There is something magical about truth.
I lied to my grandmother the other day. She had noted that her son’s girlfriend (let’s call her Mary) knew a lot of people where she was staying. My grandmother thought that was a bit odd. I told her we had arranged for Mary’s friends to take care of her. That was a nice thought, my grandmother said.
The fact of the matter is: my grandmother is going senile and had just moved into a retirement home. Mary has an administrative job in that same retirement home.
I didn’t want to tell my grandmother that – Mary needs to be able to do her job, not be bothered by my grandmother all the time. I’m sure Mary will come by to check on my grandmother as often as she can anyhow.
Those ‘friends of Mary’ were Mary’s colleges.
On an emotional level what I said was true. Mary is a person who’s friendly to a lot of people – and it’s clear she maintains friendly relations with a lot of the people my grandmother had seen her with that day. It’s also true that these are the very people who will be taking care of my grandmother. And we are all glad to have my grandmother in a house in which someone close to the family works and knows the ropes.
But I’m not sure I was speaking the truth on all levels. I left out a lot. I didn’t say Mary worked there. I left out the fact that those ‘friends of Mary’ would in most cases not be at Mary’s birthday party.
What I did was talk to my grandmother on the level she is at. She was being rebellious about the place she had mysteriously been dropped into. Emotionally she isn’t ready to acknowledge that she’ll be needing serious care for the rest of her life. She thinks she will be able to walk without a walker sometime in the future. She thinks she will be able to buy and prepare her own food soon.
Truth comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes – it’s not morally wrong to adapt the truth to the circumstance. What my conversation did was to get as much truth to my grandmother as I could manage. I managed to convince her that it was good that she was staying where she was staying. I found an explanation that fitted in with her conception of reality that also brought home some fundamental truths about her situation (she was being taken care of by good people, and the family had arranged for that).
Krishnamurti is said to have taught at only one level: in his speeches he didn’t relate as clearly to the level of his listeners. He wanted to talk about the truth without regard of where people were. I’m not sure that’s even possible.
I hope your grandmother fares well in every aspect for the remainder of her life. It is a difficult thing to live an honest life and as you say truth comes in all shapes and sizes; but these are the truths that are truth in a moral sense, like this is true and this is a lie. Do we understand what truth really is? Your last sentence certainly indicates doubt. For me the reason Krishnamurti commentaries/talks did not relate totally to the “level of his listeners” is that all the listeners, you included if you were there, were and are truth. The truth. What Krishnamurti is attempting to get across is that truth is self knowlede. When you know yourself on the deepest levels you know truth and all humanity. Truth is not outside, it is us.
I like that: Krishnamurti talking to his listeners about themselves – at whatever point they were. But the fact is – as K often said himself – they didn’t quite get it, did they?
For me the doubt is an essential part of the journey, BTW.
Lovely and sweet story. I’m sure your grandma is going to be content thanks to your white lie, which I find really noble. But I’m sure that Krishnamurti didn’t have any intention of keeping us content, in fact pretty much the opposite. I think he was talking to our true nature, like all real sages do, and our true nature is much more beyond thought. K is still trying to be understood through the intellect, and that will never work, maybe being too advanced for this time of intellectual worshiping. I think the way of approaching his teaching is letting his words “pass through us”, let them reach our purest state and let them go. Whatever remains “inside” is not for us to judge.
But this is just my view. We are all different.
The thing is – sometimes being content is the best achievable.
I’m not sure how K dealt with this sort of thing in the private sphere – I think I recall that he avoided all confrontation with Annie Besant for instance, even when she hadn’t lost most of her memory yet.
It’s mostly on the platform that he was real confrontational.
There’s that image of the real healer who does surgery, when the quack will merely give a massage… (sure I’ve read that someplace, or something like it)… The thing is: if K never succeeded in fully teaching anybody – as he himself said – was the surgeon’s approach justified?
Perhaps we could say it is all relative. Wasn’t it more toward the end of his life that Krishnaji made such comments? There were a number of things that went on in his life to warrant such a comment–if we can take the comment at face value. He may have felt the way he did, but I don’t believe it is true as his teachings have affected many–myself included.
The other facet to look at is (and this is hard to put into words so forgive me) that for people like Krishnamurti, I think, there is a connection to the consciousness of humanity, but not much to that emotional “thing” we connect to with people. Krishnaji had this incredible awareness with everything around him and one felt that in his presence because you felt your own consciousness heighten. It was not imagined, it was just something that happened. I had this experience several times while walking with him. Everything seemed a little bit more clear.
But I think at that level, it makes relating to the things that seem so real to us common and unimportant to someone like him. I remember a relative of mine telling me that Krishnaji did not understand how people were related to one another. Such as “this is my brother’s daughter, etc.” It wasn’t important to him so he didn’t relate to it. Likewise, when someone is losing their mental faculties and being able to relate on such level. Perhaps we could say that we relate heart to heart with loved ones and Krishnaji related to the heart of humanity–?
I think the way you related to your grandmother was wonderful. I think those with senility know somewhere they are losing it and to know and not be able to control it is a difficult human thing to deal with.
Kudos to you Katinka. As it’s been said “The world is better place with you in it.”