The Truth

Today’s post is long and demand­ing, but its con­tent can have immense power for you and even our world. You may want to book­mark it or print it our for future ref­er­ence. You are, of course, always wel­come to send me ques­tions about any part of its content.

What is the truth? How can we know that is true and what is false?

Human being are, more than any­thing else, story-tellers. We tell our­selves and oth­ers thou­sands of sto­ries about the nature of our lives and of life in gen­eral. Many of our most com­pelling sto­ries are handed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. One of the keys of lib­er­a­tion is real­iz­ing that what we are telling about our­selves and our world is really a story. But, like every­thing else, the qual­ity of our sto­ries vary and it’s this vari­ance, that we will be explor­ing in this chapter.

Lib­er­a­tion has much more to do with our capac­ity to know and live the truth, than any ego and child-like fix­a­tion with enlight­en­ment. The over-arching desire for per­sonal enlight­en­ment is one of those ego-fixations that we will need to lay aside, if we are ever going to live a life that is lib­er­ated from that which is false.

The very word, “truth”, con­jures up dozens of sto­ries. The most com­monly encoun­tered sto­ries about truth revolve around the two great polar­i­ties of expe­ri­ence; objec­tiv­ity and sub­jec­tiv­ity. Is truth a purely per­sonal and sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence or is it pos­si­ble to express sto­ries about our world that pos­sess the qual­i­ties of objec­tiv­ity? Is there a way to tran­scend this polar­ity through an explo­ration of that which is observed?

The term “truth” has received pretty harsh treat­ment in the world of phi­los­o­phy, espe­cially, it seems, east­ern phi­los­o­phy. We often encounter expres­sions like, “noth­ing is real” or “every­thing is in cease­less change” or “the truth can­not be known by the mind”. These expres­sions sug­gest, quite strongly, that the quest for truth is one that is both hope­less and vain. If noth­ing real exists, then what’s the point?

I would like to chal­lenge that notion.

In the world of rel­a­tive exis­tence, it is sim­ply not pos­si­ble to live a rea­son­able life with­out some idea about what is true and what is false. In my own expe­ri­ence the sin­gle most pow­er­ful expres­sion of philo­sophic excel­lence was expressed by Krish­na­murti when he said that the path to wis­dom is the one that sees the false as the false. And when the false is seen as the false, the truth arises in the very col­lapse of that which is false.

So let’s see if we can develop an approach to defin­ing what makes some­thing true. What we will dis­cover is that truth, itself, is rel­a­tive. The search for a final or per­fect truth is, indeed, hope­less and vain, but in the ever-changing flow of life, there are path­ways to find­ing what is ‘more’ true rel­a­tive to what is ‘less’ true. There is a method we can use and it is this method that we will learn.

Just as the strength, coor­di­na­tion, and vigor of our bod­ies pre­dicts for our capac­ity as phys­i­cal beings per­form­ing phys­i­cal tasks with rel­a­tive lev­els of excel­lence, just so the rigor and power of our minds to inves­ti­gate the world for rel­a­tive truths dif­fer­en­ti­ates the strong minds from those that are weak. And just like our bod­ies, if we are lazy and if we fill our minds with junk, in the form of unchal­lenged and unin­ves­ti­gated beliefs, relent­less sub­jec­tiv­ity, second-hand “knowl­edge”, we will fail to live our lives to their full poten­tial. The qual­ity of our bod­ies ought to be mir­rored by the qual­ity of our minds.

We will see that just as our bod­ies vary in their phys­i­cal capac­i­ties, our minds vary as well. And just as our bod­ies are not phys­i­cally equal, our minds are also not equal. But just as we can exer­cise and prac­tice to improve the strength, coor­di­na­tion, and vigor of our bod­ies, we can also train our minds to think with greater pre­ci­sion and with a much enhanced capac­ity to see the false as the false.

