CHAPTER XV.

TRUTHFULNESS
Truthfulness, like purity, is one of the absolute essentials to occult prog- ress. Whoever would know the truth must be truthful. We cannot compre- hend reality until we are, ourselves, sound and true and genuine to the heart's center.
The average man of the world little realizes the extent of his falsity. He thinks falsely, acts falsely and speaks falsely, with little thought that he is doing anything wrong. He habitually represents himself to be different from what he really is. He always tries to give the impression that he is better than he knows himself to be. His life among others is a perpetual masquer- ade. To prevent others knowing the
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truth about him he cheerfully lies whenever he thinks it necessary as a part of the program of concealment. He acts as well as talks in a way cal- culated to mislead people, and bring them to erroneous conclusions about him and his affairs. It never occurs to him that he should, under any cir- cumstances, admit that he has been in the wrong or even that he has made an error of judgment. If his quarrel with another has become known he takes great pains to show that it was entirely the fault of his enemy. If he has circulated a story detrimental to another, and later finds it to be untrue, instead of setting it right, as far as he can, he too often thinks only of justifying his criticism by trying to find some other damaging facts about his victim to help show the probability, at least, of his first statement being reasonable! In any event he will not permit anybody to think that he is in
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any way to blame for any trouble that exists, and whenever he is connected with any controversy or difficulty with others he insists upon ignoring that ax- iom of nature that there are always two sides to every question. He fully believes that in thus getting credit for being a better man than he actually is — a person without fault or frailty — he is promoting his own welfare; and i f somebody should suggest to him that his truest self-interest could be better served by being perfectly candid and truthful even about himself, he would probably think it very foolish advice. Just like the man, with a different kind of moral weakness, who steals an- other's money, he feels certain that he is "getting the best of it," and that the saying "honesty is the best policy" is only a maxim for fools instead of a literal fact in nature. It has never oc- curred to him that in deceiving others he is bandaging his own eyes, blunting
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his own perceptions, dulling his own intuition, and that in masking himself he is placing a mask over those very truths of nature which are a necessity to. his higher development. It is true that he may lead others to believe him a better man than he is and that for a little span he may strut in his disguise of false-righteousness; but he pays a fool's price for the vain folly and the law of adjustment, whether in this incarnation or another, will finally bring him the bitter humiliation neces- sary to arouse him from his false atti- tude toward life. His account of van- ity and humility will finally balance and cancel itself and he will awake to the fact that his foolish untruth fulness has cost him dearly — that it has re- tarded his progress in a way that is worse than merely to have remained ignorant of nature's choicest wisdom, though that in itself is misfortune enough.
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One of the things that first impresses those fortunate enough to come into touch with teachers of occultism who are direct pupils of the Masters of Wis- dom is their painstaking precautions to prevent anybody getting from them a wrong idea about the facts as they are. Thus intense is the feeling of re- sponsibility on the part of those who know the occult results of the slightest misleading of others. The informed occultist instead of ever trying to make himself appear before the world better than he is, in any trouble with which he might be connected, does not beyond merely declaring the fact of his innocence attempt to defend him- self even when entirely blameless. He knows perfectly well that what people think him to be just now is of extreme- ly small importance, while what he re- ally is is of transcendent consequence. He will set right any erroneous impres- sion if he can without augmenting the
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trouble, but not for the good opinion and the applause of the whole world would he say or do anything that would be the slightest misrepresentation of the truth. The more one knows about occultism the more scrupulously ac- curate he must necessarily become in the minutest degree about the most trivial things, for he has learned that only as he lives truth shall he know it. Somebody has invented the con- venient and comforting phrase, "a white lie." But occultism knows no white lies. It is quite color blind on the subject of falsehood. The essence of untruth fulness is deception and de- ception is unjustifiable. The manner of accomplishing the deception is wholly immaterial. It may be only by a smile or a facial expression of surprise, but if it misleads it is no less a lie than if plainly put in words. Of course there are impertinent persons who take the liberty of interrogating people about
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things which are none of their business, but the victim of their inquisitiveness is under no obligation to satisfy their curiosity ; still less to take upon himself the misfortune of mis-statement in or- der to prevent them learning facts they have no right to know. There are times when absolute silence is com- mendable, when one is justified in dis- regarding a direct question and declin- ing to utter a word on the subject.
Putting aside the more obvious forms of falsification, that scarcely re- quire comment, there remains that which is the more dangerous just be- cause it is less pronounced and is veiled under the conventionalities of polite usage. How easy it is to indulge the pernicious habit of flattering another and saying falsely pleasant things about him in order to be agreeable and to make him friendly! We praise his song or his essay extravagantly when we know well enough that it was only
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ordinarily good ; and in doing that we cultivate his vanity, if he has that very common weakness, and lead him to place a false valuation upon his accom- plishments and perhaps to foolishly at- tempt something for which he is not competent. We often excuse our in- clination to flatter with the thought that it is well to stimulate others. The truth is that it would be much kinder to gently criticise our friend's work and help him to appear to better advan- tage in the future instead of to worse. The truth cannot do him harm if it is tempered with real sympathy and we are prompted by a genuine desire to help instead of to please.
Our daily social life, also, is full of false standards and is narrowed and bemeaned with petty deceptions ; and of course it is as useless as it is false and hollow. Nothing can be worth while that does not in some way promote the welfare of people or living things.
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The person who would find a satisfac- tory life must have his every thought and act ring true to the genuine in hu- man nature. He must acquire again the candor and truthfulness of child- hood and cultivate his sympathy to the point that prevents such candor being harsh and brutal. He must continually guard his thoughts, his speech and his acts to see that no shadow of untruth- fulness is in any of them. Only he who can live a perfectly open, candid life with no motive disguised, no action cloaked and no thought concealed, may hope to reach the very heart of nature's wisdom and comprehend it