Silence is the best truth³

Many years ago in Bengal, India, there lived several spiritual Masters who were renowned for their sincerity. They were sincerity incarnate, and many times they suffered severely for this. Nevertheless, they were determined not to swerve from the path of truth.

One day, with his fifty intimate disciples, the Master Kudal went to a religious festival. Thousands of seekers and hundreds of disciples with their respective Masters came to attend this religious festival. The disciples of various Masters sang spiritual songs and staged spiritual plays. It was a colossal gathering. In the street that afternoon, all of a sudden Kudal approached a beautiful girl of seventeen who was with her parents, and he cried out, “Mother, Mother, you are here! You were my mother in your last incarnation. Mother, bless me. I am your son, Kudal.”

Kudal’s disciples were at first amazed, because they had never encountered this kind of behaviour in their Master before. Sushila, the girl, was embarrassed and shocked. Her mother thought that Kudal was crazy. Her father became furious and threatened Kudal.

When Kudal’s disciples saw that their Master was being threatened by the girl’s father, one disciple said to him, “How dare you insult our Master? Our Master is a great Yogi! If you ever again dare to insult him, we shall send you to the other world. Fifty of his disciples are here now. If you don’t want to believe what our Master says, don’t believe it. If your daughter does not want to bless our Master, let her not bless our Master. But you are a fool! The entire world is eager to be blessed by our Master. He is a Yogi of the highest magnitude. Just because your daughter happened to be his physical mother in her last incarnation, he wants to be blessed by her. The physical son, no matter how great and high he is, no matter how divine he is, offers his loving devotion to his mother. Do not ascribe undivine motives to a Master of his calibre.” Sushila’s father said to the disciples, “For God’s sake, let me take my daughter home. Enough of this Kudal, this spiritual rogue! I always knew that spirituality was a bosom friend of stupidity.”

But, meanwhile, something was happening in Sushila’s heart. During the disciple’s angry outburst, she had been looking at Kudal most affectionately and soulfully. When her father and mother led her away, she began to weep. She said to her father, “Father, you have insulted a great spiritual Master. To insult a spiritual Master is a terrible sin. And I strongly feel that I was his mother in my previous life.”

Immediately Sushila’s mother cried, “Stop! Stop! He is a rogue and you are a fool! I don’t want you to be fooled by a fake Master.”

The father added, “He is not only a rogue and a fake, but an immoral character as well. The way he came up to you, my daughter, and talked to you in the street was utterly distasteful. His manners were nothing but callous.”

Sushila said to her parents, “If you go on speaking ill of this great spiritual Master, I shall not talk to you anymore.”

Suddenly the mother said, “A brilliant idea has struck my mind. Let us go to our own Master and ask him if what this one has told us is all true.”

The father immediately agreed, saying, “Indeed, that is an excellent idea. Undoubtedly our Master is infinitely greater and higher than this Kudal, whom Sushila now seems to be on the verge of accepting as her own.”

Sushila said to her parents, “If you go on speaking ill of this great spiritual Master, I shall not talk to you any more.”

Her mother became furious and scolded, “Shame, shame on you! How dare you compare our Master with that silly man!”

“Mother, don’t call him silly, for I inwardly feel that he is really good and great.”

Her father, in an ironic voice, uttered, “Divine, too, no doubt.”

Sushila said to her parents, “Why are you torturing me? Let us go to our Master and solve our problems.”

The mother replied, “Forgive us. Let us go.”

On their arrival at their Master’s home, the father blurted out, “Master, today has been the most inauspicious and trying day of my life. That Kudal, who styles himself as a great Master, has created a terrible problem in our family! Thousands of people are enjoying the religious festival, and we wanted to do the same. Alas, all of a sudden a hostile force had to attack us. This hostile force was none other than Kudal, the great fake. Master, do you know what he told us? He told us that our dearest Sushila was his mother in her last incarnation! And what is most painful is that Sushila believes it. Please, Master, tell us once and for all that it was all false. Once she hears this from you, Sushila will not be so attached to him and fascinated by him.”

The Master went deep within. Fifteen minutes later he came out of his trance and said, “Kudal was right, perfectly right.” The mother burst into tears, the father flew into a rage, and Sushila fell at the Master’s feet with overwhelming gratitude.

Sobbing, the mother said to the Master, “Master, already it is almost impossible for us to keep our daughter at home. Now I am sure she will go and join Kudal. He will ruin our dearest daughter. She is our only daughter. She is the only child in our family.”

The father said, “Impossible! As long as I am on earth, I shall not allow my Sushila to go near him.”

Sushila smilingly said, “Let us see.”

Then the father said to the Master, “Master, we came to you to be saved. Instead of saving us, you have totally destroyed our family. I tell you, you and Kudal are two unthinkable and unbearable fakes. I had great faith in you, in myself and in God. I am giving up the spiritual life for good. Tonight I shall set fire to your house and burn the whole thing to ashes!”

The Master replied, “My son, you can do anything you want with my house and with my life, but I shall always speak the truth. I shall never waver an inch from the truth.”

“But don’t you see that your truth has destroyed my whole family?” cried the father. “What kind of truth is it that destroys a sweet, loving and affectionate family? I hate your sense of truth, and I literally hate you!”

That night, Sushila’s father kept his inhuman promise to set fire to his Master’s house. In the middle of the night, the unfortunate Master had to take shelter in his garden. Before his very eyes, his house burned to the ground. Yet his compassion and forgiveness prevailed.

Early in the morning, this Master’s own spiritual Master came to him occultly during his meditation and said, “My dearest son, compassion is good, forgiveness is good, but you have to know that wisdom is equally good. Truth is unparalleled and incomparable. But on the physical plane, if you all the time use the truth in its pristine form, the ignorance of the world finds it extremely hard to bear. The world stands against the one who offers truth. So, at times, silence is the best truth, and not the revelation of one’s realisation.

“Look how Kudal’s sincerity was misunderstood. And your sincerity was met with ingratitude and destruction. I tell you, although sincerity is of utmost importance, at times silence is the only medicine that can cure this world of ignorance. Speak the truth when it is inspiring, encouraging, illumining and fruitful. But in cases where the truth will create measureless misunderstanding and untold suffering, silence is by far the best truth, the only truth.”