सत्यमेव जयते नानृतं (satyameva jayate nānṛtaṃ)।
Truth alone triumphs, no other (false)universal order
ṛtaṃ ca satyaṃ cābhīddhāt tapaso ‘dhy ajāyata।
The universal order (ṛta) and truth (satya) were born of arduous penance… (RV 10.190.1)
satyaṃ caivānṛtaṃ ca satyameva devā anṛtam manuṣyā।
And verily the gods are the truth, and man is “opposite of universal order” (SB 1.1.1.4)
[Notice the words “satyam” and “rutam”; we will discuss them later]
Why does the last quote from Satapata Brahmana state that humans’ nature is anṛtam? We don’t pay attention and/or follow the universal order (rtam)? Rutam is a special word, and will cover the meaning the best we can, a little later.
Do we lie, ignoring the order that is laid out by sat, the truth of the current state? How often do we lie? Why’s it on this yama list? Maybe it depends upon the definition a little bit…? But I can tell you that if I didn’t pump up my credentials a little bit, I would probably still be single 🙂 But here is an interesting statistic – Psychologists say ~60% people cannot go without lying for more than 10 minutes! An average human being tells about 1.65 lies a day. Kids figure out the technique of lying by about 4 years of age. Most of it benign apparently, just to make us a little more likable to others and look a little more competent …
Yogis’ observations are not very different from these statistical inferences, and that’s why Truthfulness made it to the yamas top 5 list. There are apparently evolutionary purposes for (benign) not stating the truth, or following that path, and we can all intuit that. The problem with that instinct is that we can never really know the truth. This yama of Satya is all about introspection of those automated reflexes that support the vanity of “I”. No right or wrong or recommended levels…
Why is that? Can’t I get away by not accepting the truth, or lie my way through and change the “sat”, or even better, just choose to stay ignorant?
Basically, living by the truth (as in the first case) and putting in the effort to finding the truth is everyone’s responsibility. How is the truth known? Through tapas, askesis, intense contemplation! (see the quote from Rig Veda at the top). So what do the yogis say about this?
सत्यमेव जयते नानृतं । सत्येन पन्था विततो देवयानः ।।
Truth alone triumphs, not false order। The divine path is laid out by truth…।। Mundaka Upanishad
Satyam, ṙtam, and bṛhat are three qualities of brahman (tat). Yoga philosophers explain Sat-ya to be existence–in-motion (“sat-ya”; ya as in yana). And Sat is truth at any instance. The word ṛtam (pronounced as rrutam) has time element in it, and the meaning of ṛtam has to do with the natural or universal order. “Na-a-ṙtam” meaning follows from that, which means no-other-way or no-other-progression. One can’t dupe this flow by lying! That would be nothing but not accepting the truth. This divine path of universal flow leading to “gods” is laid out with “truth”; truth in the larger sense. Gandhi was heavily influenced by this concept. His thoughts on this topic are well documented.
Again, it’s the power of “information”.
The universe essentially flows according to its own natural order… the Sat as in existence has its own order which is based on the complete information from what really happened. Going back to our discussion about karma, “akashic records” and universal memories; the universe already has an accurate and complete record of what really happened. That combined information of all incidents from the entire past becomes the initial condition going into the computation of the next moment. No other way (nanṙtam), because the total information package is all determined, unless someone can go and change history, and no other way can be possible. That’s a time slice of Sat. So the future is computed based on that accurate information. What we say or believe as opposed to what really happened factors into this calculation only in a trivial way. In a nutshell, this yama implores us to “get with the program”, the “program” being satyam and ṙtam. So the responsibility to know that satyam is on us, individually. This ties into the niyamas of self-study (svadhyaya) and intense contemplation (tapas).
It is actually not that much about telling the truth as living by the truth as we know it. Our minds lull us into false habits by making up theories to justify our behaviors. There are several examples of individuals or groups of individuals that inflicted violence on humanity, that had internal models supporting their actions – armies of dictators, drug lords etc. are all good examples.
Of course, speaking truth is not necessarily about divulging confidential information or information that does not belong to one, or ratting out somebody. It is to train our minds not to compute anything based on non-truth and, to select our actions and manage our communication consciously.
There are two types of behaviors here:
- One who knows but deludes himself/herself that something else is true and tries to project that outwards – what we call lying. The people with this tendency explode from inside, because the gap between how Sat is marching forward and the false world this person’s mind is fabricating creates an internal stress. This stress grows with time and will eventually collapse… Can’t keep everything consistent with that external picture.
- The second is one who does not know but is extremely confident of what he knows as the truth. Dictators, megalomaniacs, psychopaths etc. fall into this category. Here, the stress builds up externally where the sat is moving in one direction while the world projected by that individual is growing in a different direction. Eventually it will fall apart.
Peeling this onion by another layer… what is Truth or Sat by definition? According to yogis, it has to be at a minimum, space-time independent. If something is true on Earth, it has to be true on Mars and elsewhere. And, if it is true today, it has to be true tomorrow, a year from now… In that case. In that case, is “I” true?
एकं सद विप्रा बहुधा वदन्त्य… That truth is one, but the learned call it by various names… Rg Veda 1.164
Just by chasing that single “truth”, whatever that is, we will reach our goal of self-enlightenment! Yamas involve a significant amount of contemplation, setting individual standards, iterating on them as we experiment with them. It is all about exploring, learning and living by the truth as we understand it at that moment. Same with what we learned about “living as a violent process” …
For practice, yogis recommend minimizing the occasions we expose ourselves to, where our instincts push us away from this path. Goes back to yogis’ practice of temporarily receding into thinly populated areas, ashrams or even into mountains to calibrate to this yama. Conscious minds around (satsang), experimenting with conscious communication, surrounded by people in authentic relationships with you is the ideal environment to practice this. In “vipasana” style meditation, they just don’t talk for long periods!
Interesting articles
http://mentalfloss.com/article/30609/60-people-cant-go-10-minutes-without-lying
Yogic Thought 
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