Truth is a controversial concept. Some deny its existence altogether – which would be a truth in itself. Others see it as a fundamental belief, call it "knowledge," and have a hard time understanding why others seem to overlook it. But everyone understands that there can be a difference between what one says, what one believes, and what one knows. And which of these takes precedence when it matters.
What
matters?
If you know
you are sitting on a chair and someone else comes in and says you are sitting
on a ball, how can you tell which is true? By what you feel as you sit? By what
you see? Or by what you remember from the last time you came out of the
restroom? Probably all three. Three points of view against one will have to do.
But if you
meditate blindfolded and haven't been outside for a long time, are you so sure?
Yes? You can still feel the ground that, in your experience, belongs to a
chair. You allow that oneness of feeling and experience to take precedence
again. The other person is wrong.
What
happens when he puts the seat thing under you blindfolded and it feels funny?
He talks about "ball" again. You hardly have anything to compare it
with.
Now you
have doubts and are inclined to believe him, aren't you? Trusting others now
counts more than personal impressions.
And if you don't trust him? Then your only option
is to take off the blindfold and make your own impression. Why do you prefer
that impression? Because it is closer
to you, the affected person. Therefore, it is more intense, more credible than
the other person's talk.
It now
turns out to be a futuristic new piece of seating furniture, the classification
of which is open to debate. Fortunately, another colleague arrives and thinks
it looks ball-like. The colleague from next door also arrives and defines it as
a ball. And it will probably go down in office history as such, because that is
the summary of the majority of points of view.
If, on the
other hand, you insist on sitting in a chair, you will eventually find it
difficult to be taken seriously. This is because you are not in harmony with the general perception.
Nor was the first ball representative in harmony with your triple chair
impression (feel, see, remember), about which you were probably right at the
time.
So what is
true? What most points of view can be summarized as, and what is closer to the
person affected.
But what if
one contradicts the other? Here it is important to investigate why this is the
case and what the greater harmony would consist of. If someone wants to find
the truth, he must be open to as many
points of view as possible and include them all. By staying close to the object
of investigation, he has a good chance of crystallizing the best possible
knowledge.
If he can convince others in this way, the summary
of points of view will shift closer to his own. "Obviously he is
right." But if he can only convince them later, he may have been right in
retrospect, because the others had
restricted the flexibility of their
own point of view too much – and now realize it. This is how we work our way
toward an ever more comprehensive truth.
This text is an excerpt from the book
Truthfulness. The Consciousness that Creates Reality