Aware­ness

Keen aware­ness is the foun­da­tion of our exer­cise. The more open we are to the sen­sory expe­ri­ence of our world and our being, the closer we can get to what is true. As sci­en­tists of the heart mind, we need to train our­selves in alert awareness.

Aware­ness is always avail­able to us.  But our minds tend to be lazy. We must awaken to the domain of aware­ness if we are ever to see and expe­ri­ence what is true. The obsta­cle is never the absence of aware­ness. Rather, the obsta­cle is our own indif­fer­ent men­tal atti­tudes that are asleep to their very world.

Come alive to your senses. Instead of always forc­ing and plug­ging our own sto­ries on what is seen, instead allow your­self to open up to what is here right now with a mind that is open. In the zen tra­di­tion, this is often referred to as “don’t know” mind. But this expres­sion doesn’t refer to a sep­a­rate per­son who doesn’t know. Rather, it refers to a qual­ity of open explo­ration. The more aligned we are to what is already here, the more effort­less can we allow our­selves to flow with the very Tao of daily existence.

If the drive to be alert becomes tire­some, then just get a feel for that. Being open to the uni­verse of aware­ness is much more about the qual­ity of being open than it is about effort and force. It may take a lit­tle prac­tice to adjust our habits, but once we get a feel­ing of sim­ple open­ness, then aware­ness will do all the rest.

But we will be blind to any­thing that is real when an under­ly­ing belief obscures our vision. That is why the coura­geous and rig­or­ous inves­ti­ga­tion of our beliefs is really the work of the Lib­er­a­tion Jour­ney. We need to cease­lessly ask our­selves, is this belief true? How do I know it’s true? Is it some­thing that my “spir­i­tual” ego wants and needs to believe as true? Is it some that my per­son­ally iden­ti­fied self wants and needs to believe as true? Is it some­thing I read from an author­ity that through my loy­alty and obe­di­ence I must take to be true? The real heavy lift­ing of this jour­ney is the decon­struc­tion of our most cher­ished beliefs. Just raise the ques­tions and then let hon­est and open aware­ness do the rest.

Rigor

Just as in phys­i­cal exer­cise, there needs to be an intel­lec­tual rigor to our work. In this world of soft minds this is where the Jour­ney can get a lit­tle scary. Our egos don’t want to be chal­lenged. They will tend to take the path trav­elled by sim­i­larly lazy and uncour­a­geous souls. This is the well worn path of con­for­mity. If we are to truly be war­riors of the real and the true, we must be will­ing to make our own path. The ego fears real work and never wants to be chal­lenged. In this way the Lib­er­a­tion Jour­ney pays lit­tle heed to the child-like voice of ego. It is not of the body, but of Lib­er­a­tion itself!

Thus there is a part of this work that will take gen­uine com­mit­ment and rigor. But there is a method through this thornier domain and it is this method that I will now present to you.

I should warn that what fol­lows is not, nec­es­sar­ily, easy to under­stand. You might want to print out this sec­tion for future study.

While we can never know final or per­ma­nent truths, we can, through a lit­tle sim­ple, but rig­or­ous explo­ration, get closer to what is true, but first we need to present some def­i­n­i­tion of what we mean to be objec­tively true. Remem­ber, we are not talk­ing about sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence here. Sub­jec­tive truth is per­sonal to the indi­vid­ual body/mind. The sub­jec­tive self is lim­ited to that of per­sonal expe­ri­ence. Sub­jec­tive truth has much more to do with pref­er­ences than it does to truth.

So what do we mean when we say that some­thing is true?

Because we can never define any ulti­mate or per­ma­nent truths, the best we can say about our world is that we can for­mu­late and present the­o­ries about our this uni­verse that we know as home. So what we are really talk­ing about is how can we deter­mine the best the­ory about the world?

Just because we are using the term the­ory doesn’t mean that it’s just a the­ory. The best the­ory is a propo­si­tion of con­sid­er­able power and significance.

