Late Night Chat with Jeff: Nuances of Honesty, Oct 6, 2024, live on Baba Zoom

We have some informal chat after every arti, the "post-arti party"! But once a week, Jeff Wolverton joins us for some serious mining of the spiritual depths. Join us for conversation, more readings, songs, quotes - you never know what treasures will be uncovered!

The Topic: The Nuances of Honesty

Dear Folks of Baba,

What does Baba mean by honesty? I think Baba lovers are very challenged in interpreting what He means when putting honesty into practice in their lives. There is the world’s definition of honesty, but that can be misleading, for sure, and often creates complications. Baba’s definition is a challenge to the usual definition that we may have grown up with. For example, Eruch, His close disciple, grew up in a Zoroastrian family where honesty is considered one of the highest values. In his early years with Baba, he was very honest by the standards of the world, but his honesty would sometimes hurt others. Baba allowed him to carry on with his notion of honesty for some years until one day, He took him aside and said to the effect, Eruch, you are very honest, but your honesty is different from Mine. Your honesty sometimes hurts others. Baba then said, “The truth when told is that which uplifts another. Anything which crushes another person cannot be true.” Even if what you say is factually true, if it hurts another, it is not true! This is a different type of honesty from what we are used to.

In another example, there was a couple who came regularly to the Center, and on one of their trips, the wife confessed that they had never told her mother, who was a devoted Catholic, about their life with Baba, their trips to India and that her husband was Jewish. The couple was feeling guilty and dishonest, that after nearly thirty years, they had kept the truth from her mother who was now in her eighties. They were asking whether they should now tell the “truth”. We talked about it at length, and they decided that telling her now would be too much of a shock in the last years of her life. To have shared it earlier in their marriage would have been the appropriate time, but now they felt it was too late. There are nuances with honesty that require viewing it in a larger context.

Here is an example of when love, which is truth, is more important than the factual truth. There was a young woman who came to India whose aunt had paid for her trip. She made her niece promise to go to see the Taj Mahal, one of the architectual wonders of the world. The young women was so profoundly moved by being in Meherabad and Meherazad that she just couldn’t leave. Time went by, and on the last day in Ahmednagar, she suddenly felt terrible that she hadn’t gone to the Taj Mahal as she had promised. She told this to Mani, Baba’s sister, in desperation. Surprisingly, Mani told her that in Mumbai there is the famous Taj Mahal Hotel. Before leaving India, Mani recommended that she should go there, which she did. This is a case where honoring the rare love she felt with the mandali in Meherabad and Meherazad took precedence over the fulfillment of her aunt’s request. Honesty is not so simple.

Baba gave a unique definition of honesty to the Sufism Reoriented group. He conveyed that when asked how you feel about something, what you say should reflect your feelings accurately. For example, say your boss asks you whether a particular person should be hired to join your company. If you feel 70 percent that they are suitable and 30 percent that they are not qualified, what you say should reflect those percentages. As an alternative, Baba said that it is not dishonest to choose not to express your feelings or your opinion, but if, just to please someone, you express full approval of something when you have misgivings, that would be dishonest.

Honesty can sometimes be a great challenge when the person you are talking to is easily angered, frightened or hurt. How have you dealt with such situations? Do you find you have to keep much to yourself because you don’t feel that you will be understood? Baba says not to hurt the heart of another; is that different from hurting someone’s pride? There are many nuances to honesty. What challenges have you had to deal with in your life with Baba? Many Baba lovers face the uncomfortable dilemma of how much to tell friends and relatives about their life with Him and His declaration that He is the Avatar. It will be valuable to hear from all of you.

In His love, Jeff

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