Why Do We Teach Kids Not to Lie But Adults Live in Lies?

If lying is wrong, why does adulthood require so much of it? Why is it that we spend our lives lying too much than telling the truth? If you ask a person, "Do you like your job?" They say, "Yes, I like it." But they hate going to their job. Right? Take the example of school children. They don't like to go to school, but they say they're happy going to school. And if some lies are necessary, why did we teach children that lying is simply wrong? We are telling children that lying is wrong. But adults spend most of their life lying. You see, for me, this contradiction tells us something uncomfortable about human society. We are all actually contradicting beings. We are not really teaching children that lying is wrong. We are teaching them that lying is wrong when it threatens the structure of society, but acceptable when it protects the structure of society. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? And that is a very different lesson that has got nothing to do with lies or truth. It's about how human beings modify their nature according to different situations.

Think about a small child. A child breaks a glass. Let us say the parents ask, "Did you break it?" Right? We all have been in that situation. The child says, "No, I did not do it." Immediately the mom becomes serious. "Do not lie to me. Tell me the truth." Right there, at that moment, the child learns something important. But perhaps the child does not learn that lying is morally evil. The child learns that some truths have consequences. Many people do not tell the truth because they fear to face the consequences. We all know so many examples of movies where an innocent man does not want to point at the villain because the villain will destroy his family. They hide the truth because of the consequences, not because they are impure or so and so and so and so. That is the first crack in the moral lesson. Because if telling the truth had no consequences, lying would have much less value.

A child does not usually lie because they have studied moral philosophy. Right? They don't do that. The child lies because the truth feels dangerous. Maybe they will be punished. Maybe they will disappoint someone. Maybe they will lose something, and so on and so on. So the child discovers something very early in life: Truth is not always rewarded. That is something that we all learn in a hard way. Truth is not always rewarded. I think most of the time, truth is not rewarded at all. Those who speak the truth are always punished and always looked at as stupid. You know, there's a beautiful saying: A worldly person looks at a spiritual person and thinks he's stupid. And a spiritual person looks at a worldly person and thinks they're stupid. And philosophers, somewhat philosophers like me, look at both of them and say, "You're stupid." It's like that. Sometimes the truth is punished. And once a human being learns that, the game changes.

We say, "Always tell the truth." But what we often mean is, "Tell the truth when the truth is convenient for me or it does not affect society." That is not truth at all. That is much more different. Right? And that is an honest sentence too. Imagine a child receives a gift from a relative. Right? We all have received gifts at some point in time. The child opens it. They do not like it. The adult asks, "Do you like it?" The child says, "No." Suddenly everyone becomes uncomfortable. Right? Immediately mom says, "Say thank you. Do not be rude. Tell them that you like it." Now look at the lesson. The child was told that lying is wrong. But when the truth creates discomfort, the child is encouraged to lie politely. Are you seeing how pathetic we all have become?

Why should truth hurt? Truth should never be hurting in the first place. We are living in such a nonsensical society. Lies should hurt us. But what are we doing? We put polite sentences. We filter our words. We sit for hours to choose the right word to tell the person. It should be the opposite. Lies should spend the most time thinking about it. Truth should never, never hurt people. That means to say, the entire society is living in an illusion. Right? People say truth shatters you. But in my eyes, if it shatters you, you have been living in an illusion. And that shattering should not require any polite sentence or polite words. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? The child says, then later, "Yes, I like it." Everyone smiles and everyone feels comfortable and they're happy. The social machine continues running, and the child has just received an important education there: Truth is good until truth becomes inconvenient.

We are all living in a dangerous society filled with poison, filled with illusion. Then politeness becomes more important than the truth. That is why adults are unhappy, because they pretend they're happy, but in return, they want people to recognize that they are unhappy in this world. This happens everywhere. Someone asks, "How are you?" Perhaps they are not asking because they genuinely want to know. They're following a social ritual. Everybody asks, "How are you?" In Tamil, we say "Saptiya?" it means, "Did you eat food?" But that word contains so many phrases that means, "Did you eat food? How's your family doing? How are you?" And so on and so on. And people tell me, "You must ask this to people. Why? Because only then you will respect things. Only then you will follow society rules. Only then you will make people happy." How pathetic is that? Right?

I'm not saying people are wrong. All that I'm trying to point out is how much illusion we all have been living in. Right? This is the truth. We are all fooling ourselves. And when people ask, "How are you?" The answer is almost always the same: "I am fine." Same thing we say. Even when we are exhausted, even when we are angry, even when our life is falling apart, we say, "I am fine." A tiny lie. Almost harmless, right? But notice how normal it is. Society does not collapse because of it. In fact, society often depends on our lies. It is because you pretend that society is flourishing. The moment you stop pretending, society will collapse. Everything in this world runs because of illusion. The moment you see illusion as illusion, you stand away from society, and people will not like you because you're not merging into the society's way of thinking. And that's why those who see the truth often are called lonely people, because they rarely find people who understand. Many times, they come across people who misunderstand them.

See, all this confusion is because human beings are not understanding that there is something greater beyond all these things. We have been bestowed with this knowledge of intelligence far better than any other animals. But we don't utilize it because we follow society. We don't utilize it because we follow celebrities. We don't utilize it because simply we follow things. You become unique only when you follow your inner voice. Not by listening to me, not by following me, not by following any celebrity or anything. Human beings will understand that they are divine from the day they turn their mind within, not by visiting ashrams or meeting gurus or mailing people like me and so on and so on and so on. Truth can be found only when you see it for yourself, not by following. And noise trying to understand silence will only make more noise. Please get this in your head: The more effort you put to become divine, you're fooling yourself. Turn to your mind within and see that you have been divine from day one. But society has fooled you from day one. That is the thing.

You are the self-aware reality which is the substratum of all, whether you like it or not. You are the origin of all atoms and dark particles. But we do not want to see that. I'm not saying the body and mind is you. I'm talking about the screen on which the body and mind is appearing. Many people question me: "If you're not the body and mind, why are you eating food?" I look at them and be like, "You know, that is such a narrow-minded question." Will you go tell a screen, "If you're not the movie, why are you jumping like James Bond from one scene to another scene?" What will the screen tell? "I'm not moving. The movie is moving." Similarly, the body and mind does the work. The self doesn't do anything. Or it is like going to electricity and saying, "If you are not the bulb, why are you glowing?" What will electricity say? "I am not glowing. It is the characteristic of the bulb to glow in green, golden, or yellow, or blah blah blah. I am just being myself. The bulb takes help from me and glows and moves forward." Right? Self does not involve with anything. Self does nothing, but without self, nothing can be done. And that self is your true nature.