Oleg Torsunov: “The truth, which is told in order to prove one’s own, is not a manifestation of truthfulness. This is a hidden lie. The real truth is to make everyone happy."
Often during his lectures, Oleg Gennadievich refers to the Tirukural, the Holy Scripture of the Tamils, which dates back to approximately the second century BC. The Tirukural describes the laws of morality in great detail, so this ancient treatise is very useful for study. Thus, the Tirukural contains a whole chapter on the quality of truthfulness, which is also one of the 26 qualities of a holy person.
The Tirukural contains various statements about truthfulness, the most popular and famous of which is the following: “Only that truthfulness can be called truth which does not harm anyone.” Does this definition of truthfulness match ours? Indeed, in most cases, we understand by truthfulness that truth, which, as the famous saying goes, stings the eyes.
— As a rule, we tell the truth with one purpose, to prove it to someone, to press it into someone’s mind. It’s not that we really want to do this, we just want people to enjoy our feelings and make us happy. And the best way to do this is the truth. Because the truth is the greatest strength and the most terrible weapon,” says Oleg Gennadievich.
If a child gets a bad grade, what is the truth? That he is wrong. And our mood, emotions, desire to do or say something fall under this truth. In other words, we use the truth to our advantage and think it will make us happier. But the problem is that it is the truth that hurts the hearts of our loved ones the most.
Telling the truth can make a person feel even worse than telling a lie. If a husband tells his wife the truth that she does not respect him, things will not get better. Moreover, she already knows this, she doesn’t need to report it, she just has her own reasons why she treats him this way. If in a relationship one of the spouses sees the truth only in their own actions, but does not see it in the actions of the husband/wife, then this destroys the family.
Why do all the quarrels and conflicts arise? Because we stubbornly stand on the side of our truth. Each of us defends our own understanding of the truth. At the same time, we do not notice when we speak the truth with the intent to harm. It seems to us that we are simply voicing everything as it is. But by speaking such truth, we do not know that at this very moment we are hitting our loved one right in the heart.
— The truth, which is said in order to prove one’s own, is not a manifestation of truthfulness. This is a hidden lie. The real truth is to make everyone happy. That's the truth, not proving to them that I'm right. There is no truth in this, because such truth hurts the heart more than any lie and hypocrisy,” emphasizes Oleg Gennadievich.
Often, when people listen to lectures on family relationships, they destroy their family faster than if they did not listen to the lectures at all. Why is this happening? The reason is that we listen to lectures not with the goal of changing ourselves, but with the goal of changing a loved one. However, the main goal of the lectures of Oleg Gennadievich and other Vedic lecturers is to stop torturing others. If we listen to lectures, then first of all we must learn to accept loved ones in our hearts, love them as they are, and cultivate an inner life within ourselves. This is the truth.
However, most come to the lecture to figure out why my loved one is wrong. We all have a feeling deep down in our souls that my husband or wife is wrong about something, but what exactly we cannot understand. Having heard at a lecture how loved ones should behave, we come home and tell our loved one the truth, and nothing can be done against it. That being said, how do we do this? With a feeling of superiority, resentment, anger, indignation, disrespect or some other negative feeling. It’s rare that someone, having learned the truth about family relationships, applies it to themselves, rather than trying it on their spouse. If a person tends to think first of all about the mistakes in his behavior, this shows strong intelligence.
- If we believe that we possess the truth, then we must behave in such a way as not to harm anyone, so that the heart of a loved one is not wounded by this truth. It often happens that one of the spouses cannot open his heart because his loved one perceives all his words from the position of his truth. And this greatly spoils the relationship. But why does this happen? Because the truth is often mixed with human egoism,” emphasizes Oleg Gennadievich.
However, you should know that the feeling of truth is not yet a sign of true truth. If a person in life is guided by a sense of truth and thinks that he is doing the right thing, this is a big mistake. The Vedas explain that there are four types of sensation of truth: in ignorance, in passion, in goodness and spiritual truth. We wrote about this in the article “4 types of truthfulness”.
If we cannot understand that, in addition to our truth, there may be some other truth, then how are we different from an animal? It is noteworthy that animals also have a sense of truth. For example, a cat snorts because she is sure that she is right in a particular situation. A dog barks at another dog because he also senses the truth in his actions.
— Ощущение правды — это серьезная тема, которую надо изучать. Люди часто попадают в капкан с этим ощущением правды. Согласно Ведам, правда, разрушающая жизнь других людей и оправдывающая нежелание служить и заботиться об окружающих, является правдой в невежестве. При этом она тоже чувствуется, как правда. Она не выглядит, как ложь, потому что в ней есть скрытый глубокий смысл. Но когда человек ее говорит, он опирается не на него, а на свой эгоизм, — отмечает Олег Геннадьевич.
For example, there is a saying: “Let the iron saw work, that’s not why my mother gave birth to me.” The question arises: why then were we born? The Vedas say that human life is intended for us to realize the highest meaning, to be able to comprehend our spiritual nature and our eternal relationship with God. Therefore, when we say that a person was not born to work, this is true, and this sense of truth is conveyed in this saying. However, people say it not for this purpose, but so that they can sit back and live a relaxed life. Since there is something resembling truth in this phrase, everyone feels that there is truth in it.
The same goes for the saying “Happiness is not in money, but in quantity.” The amount of money is important, so a sense of truth immediately arises. But there is also a good truth: “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” However, it is not clear to everyone, just like the ignorant truth. There is also truth in passion. For example, when they say to you: “I want to be friends/collaborate with you.” That is, they offer you friendship, but this is not disinterested friendship. Since it is obvious that such a person wants something from you. Is he telling the truth? Yes, but it has its own secret meaning.
Let us give another example of truthfulness in passion. When a girl tells a guy: “Yes, I like you.” What does it mean? This means that she really likes this guy, but she also likes the fact that he has a car, a good job, wealth, and the right environment. It’s not that she loves him very much, she just likes this kind of life, and since this guy can give her all this, he suits her too.
Thus, the feeling of truth does not always mean that it is true, or, as they also like to say, the ultimate truth. Truth can be relative, or it can be absolute. The latter, as a rule, concerns truth in its spiritual understanding. There is no untruth or deception. And everyone has relative truth. Each of us has our own truth in our hearts, and it is much closer and clearer to us than anyone else’s.
However, our task is not to put pressure on the people around us with our truth, not to try to prove something, but, on the contrary, to accept a loved one with his truth. There is truthfulness in this, but this is a very big asceticism for us, and many people do not understand this at all, which is why families are destroyed. This is the problem. Therefore, you need to know how truthfulness manifests itself in family life, what its danger is and how it can be avoided. We will talk about this in the next article.
