Understanding the Masks, False Fronts and Deceptive Appearances We Present to the World and to Ourselves

It is relatively easy to recognise that we are putting up a false front in our dealings with society. We greet people with a smile while in our minds, we may be having an opposite feeling about the person. We flatter people to get ahead in society, knowing that the flattery is not based on reality, but is meant to gain a certain position or end result. Similarly we mask our own feelings, intentions and thoughts in order to appear more successful, more important and more powerful than we really are. Many people put on the appearance of wealth with luxury cars and clothes or homes when they are masking what may be dire financial straits with heavy loads of debt. We may want to appear more learned and wiser than we really are, or we may want to put on an outward show of appearances while inwardly we are struggling or suffering.

This is the way of the world we live in for the most part, and the vast majority of people simply accept this as the way things are and the way things need to be. They do not question and, indeed, in many cases they do not even recognise that this is taking place.

We come then to the position of the spiritual seeker, aspiring for truth, and yet faced with an external nature that continually expresses various degrees of falsehood in our social settings. These things happen so automatically, and are so embedded in our socialization, upbringing and in the expectations of the society that we do not even generally recognise the situation.

The issue is further complicated by the emphasis we place on mental knowledge in today’s world. We think something and we thus believe that we have become that. We accept certain spiritual principles in our minds and we thus count ourselves as having realised the truths of that teaching. We do not generally recognise that there are different parts of our being which each have their own drive for fulfillment and expression and which are not all organised around a single principle. Thus, in our psychic being we may feel devotional, but the mind may be guiding us to do things that actually contradict that devotion. Similarly, the vital nature may have its own desires, needs, wishes that it tries to fulfill, and it is very good at getting its way, by convincing the mind that it is diong the right and needful thing to actually carry out the mandate of the aspiring soul, when in fact, it is carrying out its vital human desires.

For the spiritual seeker then there is a need for careful scrutiny of the different parts of the being, the mind, the emotions, the vital nature and the physical body to see, not what we deceive ourselves to believe about their adherence to the soul’s aspiration, but what is actually taking place, what the actual thoughts, emotions, feelings, drives are carrying out in these other aspects of the being. To the extent there is lack of unity in the aspiration and its expression through all elements of the external nature, there is work to be done!

How many actually can look through the masks and false fronts we present, not just to the external world, but even to ourselves, when we believe we are totally sincere, dedicated and consecrated to the spiritual path? As long as we remain within the framework of the mental-vital-physical complex we cannot see and identify its limitations and weaknesses clearly. Only when we can step away from that external being, and observe it dispassionately, can we begin to understand the depth and complexity of the effort needed. This is not a matter for despondency or depression, as it is simply a recognition of the basics of human nature that have been deeply embedded throughout human existence. Rather, we can recognise this as an opportunity to address and change some elements of human nature as we ascend the evolutionary scale of consciousness. At that point, we can call on the spiritual force and open ourselves up to its action so that it can transform us down to the very cells of the body.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “men are always mixed and there are qualities and defects mingled together almost inextricably in their nature. What a man wants to be or wants others to see in him or what he is sometime on one side of his nature or in some relations can be very different from what he is in the actual fact or in other relations or on another side of his nature. To be absolutely sincere, straightforward, open, is not an easy achievement for human nature. It is only by spiritual endeavour that one can realise it — and to do it needs a severity of introspective self-vision, an unsparing scrutiny of self-observation of which many sadhaks and yogis even are not capable and it is only by an illumining Grace that reveals the sadhak to himself and transforms what is deficient in him that it can be done. And even then only if he himself consents and lends himself wholly to the divine working.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 117-118