Truth
The hunt for truth is universal. You and I try to understand ourselves better, and to find our personal truths. Science, philosophy, religion and psychology all pursue their own forms of truth, looking for the most perfect explanation. And why not? Truth brings understanding, power, happiness, and thousands of smaller benefits.
Our belief in truth seems to be hard-wired into the psyche. We easily make distinctions every day between true and false. Yet we also have a longing for absolute, capital-T, Truths, be they scientific or psychological or religious. Like medieval alchemists, we hope for the revelation that will eventually turn base metals into gold.
But where are those Truths? There are many pretenders to the throne, but can you name even one absolute Truth that has lasted? Thousands claim to know The Truth, religious and political leaders particularly. Millions base their lives on those claims, yet none of those truths survive the passage of time unscathed.
Truths are disturbingly mortal. They grow and die. They decay from their excesses, or fracture through rigidity. They are killed off by young, rampaging, alpha-male, truths. New gods enslave the old gods, and starve them to death. Scientists demolish their predecessors. Newton dethroned Aristotle, and was dethroned in turn by Einstein. Even our personal truths are fluid. What was absolutely true for me at twenty is not true now at fifty-five.
The philosopher Kant said the very idea of eternal truths is an illusion. He said The Truth is forever beyond our grasp because our mind is constructed to understand things only in certain highly selective ways. This means we can only see the world that we are capable of seeing, and Kant had the insight to see how immensely limited this is. We can never hope to understand the mind of God, or the absolute laws of creation. In fact, we can’t even understand the world as a dog would see it.
According to Kant, The Truth, no matter who declares it, is always a falsehood. Only relative truths can be true. Truths definitely exist, but they are always vulnerable to revision as new information and insights arise. The only truths that don’t change are usually the dead ones.
Eternal Truths might appear to be serene and beautiful refuges from uncertainty, or even harmless fantasies, but they do have a darker side. Truth is naturally combative: the very word implies its opposition to what it believes is false, ignorant and deceptive.True believers are often narrow-minded and intolerant.
Truths are usually established by crushing the opposition. History is full of brutal ideological wars, like the crusades and the cold war. The battle over what is true (and therefore “right”) goes on incessantly in the media and in society at large, and the individual viewpoint invariably suffers. As Emerson said, “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the independent thought of each one of its members.”
The Truth can turn people into monsters. When a small man talks about The Truth, he feels like a big man. Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Bush all felt they knew what was absolutely right and wrong for their countries, regardless of the human cost. Religious leaders typically speak with supreme assurance. We even hear that smug, sanctimonious, know-it-all tone of voice from our relatives, our friends and our workmates. Whenever I feel that “my truth” is also “The Truth”, it actually becomes false and toxic to both of us.
Pope Benedict rails against the idea of relative truths. He longs for the time when the Church was assumed to know everything there was to know about man, God and the world. He says that relativism leads to moral depravity and “anything goes”.
Yet truths remain matters of personal conviction and there are no divine yardsticks worthy of much respect. Much as you may admire a religious leader, would you trust the Pope or an imam or even the Dalai Lama to make a judgement on you?
In the Palestinian conflict, how could anyone decide if the Israeli truth is right, and the Palestinian truth is wrong, or vice versa? Both truths are being held with unshakeable conviction and with abundant evidence to support their viewpoints.
Yet although The Truth is a fiction - an archetypal symbol rather than a reality - to search for it is not at all a useless activity. Like Moses, we will never reach the promised land, but in seeking it, we find provisional truths that are infinitely “more true” than others.
This is how knowledge and personal wisdom develop. Relativity theory is “more true” than Newtonian physics. Today’s medicine is not perfect, but it is “more true” than medieval medicine. Modern psychology explains human misery far better than older ideas such as sin, karma and retribution.
Yet absolute truths do exist. These are the truths that are absolutely true for you at this time and place in your life. That is as true as any truth can be, and these are the truths that matter (I don’t much care if the Big Bang theory is proved wrong).
