A man of God will say: ‘Be uncompromising in your practice of truth.’ But the man of the world will say: ‘You cannot be uncompromising with truth. If you are always truthful, you cannot get on in the world. You cannot succeed. You have to compromise with truth.’ But the scriptures say: ‘Know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ Follow truth wherever it leads you. The Upanishads say that the highest Truth or Brahman, your Inner Reality can be realized by the practice of truth. Sri Ramakrishna said that in this age the practice of truth is the greatest help to realize one’s inner Self or God. But a man of the world will find it impossible to believe. And so it goes in the world, compromise after compromise, until nothing is left of truth but the outer shell. All distortion of truth is done in the name of truth.
Cheating, compromise, slapwork, white-collar theft and graft, were considered some years back to be wrong and that now they have become an accepted practice. Today, these practices are not beneath the average run of persons who want worldly success. And when someone succeeds in life by following these methods, which we in our calmer moments consider to be horrible, he becomes the idol of society, an ideal for others. In this state of affairs, if a person wants to live a spiritual life seriously, he is in difficulty. He will say: ‘How can I live differently from others? How can I go counter to the influence of the environment?’ He finds himself in a dilemma, in a conflict with his moral and ethical principles, and he suffers from that. Psychologists then come forward to tell him that this conflict is a kind of disease. ‘Compromise. Adjust yourself.’ They will say. A truly spiritual man cannot agree with this advice. It is not for a man of principle to adjust himself to society. It is for society to adjust itself to him! If a man is powerful, it does. A real man of God does not compromise with society. Society obeys him.
By following the worldly ways, does a man get peace and real happiness? No. He may get some praise and even a testimonial dinner, but not true peace.