What are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a best the­ory? There are two. One, the best the­ory accom­mo­dates most of the con­di­tions that are observed through aware­ness. The the­ory of global cli­mate change needs to explain nearly all the con­di­tions that are observed about he world’s chang­ing envi­ron­ment. It must be able to explain a very broad range of observed phe­nom­ena, from chang­ing ocean cur­rents to the reduc­tion in the world’s glac­i­ers and ice caps. Cor­re­spond­ingly a weak the­ory will fail to account for many of the con­di­tions that are described and, in part, explained by the bet­ter the­ory. For exam­ple, the The­ory of Evo­lu­tion is the most pow­er­ful story on the struc­tural changes of organ­isms and species through­out the his­tory of life on Earth because it incor­po­rates and offers com­pelling expla­na­tions about a very broad range of phe­nom­ena, includ­ing changes in envi­ron­ment, rela­tion­ships between plants and ani­mals, mod­i­fi­ca­tions in DNA/genetic struc­tures, species pop­u­la­tions, habi­tat change, and nearly every­thing else that is linked to the rise and fall of species. What makes a the­ory com­pelling is that it is based on ver­i­fi­able and testable evi­dence. The very best the­o­ries vir­tu­ally elim­i­nate the need to depend on any belief. If evi­dence is brought to bare that con­tra­dicts the the­ory, then we must return to the draw­ing boards to either account for the newly found evi­dence or throw our cher­ished the­ory into the trash can.

The other aspect of the best the­ory is that it accounts for most of the vari­a­tion about a series of linked phe­nom­ena. This is not an easy state­ment to under­stand so let me explain it through an exam­ple. Sci­en­tific explo­rations are designed to show link­ages between var­i­ous phe­nom­ena. In the 1950s sci­en­tists (using aware­ness) observed a link between smok­ing and lung can­cer. They couldn’t explain the link (because their only evi­dence was obser­va­tion), but they were able to observe an asso­ci­a­tion between the amount of smok­ing and the like­li­hood of lung can­cer. The link could not be explained because just because phe­nom­ena appear to arise in ways that are cor­re­lated does not, nec­es­sar­ily, mean that they are causally linked. For exam­ple, we might observe that tor­na­does invari­ably destroy trailer parks, but we can­not say that tor­na­does cause trailer parks or vice versa. So they looked deeper and in their explo­rations, they dis­cov­ered com­pelling evi­dence show­ing that tar and nico­tine, key ele­ments of cig­a­rette smoke, were nec­es­sary for the for­ma­tion of can­cer­ous tumors in the lungs. As they col­lected more and more evi­dence and were able to repli­cate sim­i­lar tumors in lab mice using the same chem­i­cals as found in cig­a­rette smoke, they were even­tu­ally empow­ered to present a story about the rela­tion­ship between smok­ing and lung can­cer. It was the best story because it not only showed a direct con­nec­tion between the chem­i­cals and the for­ma­tion of tumors, but it was also able to make high prob­a­bil­ity pre­dic­tions about rates of smok­ing and the sta­tis­ti­cal like­li­hood of get­ting lung can­cer. The the­ory was so pow­er­ful that it could pre­dict the prob­a­bil­ity of the inci­dence when that amount of tar and nico­tine was fac­tored into the equation.

You will notice that I used the term “rates” and “prob­a­bil­ity”. As said, there are no final or per­ma­nent truths. The best we can do is to present the most capa­ble the­ory, which is the best story human beings can come up with to explain why and how some­thing occurs. Thus the story link­ing smok­ing and lung can­cer was espe­cially pow­er­ful because it explained, bet­ter than any other the­ory, the largest range of vari­a­tion. It takes into account vari­ance in the prob­a­bil­ity of any one indi­vid­ual to get lung can­cer. Because the human body is so com­plex, the abil­ity of this the­ory to be always right about every­one is impos­si­ble. But the more right it is than any com­pet­ing the­ory, the more com­pelling is its story. The the­ory does not always suc­ceed on the level of the indi­vid­ual. Thus a heavy smoker may not get lung can­cer and a non-smoker can get lung can­cer, but the the­ory works well on the level of whole pop­u­la­tions. It explains most, but not all, of the variation!

