Self-Deception Manifested Through One’s Own External Actions and Internal Justifications

Another type of deception may either be conscious fraud, or may be another instance of the process of self-deception manifesting also as deception in relation to others. If the individual is purposely trying to take advantage of people, and knows that to be the case, it is an instance of conscious fraud. The other type, that in which the individual misleads himself while misleading others, is the focus of this review.

There are numerous instances where people cloak themselves in high-sounding motives, in fulfillment of an ideal, while they are actually fulfilling their various desires, whether they be for fame, wealth, sex, or some form of power that they can use for their self-aggrandisement and wield to control other people and their actions.

There are well-documented cases where someone who has actually spent a considerable effort on spiritual advancement determines to become a teacher or guru, and who then goes out and tries to build a following and develop sufficient funding to build a center, finance the activities and disseminate the teachings. One case that was closely observed included the teacher instructing the young disciples that it was fine to not pay for contracted materials because the money would just be misused by the “ordinary” person, but was part of a spiritual development and was a form of “conquering wealth for the divine”, which of course is a total distortion of the teaching. He broke up young married couples with the idea that the woman had a spiritual destiny and should not be tied down to the less amenable husband who was living an ‘ordinary’ life. The same individual seduced young women with the sense that they were practicing various secret tantric rites to accumulate spiritual power and merit. It was later determined that he was gathering wealth, and enjoying sex with numerous young women under the guise of being a spiritual teacher. It is even likely that he believed his own explanations and justified these acts to himself and to others as part of the spiritual path.

The Mother observes: ”There is another one. There are people who without knowing it — or because they want to ignore it — always follow their personal interest, their preferences, their attachments, their conceptions; people who are not wholly consecrated to the Divine and who make use of moral and yogic ideas to conceal their personal impulses. But these people are deceiving themselves doubly; not only do they deceive themselves in their external activities, in their relation with others, but they also deceive themselves in their own personal movement; instead of serving the Divine, they serve their own egoism. And this happens constantly, constantly! They serve their own personality, their own egoism, while pretending to serve God. Then it is no longer even self-deception, it is hypocrisy.”

“This mental habit of always endowing everything with a very favourable appearance, of giving a favourable explanation to all movements — sometimes it is rather subtle, but sometimes it is so crude that nobody is deceived except oneself. It is a habit of excusing oneself, the habit of giving a favourable mental excuse, a favourable mental explanation to everything one does, to everything one says, to everything one feels. For example, those who have no self-control and slap someone’s face in great indignation would call that an almost divine wrath!”

“It is amazing, amazing — this power of self-deception, the mind’s skill in finding an admirable justification for any ignorance, any stupidity whatsoever.”

“This is not an experience that comes only now and then. It is something which you can observe from minute to minute. And you usually see it much more easily in others! But if you look at yourself closely, you catch yourself a thousand times a day, looking at yourself just a little indulgently: ‘Oh! But it is not the same thing.’ Besides, it is never the same for you as it is for your neighbour!”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 203-204