JOIN USMost of us recognize hypocrisy in its blatant forms: People kind to us when we meet them face to face, but who rip us to shreds behind our backs, politicians who promise us they will get rid of corruption when they themselves are stealing from the pockets of their constituents, sports heroes, who turn out to be nothing but zeroes….
But do we recognize out own contradictory behaviour? For instance, I have declined invitations on the pretext of being busy when the fact is I was not. I have acted one way while feeling quite differently about a situation.
Sathya Sai Baba insisted that we must have thought word and deed in alignment. He said, “It is sheer mental weakness and cowardice that allows hypocrisy to develop. If you have the courage to face the consequences you will never utter a falsehood.”
Living many years with the idea that presenting a good face was extremely important, it was difficult for me to follow my own integrity at times. But due to the loving guidance of Baba, I became eager to transform myself.
He has indicated, “For this adventure (following a spiritual life), all are candidates, women as well as men. Sex is but a vesture worn by the soul for the role of life on earth. It does not affect the life of the spirit, which is eternal, and on the supersensory plane. Man and woman have each to purify the inner consciousness so that the divine may reveal itself in all its glory therein. There are some rude thinkers who declare that women are not entitled to pronounce the scared syllable Om, but that is a pernicious narrow doctrine.
It is relatively easy to discard hypocrisy once we recognise it, perhaps. If I am focusing on what others are doing wrong, while acting outwardly as saints, then I am wasting my precious time. It is not their actions I ought to be concerned with. Plucking the thorns out of my own bad behaviour is a full-time job. And by God’s grace, if I’m in constant contact with Him, I’ll see my own failings.
“Obsessed with worldly desires and forgetting God, man is immersed in misery,” Sai confirms, “Even devotion is tainted by selfishness. It does not stem wholly from the heart. It is only part time devotion and hypocrisy. All should realise that the Divine is the basis of everything in the Universe. Having evolved from the animal, man should aim at realizing the Divine. Unfortunately, men today are descending to animality. As a result, peace and order are vanishing from every sphere of life.”
Harmony, not hypocrisy, is the result when we step out of a worldly focus and dedicate our lives to God.