol of that which wants to oppose the divine work of Truth.

• Offer to the Divine More

Let us offer our falsehood to the Divine so that He may change it to joyous Truth.

• Pray to the Mother for Strength

Lord, give us the strength to reject falsehood and emerge in Thy truth, pure and worthy of Thy victory.

• Cure from within

There is only one solution for Falsehood: it is to cure in ourselves all that contradicts the presence of the Divine in our consciousness.

• We cannot even call down the Truth to manifest. The falsehood is so widely and deeply spread that the result would be a wholesale destruction. Yet, the Grace is infinite — — it may find out a way.
• This world of misery and confusion is a world of falsehood. Only a change of consciousness and the conquest over falsehood can change the conditions of this world.
• Such is life! The world is a place of falsehood and it is only in the silent depths of the Divine that one can find the peace of truth. — 15 Dec. 1964
• Truth is stronger than falsehood. There is an immortal Power that governs the world. Its decisions always prevail. Join with it and you are sure of the final victory.
• Before dying, falsehood rises in full swing. Still people understand only the lesson of catastrophe. Will it have to come before they open their eyes to the truth? I ask an effort from all so that it has not to be. It is only the Truth that can save us; truth in words, truth in action, truth in will, truth in feelings. It is a choice between serving the Truth or being destroyed.
• May the Truth be invincible, overwhelming, all-powerful, leaving no room for falsehood anywhere and for ever.
• Indeed the very act of bringing it out and showing it to the Light would be in itself a momentous conversion and pave the way to the final victory. For the laying bare of each falsehood is in itself a victory — each acknowledgment of error is the demolition of one of the lords of Darkness. — The Mother
• See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret and violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly and unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see and experience the All-true, Almighty and All-blissful. — Sri Aurobindo

By tireless constancy in effort and faith, we can unite with the Divine Consciousness which is constant and perfect beatitude. — 2 June 1970

— The Mother

• The rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking after truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth; not to escape falsehood is the effort of divine mind, but to seize the truth which lies masked behind even the most grotesque or far-wandering error. — Sri Aurobindo

What is the “divine mind”?

What Sri Aurobindo calls the divine mind is the prototype of the mental function which is totally and perfectly surrendered to the Divine and works only under divine inspiration. When a human being exists only by and for the Divine, his mind necessarily becomes a divine mind. — 4 June 1970

The Mother

• When men will be disgusted with the falsehood in which they live, then the world will be ready for the reign of the Truth. 14 August 1971

It was the gate of a false Infinite,

An eternity of disastrous absolutes,

An immense negation of spiritual things.

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Impatient architects of error’s house,

Leaders of the cosmic ignorance and unrest

And sponsors of sorrow and mortality

Embodied the dark Ideas of the Abyss.

• Have Unshaken Faith in the Divine

The Mother: Another important thing to be remembered is that one must have an unshaken faith in the Lord. The Flame of faith must be kept burning and it must grow and spread its light widely to replace the falsehood, because it is the Light of Truth.

Why should you get disturbed? You must leave everything to the Lord. It is He who knows ‐ not only knows but sees and looks after everything, arranges everything. It is His responsibility and not the responsibility of human beings. The more they get disturbed and upset by Falsehood, the more it will come under various forms and take a quick chance to enter their consciousness, hearts and brains and make them miserable. Here the body and the true consciousness are not separated, so naturally the body too suffers from Falsehood.

You must try constantly to ignore the Falsehood by remembering the Lord’s Love only. Whatever thing may happen to you, do not get upset just pray to the Lord.

Ultimate fate of falsehood

The Mother: This Asura of Falsehood is the one who delegated the Titan that is always near me. He chose the most powerful Titan there is on earth and sent him specially to attack this body. So even if one manages to enchain or kill this Titan, it is likely that the Lord of Falsehood will delegate another form, and still another, and still another, in order to achieve his aim.

In the end, only the Supramental will have the power to destroy it. When the hour comes, all this will disappear, without any need to do anything.

The supramental is not only Truth itself, but also the very negation of falsehood. The supramental will never come down, settle and manifest in a consciousness harbouring falsehood. Naturally the first condition for conquering falsehood is to stop telling lies, though this is only a preliminary step. An absolute, integral sincerity must finally be established in the being and all its movements if the goal is at all to be attained.

In the supramental Truth all falsehoods will be dissolved. — The Mother