A woman sat on a bench and saw a lone apple tree standing on a hill not far away. “That is a beautiful tree.”, she thought to herself. Then, a friend came along and sat next to her. “Isn’t that tree over on the hill beautiful?”, she asked him. “It’s true, it is a beautiful tree.” the man said.
They sat silently for a moment, then the woman said, “I love how the red apples stand out from the green leaves.” The man, however, was colorblind and could not distinguish the apples from the leaves. Still, he nodded in agreement. “Hmm. Yes.”
After another moment, the man said that the tree looked like it was about 10 meters tall. The woman, however, was from a country where they measure distance in feet, so she didn’t have a good idea of how tall it was in meters. Still, she nodded in agreement. “That looks about right to me.”, she said.
They continued to look at the tree. As they did, they entertained thoughts about the tree. They wondered if the apples were ripe enough to eat, then imagined themselves taking a big, sweet bite of one. They imagined laying under the shade of the tree, looking up at the leaves and listening as the wind passed through them.
Then, suddenly, they watched a man walked up the hill to the tree. The man then grabbed the tree by the trunk…and carried it away. It’s wasn’t a real tree, just a cut-out, like the ones used on a movie set.
The man was perturbed. He had created an entire story about the tree in his mind and now it was taken away. “What?”, he thought. “Who is that guy? That’s not right! They shouldn’t leave those things around to fool people!”
The woman, on the other hand, laughed out loud. “Seeing is believing, but that doesn’t make it true.”, she said.
When the woman saw the tree, an image of it was projected onto the retina of her eyes. The image was then communicated to her brain. Her brain analyzed the image, compared it and matched it to memories of other similar images named “tree”. Her mind then made a “logical conclusion” that the object was a tree. The conclusion was accurate, but not true.
At first, the woman found empirical truth, the truth that comes from thought which is based on sensory input, in this case, sight. Even though we consider this to be the highest level of truthfulness, as in the story, it is still prone to error. This is why the phrases, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” and “I couldn’t believe my eyes!” are both used so often.
When she asked her friend if he could see the tree and he said that he could and identified it as a tree, the same tree, they created a truth, a truth based on agreement. In reality, all so-called truths are actually agreements. It is these agreements that allow humans to interact with each other and create societies. And, there are many kinds of agreements.
There is agreement by deduction or logic, when something “just makes sense”.
There is agreement by popularity, which says that when many people adhere to an agreement, it will be generally considered to be true.
There is agreement by association. If a person is told something by someone they hold in high esteem or has a history of being correct, the person will be more likely to accept the information as true.
There is agreement by identity. A person is much more likely to believe that something is true if the information comes from someone with a shared identity: gender, family, nationality, culture, religion, status, and so on.
And then, there is egoic agreement. The ego is that part of the human psyche that wants. Wants to be better, stronger, smarter, more…more than anyone else. The ego creates thoughts of an imaginary past or future event in which you are either diminished or made to be more. Your body, which does not know the difference between an imaginary thought and one arising in the present moment, reacts accordingly. The ego is why it is so important to be able to separate yourself from your thoughts, because separating yourself from your thoughts allows you to watch the ego instead of it taking you over.
An egoic agreement is one in which something is true simply because…you want it to be true.
But, not only do we all have an ego, we also have collective egos. When a person identifies with an egoic group, the effects on that individual are magnified. When you hear of an attack on a person in your group, you feel like you were the one who was attacked. There are acts that an individual would never think of doing, but will commit as part of a strongly unconscious egoic group.
The ego, and our inability to separate ourselves from it, is the main cause of suffering in our world today. Ego, left unobserved, creates insanity.
When an idea combines multiple kinds of truth, it becomes more powerful still. A thought that is shared by a large number of people, people who themselves are part of a deeply unconscious egoic collective, and are led by a person they hold in high esteem, the result is baffling, catastrophic and is the world we live in today.
So, the question is, is there an absolute truth?
As human beings, we have sensory perception. We are equipped with organs that allow us to see, hear, touch, taste and feel. However, when an image falls onto your retina, something happens before your brain can analyze and name it. You become aware of it. You become aware that it…is.
Every living creature on the planet has some level of awareness. In a way, even your phone has awareness. When you say, “Hey Siri…”, how does the phone know you said anything?
What makes humans different, what, in fact, makes us human is that we not only have awareness, we are awareness. We know that we that we exist as a completely unique individual being.
We are aware of everything that we can sense, but we can have only one point of focus at a time. For example, you are always aware of your left elbow, but it didn’t think about it until you heard this sentence.
The choice of the of where your attention goes is made by the essential you, the being part of human being, pure awareness. Every moment, your awareness creates your universe. Everything that you perceive without naming, without thought…is the absolute truth.
This means that the absolute truth is purely objective. Every human has their own absolute truth. It also means that the absolute truth exists only in the present moment.
We need the truths of agreement, not only to navigate our world, but also to create bridges of communication and co-operation with other human beings. We all may not be looking at the same word, but at least, thanks to the agreements we make, we are on the same page…most of the time.
But it is vital we are become able to separate ourselves from our thoughts and access the absolute truth that is the present moment. The gap between perception and thought is the place from which true creativity arises. As Eckhart Tolle writes: “All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.”
The absolute truth? It’s a no-brainer.
I’m Tony Edwards
Peace
