When You Have a Heart, You Get a Spine
Questioner: The title is a very powerful “Truth without apology.” So it seems like you have seen a lot of people who kind of are lovers of Truth but they fear to say it out loud. And they have a lot of shaking inside them while communicating this Truth with others. So why didn't people have this apology while communicating this Truth to someone? I guess it is our greed.
Acharya Prashant: No, no, no. The reason you must link to what we were saying just now.
Our fundamental allegiance is not to the Truth. It is to the powers that be.
Think of your practical daily life. Who do you submit to? The Truth or the Lords? That's the thing. And that's why when you side with the Truth, when you fall in love with the Truth, you have to apologize to the lords. One Truth, one master, one center, one destiny. That's Vedant; Satya, Atma, Brahm, one, all one and nothing but one. Not even one, Advait, forget about two, not even one. That kind of pointed surrender is what our sages taught us.
Instead of surrendering to that one Truth, we have been told to bow down to several lords. That's why when it comes to the Truth, we are apologetic. We say, "Sorry, you know, yeah, the lord does not like it but may I please submit that, you know, if you allow me, if you permit to your pleasure." Seen all these things. See how we teach our kids to write applications. "Humbly I beg to submit that today I have an ache in my tooth." Humbly I beg to submit.
If that is the Truth, why are you begging? State the fact. What is this? Humbly I beg to survey. Would the Lord and the master accept my submission at his feet? Why? If you are lying about your toothache, then don't write that. Tear away that application. And if you are stating the fact, if the toothache is real, why the hell are you groveling? Why are you rolling in the mud? Drool, drool, drool. That's become our culture. If you are in the false, you feel secure because you're with the majority. Right?
And when you know you are in the Truth, that’s when you experience fear, because the Truth is always a minority, at least in our society; not just a minority, but a very vulnerable minority, a very hated minority. And so you keep begging for forgiveness: “No, no, no. I committed the gravest sin of uttering the Truth. Forget about uttering it; I should have never known about it in the first place.”
All boils down to the philosophy you are following. If your philosophy tells you to submit and surrender to several masters: this, this, this, there is a social authority, there is a political authority, there is a familial authority, there is an institutional authority, there is a religious authority, and in the skies there are several authorities, if that becomes your culture, you will never be a truthful person, because in Truth there is no authority but the Truth.
So how do I bow down to several masters, several lords, worldly or otherworldly? I don't care for anything but the Truth. And that's why otherwise the name of the book is just Truth. But I had to say Truth Without Apology, because we indeed are apologetic. Those wallow in lies, you'll find them walking, living, eating, breathing comfortably, and they'll be lorded on public platforms. And the man of Truth, he'll be hated, ostracized, and left alone, as you said.
And all that is fine. Hate me, expel me, ostracize me. All that is something you can do, but I won't apologize, because that's something I can do. You do what you can, but you won't get an apology out of me.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, our love for Truth will be so high that we will not care for anything else. Whether the whole world is standing against us, we are not hearing.
Acharya Prashant: When you have a heart, then you get a spine.
When you have such a beating heart with love for Truth, then you will get a spine that does not easily bend in front of religious, social, or political authority.
