Page 63 - Mystic Pathways through the Bible

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values and meaning of life. If the mind is burdened by egoistic desires and crowded by impressions of anger and hate, your intellect will not be able to grasp the nature of truth.
If you are truthful at the level of your mind, then automatically your words and actions will be true. However, such mental purity is an advanced attainment. Therefore, the initial focus for a spiritual aspirant is practicing truth at the level of speech and actions.
Truth on the Level of Speech
For most people, the practice of truthfulness at the verbal level implies speaking about things as they seem to be, in a clear and factual way, without any distortion, modi cation, or concealment. However, according to Yoga, speaking the truth is not quite that simple.
Consider the situation in which a person speaks the truth with the negative intention of hurting someone else. Suppose, for example, that you have a business competitor that you would like to eliminate. One day you see him doing something that others would consider erroneous, and you decide to expose this to the public to ruin his business image. You wait for the occasion when there is an appreciable gathering of people and then come forward to say, “I am the practitioner of truth. I will tell you exactly what I have seen this man do!”