Qual­ity sci­ence is always open to new infor­ma­tion and new meth­ods of mea­sure­ment (aware­ness). So its the­o­ries are never fixed. For cen­turies the best minds were con­vinced that the sun revolved around the earth. But the astronomer Coper­ni­cus, using inno­v­a­tive approaches to obser­va­tion (aware­ness) was able to show that it was, in fact, the earth that revolved around the sun. His the­ory was able to account for vari­ances in cli­mate, sea­son­al­ity, and the length of days and nights through the year. Coper­ni­cus’ dis­cov­ery rep­re­sented a par­a­digm shift. Now, even though our body-based obser­va­tions sug­gest that the sun revolves around the earth, more sophis­ti­cated forms of mea­sure­ment show exactly the oppo­site. This is the power of keen obser­va­tion and the rig­or­ous use of our extra­or­di­nary minds. Of course, not every­one is a Copernicus.

All of this may sound overly com­plex and chal­leng­ing, but it needn’t be per­ceived this way. There are many times in our aver­age day that we are called upon to see if some­thing is true. If we attune our­selves to being open to the best the­ory, then we will be in a far bet­ter chance to stand with both our feet solidly perched on the foun­da­tion of truth and knowl­edge. But there is some­thing more here — some­thing that has been alluded to sev­eral times in this passage.

The best the­o­ries are those that account for the most con­nec­tion. Through our explo­ration for the truth we can see that every­thing is truly con­nected, but in ways that can be quite com­plex and even mys­te­ri­ous. No mat­ter how lim­ited our knowl­edge may be, the real­iza­tion of con­nec­tion is eas­ily seen. The very eyes and minds you are using right now to read this arti­cle are the con­se­quence of bil­lions of years of evo­lu­tion and adap­ta­tion. The eyes of ancient dinosaurs run through your own eyes right now. The shin­ing present is built on the age­less past. Those same atoms and mol­e­cules filled their ancient uni­verse, fill our uni­verse now. Our breath is their breath.

Return­ing to Krish­na­murti, we can see that that which is false is pre­cisely that which ignores the truth of con­nec­tion. Truly no per­son is an island. No thought or feel­ing stands alone. The web of per­fect con­nec­tion is so much more than a pretty sound­ing phrase. This one­ness is the very essence of our non-conceptual exis­tence right now and right here. That is not merely an  or “my” opin­ion. It is not sub­jec­tive pref­er­ence. It is the liv­ing truth. Only igno­rance would resist or reject it.

Thus our Jour­ney to Lib­er­a­tion means our Jour­ney to liv­ing as this con­nec­tion, not as a wish or hope, but as a liv­ing truth. Our ideas about sep­a­ra­tion or noth­ing less than igno­rance. They fail to stand up to the sim­plest intel­lec­tual inves­ti­ga­tions. You are, clearly, not what you think you are. You are the uni­verse express­ing itself as your seem­ingly indi­vid­ual form. You are the bil­lions of years of change and evo­lu­tion that led to this very moment. Your form, phys­i­cal and non-physical will cast its shadow through the lim­it­less future — because every­thing comes together now.

The more aligned we can be with that which is clearly true, the more we will flow with the Tao of the uni­verse. Aligned in har­monic con­nec­tion, the uni­verse lives as truth through us and as us. Words fail to describe this daz­zling truth of this real­iza­tion. It can man­i­fest for you as you drop your notions of sep­a­ra­tion and let the truth of uni­ver­sal con­nec­tion to shine brightly as the old edi­fice of igno­rance and sep­a­ra­tion col­lapses in the light of Connection.

Did you find this infor­ma­tion help­ful? If you did, con­sider donat­ing.

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