FALSEHOOD BETRAYS ITSELF

 
Even in the very depths of ignorance the soul gives some kind of challenge to falsehood. However feeble and inarticulate it might seem to be in its initial stages, it is the beginning of that search for the Truth which ultimately annihilates all falsehood and all ignorance. In the acceptance of a falsehood there is an ever-growing restlessness — a deep suspicion and a vague fear.

For example, when a man considers himself and others to be identical with the gross body, he cannot completely reconcile himself to this belief. In embracing this false belief there is fear of death and fear of losing others. If a man depends for his happiness only upon the possession of forms, he knows in his heart that he is building his castles on shifting sands, that this surely is not the way to abiding happiness, that the support to which he so desperately clings may give way any day. So, he is deeply suspicious of his grounds.

Man is restlessly aware of his own insecurity. He knows that something is wrong somewhere and that he is counting upon false hopes. Falsehood is treacherously unreliable. Man simply cannot afford to embrace it forever. He might as well garland himself with a poisonous snake or go to sleep on the top of a volcano which is only temporarily inactive.

A falsehood bears the hall-mark of being incomplete and unsatisfactory, temporary and provisional. It points to something else, greater and truer than what it seems to be. Falsehood betrays itself, and in doing so leads man on to know the truth.