Question: Is sincerity in the mind and vital the same for all seekers, or is it different for each individual?

Sri Chinmoy: It depends on the degree of advancement of the seeker. A child's sincerity, a young man's sincerity and an elderly person's sincerity in the physical, the vital and the mind need not be the same. If a child has done something wrong, then he will tell the whole story from beginning to end. If a grown-up or an adolescent has done something wrong, then he is more reticent. He may say only a few words about the thing that he has done. And a forty or fifty-year-old person will only say, "Oh, I made a mistake." That will be the length of his sincerity. So sincerity is expressed by three individuals in three different ways. The child, if he is sincere, will tell the whole story, how it started and how it ended. The adolescent will tell only a few lines and then stop. And a fifty or sixty-year-old person won't even name the incident. He will just say that he made a mistake.

When it is a matter of recognising insincerity, a child may not even know if at times he is a bad child. A grown-up person will know what sincerity is and what insincerity is, but he may not appreciate that he is telling the truth. Sometimes an elderly person will tell the same lie ten times in order to prove that he is sincere. If a person tells one lie, then he has to be prepared to tell ten more lies to save the first lie. Many people are prepared to tell ten more lies or repeatedly to tell the same lie. They collect the negative force and offer it to the first lie. Then they are convinced that they are telling the truth. Many times they know that they have told a lie, but they just go on. After they have said the same thing twenty times, then it does not remain a lie to them any more; it becomes absolutely gospel. They are so accustomed to saying it that it has become part and parcel of their life. To them insincerity has become sincerity, but others can trace it as insincerity.

Again, sometimes sincerity itself is challenged by human beings. You have seen something or done something; but if ten persons did not also see it, then you enter into the doubting human mind. Although you know that you have done a good thing or a bad thing, there comes a time when you doubt yourself and you feel that you could not have done it. You feel that somebody else has done it.

From:Sri Chinmoy,The significance of a smile, Agni Press, 1977
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