Firstly, there's a menu item on the left Articles/Truth which is well worth investigating.

So, truth. I think this can be a bit of a minefield. When you mention the word "true", as with most mental concepts up comes its opposite, namely "false". So immediately we are into a field of opposites, duality and separation.

How was your truth arrived at? By intellectual reasoning or by an emotional gut feel maybe? In the former case, the intellect is now all set to dismiss or look down on those who have reached the opposite conclusions; in the latter case, a strong emotional reaction will likely ensue if your view is challenged by people or events. And, of course, both approaches to the truth can operate together to build an even more firmly held view. So, what do we then have? Attachment and resistance.

Another type of truth is "revealed" truth, as is typically found in mjor religions. Here we find dogmatic assertion of the literal word of the teaching of the particular prophet in question, or more accurately, the interpretation of it proposed by a long generation of officers of that religion. So, again, attachment and resistance.

In all these cases, the ego, either intellect or emotions or both, loves the "them and us" aspect of truth/falsehood. It loves to use such differences to establish an "other", a not-me, not-us, to whom it can set itself in opposition. With the opposition comes judgement: we can now feel superior to the other, and our ego is inflated with that self-serving belief. The idea that "we are all one", as proposed behind this site, is clearly incompatible with such views.

Interestingly, again as with quantum mechanics, science has in the last century developed a more nuanced approach to truth than the bipolarity of true and not-true = false. The most recent of these is fuzzy logic, where the domain of values is the continuum of real numbers in the range [0.0,1.0] unlike the case of Boolean logic where the domain is {false, true}. Despite its name, fuzzy logic has had many useful real-world applications, more here. The other, and somewhat older example, of issues with logical truth are those identified by Kurt Gödel in his two incompleteness theorems. These effectively undermine any previous belief in the perfectability of any highly logical system, more here.

How true or false is the above? You choose. Or not...

Yes I share your sentiment (Liberation) on truth being a proverbial minefield - I've been 'blown up' in this one many times (so to speak).
I once had a very interesting discussion with a guy who held the position that there was no ultimate ONE truth, that we each hold a unique truth.

I definitely agree with the latter, that we each hold a unique version of the truth however, even if we are each living in a separate but overlapping universe where each truth is different, even this scenario must have one ultimate truth ie the truth is that we all live in separate but overlapping universes where each truth is different.

So to me there are two truths. There is absolute truth - the zero sum total of all things (everything/nothing in Buddhism) and relative truth - our experience of absolute truth.

In my truth, absolute truth cannot be experienced because when experience arises we move from the absolute into the realm of the relative - "this" and "that". Where you have "this" and "that", you have created definition which means that what you are defining and what you experience of this definition must be less than everything/nothing.

However, in my truth, there is a place where the experience of something which is very close to everything/nothing (infinite potential) is so close that the difference between them is negligable. So I get to experience what is inexperiencable - I carry this experience within me at all times. I believe it is what the Buddha called 'nirvana' in his truth (but since I am not having his experience, I cannot know that for sure).

In my truth, what everyone else is searching for in their own unique relative universe is this experience of nirvana. The paradox is that while we are searching, we are searching for something. Even if we find the something, it will not be what we were looking for because what we are looking for cannot be defined within relative experience - 'something' is not the zero sum total of all things.

So really truth is just like bouncing a basketball through a minefield. You don't want to hit anything because if you do, it will probably explode in your face!

Best wishes

Chris

In my opinion "truth" is another one of those human concepts we use to frame the world in that really doesn't apply. I think it comes from the belief that there is one absolute reality that we all can see, hence only one true way that things could be.

I have come to believe that we really don't know that "reality" is. Two people can observe the same thing and come back with completely different ideas about what it is that they saw. Often times it seems this observation is "colored" by one's own judgements, prejudices and beliefs.

There have been studies that show that peoples memories of "reality" can vary widely and even not match "hard evidence" like photographs and tape recordings.

