Truth needs to be established from the Earliest Age
In order to serve humanity and realize your innate divinity, you have to take truth, character and good behavior as your basis. Right from childhood make the necessary efforts to establish yourself in these noble virtues. Early in life, children are likely to make a number of small mistakes, either knowingly or unknowingly. Fearing that these errors will become known to the elders and that there might be some punishment or criticism, children will try to hide their mistakes.
In this way, from an early age, there is a tendency for the child to develop the habit of straying from truth, to avoid blame. Eventually, this habit will destroy the very foundation of life. Untruth will destroy one's humanness. Therefore, children should be strongly encouraged to always tell the truth no matter what, without fearing the consequences, be these consequences joyful and profitable to the child, or should they result in chastisement and punishment. Just as a foundation is very important for a mansion, just as roots are the very basis of a tree, so, truth is the very basis of life as a human being.
If you are wavering in truth, there will be no safety and no protection for your life. An example of strict adherence to truth can be seen in the life of a great king in ancient times. Because of his uncompromising stance on truth, he was forced by circumstances to give up his wife, his son and his kingdom. He considered truth as his penance. Even in the most difficult situations that assailed him, he was not prepared to tell an untruth or deviate from dharma. Eventually, he lost his kingdom. Banished and alone, he took up work in a cremation ground. When his son died, his wife brought the body to the cremation ground. Although he knew that it was his wife, and the body was that of his son, still he felt bound to discharge his duty as the person in charge of the cremation ground. Under the most trying tests, this king never gave up either telling the truth or following dharma. He considered truth and dharma like two eyes or like two wheels of a chariot or like two wings of a bird, each indispensable to the other.
