Truth and Fiction, Actuality and Belief

  • Summary: The world seems embroiled in chaos and discord, yet in every age there are seers who claim to have experienced Reality as a transcendent state of present bliss.
  • I began writing this post with an outline, thinking to add detail later, but if all the detail were added it would be book length, so here is the outline. (The book I wrote on Amazon earlier, is titled “How Do I Find Inner Peace.”)
  • People tend to be gullible, driven by emotion to the exclusion of logic. Reason and revelation are not antagonistic.
  • There is a wonderful aspect to Mind that is sometimes entirely unrealized. Meditation is very simple. It simply means finding the “off” switch for thought, so you don’t follow every random thought, but allow the mind to be still and present. The Bible states: “Be still and know that I am God.” Having the mind be quiet opens the understanding to ideas that are not finite.
  • In Alduous Huxley’s book The Perennial Philosophy, Paul Tillich’s phrase defines God as the “ultimate Ground of all being.” I like that.
  • Rather than “Do you believe in God?” the question should be “What do you believe God to be?”  One might say “An opiate of the masses” as did Karl Marx, still the question provides a more open possibility to explore the nature of the Infinite. God is the unifying and organizing Principle of the universe. God is One.
  • The Yogis have a branch of inquiry called “Gnani Yoga” and I read Yogi Ramacharaka’s books while still a youth. In it he describes that the materialist believes all that exists is matter, yet upon closer observation matter is resolved into energy. I usually think about Albert Einsteins’s famous equation linking mass to the celestial speed of light that made it possible to convert small amounts of hydrogen into very large amounts of energy in regard to matter being resolved into energy. And finally Yogi Ramacharaka describes that upon closer examination, energy is resolved into Mind. It took me about fifty years to understand and actualize that one.
  • Belief is fallible. You may be mistaken. We believed the sun rises and sets over a flat earth. Sensory evidence supports this, too.
  • There is such a thing as Truth irrespective of belief, beyond opinion.
  • Understanding Truth is very powerful. The Master said it will make you free.
  • The world seems embroiled in chaos and discord, yet in every age there are seers who claim to have experienced Reality as a transcendent state of present bliss. Zen terms it “Satori.” Yoga calls it “Samadhi.” Christianity calls it “The Kingdom of Heaven” – “Lo, not here or there” “The Kingdom of God is within you.” Buddhism calls it “Nirvana.” Richard Maurice Bucke, M.D., experienced it while nearly freezing to death crossing the Rocky Mountains around 1902, and wrote a book about “Cosmic Consciousness.” He maintained that the human race is evolving from simple consciousness, to self consciousness, to cosmic consciousness, and gave numerous examples. Psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote a short book called “Religions, Values and Peak Experiences” where he described “Self Actualization” and said often children experience it spontaneously. Mary Baker Eddy wrote several books and in the preface to one, dedicated it to “Sincere Seekers for Truth.”
  • photo by Pablo García Saldaña

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