Commentaries by Vee Jay Attri during the Book Study – Secrets of Karma
We shall proceed with the study from the Secrets of Karma. Yesterday, we were reading on the lies and white lies. We read that the lies that we say has an effect on our spiritual development. The more frequent your lies, the greater is the block for spiritual development.
Also we discussed that because your lies distort the truth, consequently two things happen; one is at a very crucial time, truth will be distorted to you, compelling you to take wrong decisions. Second is because of the karma of carrying the distortion of truth, higher wisdom will not be revealed to you.
So, you might be attending courses, you might be listening to the wisdom of the masters, you might even be practicing certain meditations. Despite all this, if you continue to tell lies, then whatever that you do, all your spiritual practices will have little impact in your inner transformation.
So, spiritual development demands a very higher level of honesty. This is very important. When we talk about honesty, it means accurate perception or discernment. At any given time, you need to know exactly what is happening.
You should have the ability to decide how to use the information in front of you in a harmless way. If you simply practice honesty without practicing a matured form of honesty, that can sometimes lead to disaster. This is what we are going to study now.
Honesty without discrimination or discernment may at times cause immense harm to others.
Once upon a time, there lived in a forest an ascetic, by name Kausika. One day, some men came running inside his hermitage and hurriedly hid behind a tree. After a while, Kausika saw some fierce-looking men running towards him as though looking for the men who were hiding behind the tree.
Approaching, Kausika, they asked him, “Oh holy one, which way did the men go a little while ago?”
From their appearance, it was quite apparent that they wanted to cause harm to the men in hiding. But without thinking, the ascetic said: “Yes, I have seen them and they are hiding behind that neem tree.”
The fierce-looking men were bandits who wanted to rob the men in hiding and having found out where the men were, they killed all of them and then went away with their possessions. Since the ascetic caused great harm to innocent people due to his immature honesty, he was dragged to hell.
This is a story from the scriptures.
Hence, it is important to discern when to practice honesty and when to practice mature honesty.
However, white lies should be avoided and only be used when it is very necessary as it is bad karma to use them for your advantage, just like taking sick leave when you are not sick!
So, this is a very common practice that happens in countries like India, where if all the leaves are exhausted, they do not hesitate taking their sick leaves, not realizing that repeated use of sick leaves when you are not sick actually makes you so sick that even your sick leave sometimes, is not sufficient to cover your leave.
So, these are all very delicate subjects of life that you need to ponder upon. It’s all about the motive behind everything that you do. If you understand that motive plays an extremely important role in shaping up your destiny, you will be very careful about what you are doing.
Of course, sometimes there is a very genuine and unavoidable reason; an emergency and the only leave that is available to you is a sick leave. These are all exemptions. Matured honesty can be exercised when it is absolutely necessary but not that you take a sick leave to have fun.
This is negative karma. You need to be aware of all this.
Even white lies used without discrimination weaken your spiritual connection with God and the Higher Beings.
That is the worst thing to do. When you lie, you minimize your spiritual connection with God and the Higher Beings. Minimal spiritual connection means minimal spiritual development. When the spiritual development is not sufficient, then instead of you the soul, the vehicle takes possession of your life.
Your emotions will control you, your body will control you, and life becomes very chaotic. You have to be very careful not to do activities that will disconnect you from the higher beings or higher teachings. You need to be very careful about it.
That means, if you are a person who is swinging emotionally all the time or if you are a person having uncontrollable passion or desires; that you are under the control of your physical and astral vehicles and you have no control over the way you think, it means that there is minimal flow of spiritual energy.
If there is adequate flow of spiritual energy then, you will easily remember that you are a being of divine intelligence or divine light. The intelligence factor is so important; not intellectual, intelligence factor. The intelligence is born from the spiritual energy, is born from spiritual maturity.
Many intellectuals do not have spiritual intelligence. They do absolutely unthinkable activities that do not reflect any form of spiritual maturity. So, you, as a being of divine intelligence, if the aspect of divine intelligence is enhanced to a great level, very difficult for you to swing emotionally.
Or for that matter, difficult for you to flow with the whims and fancies of your physical body. You, the real you, the spiritual being, will be under the control of the vehicles and not the other way. So, check how stable you are emotionally.
If you are quite stable emotionally, quite stable means at least 60% of the day, you are stable emotionally, at least. Then you know that you are progressing, that you are spiritually a balanced person. This is a very important inner reflection that you need to do. We shall continue with our study.
The Three Monkeys
Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Three Monkeys’ conveys great lessons on karma. You can make much progress in your material and spiritual lives by practicing these precious teachings.
‘Speak no evil’ teach you not to speak anything negative or unwholesome. Neither speak foul words nor talk ill of others as both are bad karma.
While foul words affect people and pollute the surroundings, the defects in others that you often criticize karmically get connected to you and over time may become a part of yourself.
When you keep looking at the mistakes or the weaknesses of people and if you keep criticizing, over a period of time without your knowledge, you start getting affected with the same vices or the weaknesses. You can try this as an experiment, noticing small weaknesses in people. Suddenly, you will realize someday, unconsciously, this weakness has become a part of yourself.
However, you may talk about the faults of others or politely condemn the flaws in any system with the intention of helping people to recognize and overcome their shortcomings. You will find good results by blessing people having any weaknesses using the guidelines in Chapter 5.
We shall be coming to it shortly. The second monkey of Mahatma Gandhi is See no evil. First one is, Speak no evil or Talk no evil.
‘See no evil’ reminds you to see only the good thing in others. No one is perfect, including spiritual teachers.
It is an evolving universe where everyone is growing. Moreover, what you see in others often reflects who and what you truly are.
Further reading, Secrets of Karma, Page 45
