Distinguishing Truth from Falsehood Requires Separation from the Vital Desire-Soul and Its Impulsions

During the 1980’s there were a number of scams carried out by US mail. An individual would receive a letter purporting to come from some high official in another country who had access to a large amount of money and needed a ‘partner’ to help take the funds out of the country and invest them in the USA under the control of the partner. The individual who received the mail laughed about how absurd the whole idea was, but an employee at the company was taken with the idea and was conce
ed that it was just being thrown in the trash bin. The company owner explained to this individual that it cleary was some kind of false attempt to take advantage of someone in the USA, possibly through stealing their banking information. The employee asked for the ltter so he could follow up and become duly enriched. Despite hearing the truth of the matter, his desire for instant financial wealth was so strong that he could not accept the truth of the matter. Needless to say, he did not gain the riches he sought. This is actually a very common occurrence and people lose a lot of money each year to similar deceptions.

For a spiritual aspirant, if we apply our understanding about how vital desire can cause us to disregard or simply avoid what are unpleasant facts in order to fulfill the desire, we can find that the truth, the factual reality is full evident, but we essentially choose to disregard it. The spiritual practitioner eventually needs to find a standpoint whereby he can observe the working of desire, the deceptions that work upon his mind, and simply see, and act upon, the facts as they present themselves, not the false and illusory notions that the exte
al desire-soul creates to try and achieve its aims.

By virtue of a long-standing practice of separating oneself inwardly from the flow of thoughs, emotions, feelings, perceptions and reactions, the spiritual aspirant has the capacity at all times to see the truth if he chooses to see it. He must do away with wishful thinking, partisan ideas, and incomplete observations.

Those who take error for truth, and the truth for error, will never attain the supreme goal, for they are led astray by vain desires and false views.” [The Dhammapada]

The Mother notes: “… My experience is like this: whenever you sincerely want to know the truth, you do know it. There is always something to point out the error to you, to make you recognise the truth. And if you observe yourself attentively you find out that it is because you prefer error that you do not find the truth.”

“Even in small details, the very smallest — not to speak of the big things of life, the big decisions that one has to take — even in the smallest things, whenever the aspiration for the truth and the will to be true are wholly sincere, the indication always comes. And precisely, with the method of the Buddhist discipline, if you follow up within yourself the causes of your way of being, you always find out that persistence in error comes from desire. It is because you have the preference, the desire to feel, to act, to think in a particular way, that you make the mistake. It is not simply because you do not know what is true. You do not know it precisely because you say in a vague, general, imprecise way, ‘Oh, I want the truth.’ In fact, if you take a detail, each detail, and put your finger on it, you discover that you are playing the ostrich in order not to see. You put up something uncertain, something vague, a veil, in order not to see behind it.”

“Whenever there is sincerity, you find that the help, the guidance, the grace are always there to give you the answer and you are not mistaken for long.”

“It is this sincerity in the aspiration for progress, in the will for truth, in the need to be truly pure — pure as it is understood in the spiritual life — it is this sincerity which is the key to all progress. With it you know — and you can.”

“There is always, somewhere in the being, something which prefers to deceive itself, otherwise the light is there, always ready to guide, but you shut your eyes in order not to see it.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 121-123