Those personal truths are hard to find, and it usually take years of trial-and-error. This is not surprising, since we start life as babies not knowing who we are, at the mercy of the invasive truths of others.
You find your own truths by asking: “What is good and bad for me?” What kind of food should I eat, what intake of coffee, alcohol, legal and illegal drugs, how much sleep, exercise, work and partying, what kind of people should I be with or avoid, where to live, what kind of livelihood and long-term relationships, how to express myself, how to balance the needs of self and others, and so on. Not to mention finding my personal values, life aspiration, political and cultural affiliations, and the right way out of catastrophes.
As a young man, I found it hard to “think” my way to self-understanding, because the language and concepts I used were not my own. All that changed on my first meditation retreat. I found a way of knowing myself without words - a way of “thinking” via the body, through sensation, feeling and image.
A meditation retreat has its psychological effect because you minimise all input - no talk, no books, no people and nothing to do - so that what is left over is just “you”. I found this approach to inner truth so revelatory that I spent a total of eighteen months in retreat at that time.
I found that the Buddha’s instructions were perfect for the task. First become calm and clear-minded he said, and then “just watch” the stream of consciousness. Recognise and identify the multitude of thoughts, sensations and feelings that make up your experience, without trying to manipulate any of them. Do this with great attention to detail throughout your whole day.
If you see things “just as they are”, he said, free of mental confusion, then deep insights are bound to arise. Although the conscious mind does the hard work, the answers seem to come from elsewhere. They come as flashes of understanding, small epiphanies, messages from the body, moments of joy or grace or illumination, profound convictions, streams of vision. These insights rarely stay for long, but their effects resonate deeply through the psyche.
Once you tap into this kind of direct knowing, it becomes harder (though not impossible!) to lie to yourself, or to be fooled by the half-truths of others. You know the ring of truth (and falsehood) when you hear it.
The Buddha said his techniques would lead to an understanding that went “beyond rule and ritual” - beyond all words, beliefs, outer forms and even codes of behaviour. I found that to be true. With these techniques, the Buddha found his truths, and I found mine. Yet meditation, with its strong emphasis on “being” and “knowing” in preference to “doing’, still has obvious shortcomings.
For the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, knowing your truth is not enough. You also need the nerve to act upon it. Otherwise, your search for knowledge is just a mind-game more suited to ashrams and universities and bedside reading.
Sartre said we should accept the enormous freedom we have to choose our every action. He said that we ultimately find ourselves through our actions, not through our thoughts, and that it was an act of “bad faith’ to deny how free we actually are. To lead what he called “an authentic life’ means you are willing to start or end a conversation, a meal, a task, a relationship or even a train of thought, at the right time, and take the consequences.
It sounds selfish, doesn’t it? It is so much easier to follow habit, or to fit into roles, or to do what people expect of you. Being social animals, we all want to belong. We usually get some reward if we fit in and are criticised if we don’t. Yet Sartre, tough as ever, spoke of “the waiter who was too much of a waiter” - the man who chose a role over a life. We all have to compromise at times, but we usually do so far more than we need to.
Sartre said we make hundreds of small, either/or, decisions every hour, mostly on automatic pilot. To act freely, and in harmony with your soul, you need to grasp the moment of choice that precedes each action. For example, as you walk to the shops, what do you “choose” to think about? Last night’s TV, a coming task, an old argument, the weather, your sore back, or all of them at once?
And are you walking in a tense or relaxed fashion? Are you holding your breath, or are you breathing easily? Your choice. If you notice that you are anxious or sad or elated, do you choose to amplify or minimise that emotion? Whatever you choose has its consequences.
“Just watch and know” says the Buddha. “Act consciously” says Sartre. We can easily combine these two injunctions. To lead an authentic life, we need to be calm and observant enough to see the options, and to then make conscious choices, again and again and again, throughout the day. This is a gentle, natural and deliberate way to find your own truths, and it is well worth the effort.