The fifth Commandment commends to, "Be truthful, take miseries as Divine blessings for your own good and be thankful".

When Master asks to "Be Truthful" he is not talking about "Speak truth" which is also one of the ways it was interpreted by great pioneers of the system,--whether it is Sri Iswar Sahai or Sri Varadachari or many others. But He was not talking just that only. He said 'Be truthful'. What is our true condition? What is our real nature? Our real nature is to be a 'Bandha'-a person bonded to the Divine. Our life is meant for Him to express Himself fully. We are an absolute dependent expression of God.

A question has arisen long back in a system of Vedanta. The question was "Is consciousness precedent to dependence or dependence precedent to consciousness"? Our existence, consciousness: does it precede dependence on God or dependence God precedes consciousness. The Acharyas of that day clarified that the reality is, dependence precedes consciousness. We are entirely dependent upon God whether we are conscious or otherwise. Any existence for that matter is totally dependent upon God. That is the truthful condition. Dependence on God is the beginning. Every one of us was a great "Prapanna"(surrendered) in the beginning. Only over a period of time we turned into 'Bhaktas' (devotees) and finally to 'Shaktas' (able persons). In the beginning we were all 'Prapanna' then we started thinking that our love is more important and became 'Bhaktas' and later we went on showing our greatness of expression, our capacities to create or destroy. This is how we have come to the stage of Shaktas, and in the process drifted away from our Homeland. But the basic point in truthful existence is to be dependent upon the Great Master. To 'Be truthful' means that we should be truthful to our original nature of being dependent on Master.

If we are totally dependent upon Him, it does not matter much what happens to us. There is neither misery nor happiness. So all happiness and misery has to be accepted as something of a Divine gift, because we are dependent upon Him. Revered Ram Chandra does not deny that we are going through our past 'Karma'. He makes it a point to mention it also. Still it is our dependence upon Divinity that makes us accept everything as a Divine gift. If we do not have the relationship of dependency on the Divine that implies that everything happens with the knowledge of the Lord, the question of gift does not arise.

If the relationship of dependency is ensured all other virtues develop easily. We can be truthful, that is we can be speaking truth-'satyam' not the truthfulness we talked about, but can we practice 'Satya' and then take miseries as Divine blessings. Maybe, that also we will accept. But we will not take it as something good for us and be thankful. To be thankful here is really difficult. The difficulty starts when miseries come to us. How will we thank Him for that? We will thank Him only when we are dependent upon Him. When the consciousness that Divinity knows what is best for us percolates through every pore of our being, we can accept every misery as something of a Divine gift and we will also be thankful because God is making us remember Him more and more. As in the case of 'Kunti' (mother of the Pandavas of the Great Epic Maha Bharat), this is what she has asked. She said I am not interested in anything else. Please give me miseries. It has been interpreted in so many ways, saying that she wanted to complete her karma and get back to Him. That need not concern us here.

The lessons in life are taught by the Lord very systematically. As my trainer and father put it "He loves us so much that every opportunity is provided for us to grow. When we ask for strength, He provides us difficulties to make us strong; when we ask for prosperity, He gives us the brain and brawn to work; when we ask for courage, He causes danger to overcome; when we ask for love, He sends us troubled people to help; when we ask for wisdom, He gives problems to solve. The way of instruction of the Lord is difficult to understand but when we understand the joy of awareness of His love has no bounds. The lesson of truth that we learn is very great and what a loving teacher we have!

Truthfulness to others means that we affirm our oneness of all and create a bond of mutual trust in the Unity that exists. We can never speak the truth unless we trust the other person and that is possible only when we know our oneness with the person to whom we are speaking. Every child is capable of speaking truth to the mother, as there is a natural oneness it experiences with the mother. As it develops its individuality it learns to distance itself from the mother and also hide facts and even resort to telling lies. Truthfulness is capable of expanding our consciousness, which enables us to break the barriers of the body limitation and we start experiencing our true Self.

Through truthfulness we develop a positive image of ourselves that is essential for any healthy mind. It is true that certain times truth speaking leads us to a situation where harm to others is done. But the nature of good will that we develop to others also provides a solution out of the situation. Trust in Master in such a situation enables us to perform our Dharma without essentially harming others.

More than anything else in sadhana, we can assess ourselves better when we are truthful to ourselves. It is said that truthfulness when establishes makes our words and actions become effective.

Whether we discharge our 'Karma' and get back to Him or not is not the concern in Sri Ram Chandra's Raja Yoga. We live here, we exist here, we make our life meaningful here as an expression of Divinity. That is our 'Karma' that is our duty. Not to get rid of our 'Karma Phala' and get back to the Base. That is not at all our approach. Ours is a positive approach. God created us for expressing Himself through us. He desires to express Himself through our existence with all our capacities. Whatever is the ability we have is the ability that is given to us, for the good of others. Just as God gives bountifully everything that we need, similarly through us, He expects to give what we have to others. Then our life becomes meaningful to others.

We are not only going to get back to the source. That is one of the purposes of Sadhana. But from the point of view of Sri Ram Chandra's Raja Yoga it is necessary to find a meaning for our existence here itself. Our being Free shall be expressed here and it need wait for the last day of our life. Our Master does not advocate a negative concept at all. He has got a positive concept and meaning to give for Life. This life given to us shall be used for the Divine by the Divine. He has given us this human life that is an opportunity - life is a great boon for us and at no point of time regret for having born is justified. This human life has a definite goal. It finds itself fulfilled when we express the Creator in the best of our potential. Because many of the vedantists unfortunately suffer from the notion that human life or samsara is a duhkha or sorrow there has been a tendency among many to regret our very existence and seek relief from it. We are to be happy about our existence. We are happy to be an expression of Divine. We allow the Divine to express itself fully through us, and when we do this the question of misery does not arise. The question of misery does not arise, nor the question of happiness arises. That is the same point of Lord Krishna when He says "Sukha Duhkhe Samekrtva" it means we are not having either 'Sukha' or 'Duhkha'. It is what Divinity wants to express. We express it and in turn we get something, and don't bother about it. It is a gift of Divine.

We should always remember in the core of our being that we have chosen our goal and are making our efforts are marked by our having started our puja; we have come up to this level of being truthful and the Master seems to say "Yes, you are truthful to me, you are truthful to your nature, therefore what ever comes to you, you should accept as something coming from me". It is not possible to practice it in totality in the beginning.

The awareness of the Just nature of God, and our knowledge gained through imperience during meditation that assure deep within that we are in the company of the Divine enables us to follow this commandment as we progress in the path to Infinity..