In my opinion, the way we understand and interpret the world is affected by our judgements, prejudices and beliefs much more than we realize. When you get down to it, certain concepts or ways of categorizing the world, don't really exist - they only exist in our heads: Truth, Good/Evil, self-worth, etc.

-- Spur

Hi Spur,

In many ways I agree with you. That our individual truth is dependant on the internal model of the world we hold, as the Bhagavad Gita says "as a man thinks so he is". This is because (in my truth) the universe and our minds are inseparable - the observer and that which is being observed are one. Consequently the universe is shaped by our thoughts and since we each hold different thoughts and beliefs, our individual view of the universe is likely to be unique for each.

However many awakened people who have reached this understanding also went one stage further and said that even if everyone has a unique truth to them, there must be one underlying absolute truth. For example, 'that everyone single one of us has a unique truth'.

Also if you contemplate deeply the point at which the One Life through the universe became aware of itself and then contemplate that the One Life is all there is, you'll also likely reach the conclusion (like many others) that the One Life is the infinite potential (all that is) before any experience arises at all - if you like 'the zero sum total of all things'. What I mean by this is that for there to be 'up' there has to be 'down', hot cold, male female etc etc etc. This means if you took the total of all experience through the universe, experience would cancel itself out (the zero sum total).

When you contemplate the One Life deeply, you will discover that time and space are an illusion. That there is no beginning to the One Life and therefore no end. So we, as unique expressions of the One Life, experiencing linear time (past, present and future) are living in a distortion of this one truth.

It also means that we as the One Life cannot be experienced - if we are infinite potential before any experience arises, how can we know ourselves?

However here comes a divine dichotomy - we can know everything we are not and experience letting go of everything we are not - then we get to experience this absolute truth.

They say there are many paths up the mountain but the view from the top remains the same. In a similar way, in my truth there are many truths to the one absolute truth. However no amount of brain power will get us through that gateway - it has to be directly experienced.

Best wishes

Chris

I thought I'd come back to a point raised earlier about absolute and relative truth. It has been suggested that the two "are to be integrated".

The statement itself "are to be integrated" suggests the presence of an internal witnesser efforting (albeit slightly) to integrate what is already integrated.

This is what I mean when I refer to the 'super ego'. I observe a number of 'spiritual leaders' (gurus if you like) who are able, through immense inner stillness, to expand their consciousness. In so doing, anyone who is sitting in their audience will tend to attune and entrain to this expansion.

With the expansion comes the possibility of all manner of 'God-like' experiences - as we attune to this unity consciousness the illusion of the relative universe bursts like a bubble and it becomes possible to shape 'miraculous experiences'.

However there is a serious risk of being deluded by these experiences. A super ego can form internally - something that looks like the experience of absoluteness but it is just a mirror of it.

When this happens, the super ego can head off on a journey into an ever expanding universe (expanded mind as some refer to it) continually evolving and yet continually lost.

I agree with Ken Wilbur on this point - check out 'One taste'. The experience of enlightenment is an awesomely ordinary state of perception that is always present in the background. Every one of us experiences it but it is so ordinary that we tend to miss it - it gets associated with an experience and so we disappear off into the universe once more searching for another taste of that experience.

The taste of absoluteness comes from watching inner attachments (to a desired outcome or state) and resting in them. When we have surrendered all attachments, even the attachment to not being attached , then the inner witnesser dissolves into pure witnessing and we are completely liberated.

Best wishes

Chris

Thank you all for helping me to gain a deeper understanding on my initial question regarding 'truth'! After sifting through the responses here, a lot of contemplation and then finally giving up trying to understand, I feel that I am beginning to understand what truth is!

We do all have an an individual experience of the world. No one can tell us what our own truth is. And there is ALSO "TRUTH" - unchanging, absolutely, no matter what, beyond definition, it just simply IS!

Thanks so much!
Turtle