WHAT IS TRUTH?
The beginning of the commitment to Truth is in radical revulsion to any confinement by the destiny or the limits that are or could be set before us.
But, even so, the Realization of Truth is not attained by any reaction to the present conditions of existence.
Whatever is the Truth, it must be True at this moment.
It must be always already True, both in and prior to every moment of space-time.
Therefore, the Realization of Truth is not attained in the search for Truth, since seeking must necessarily bypass the Truth in this moment in order to pursue it as an eventual Goal of action in time and space.
Whatever can be attained by seeking and strategy is necessarily an occasion, an incident, a form of experience, space-time, or time-space itself.
But Truth must be the Truth of even that incident or Attainment.
Therefore, there is no Realization of Truth other than the presumption of Truth.
The Way of Truth
- This is so. The Way of Truth is not itself identical to any progressive or summary process of experience.
- But it is a matter of radical insight into the process of experience in the present moment.
- This insight is itself a formless presumption. It is the presumption of Truth.
- This insight or presumption, projected moment to moment, is the Way of Truth.
- It is Sacrifice into Truth, or the Condition that is Truth.
What is Truth?
- What is Truth? "I" may find out or know all kinds of facts or truths about any thing, or everything, or the whole world.
- But I may never discover or know what that thing, or everything, or any thing is.
- No matter how much time passes, or how much knowledge is attained, this fundamental Ignorance can never be changed to any degree.
- This Ignorance is Truth and the Way of Truth.
- It is the Truth or Condition of any thing and everything.
- It confounds the dream of knowing. It is Awake.
- It is Intuition, prior to all knowledge.
- The radical Realization of this Ignorance under all conditions is the presumption of Truth.
- Such is Enlightenment or God-Realization.
Ignorance
- That which is Revealed in Ignorance, or perfect Sacrifice, is the Truth or Condition of all conditions.
- It is Paradox.
- It is Revealed in the moment of every condition and all conditions, but it may not be defined or grasped in itself.
- Those who are Awakened by Grace, through hearing, are a constant party to this Revelation, but it is never known in itself over against anything else.
- Fear and revulsion account for most of the spiritual adventure of mankind.
- The "Truth" that is offered to us, independent of perfect insight or Revelation, is an Idol, high or low.
- That which may be sought and found is not God.
- The vulgar world is an offering of elemental Idols, but fear and revulsion may escape what is vulgar, and then what is proclaimed as Truth is subtler than the elements.
- Spiritual proclamations offer us Idols of inwardness, Idols of the better part, Idols of highness, Idols of the subtlest and highest.
- At last the Idol of Origin is offered.
- Since we are what we appear to be, the Creator of it would seem to be Truth.
- Therefore, men worship and seek visions of the Creator.
- But we do not worship Truth as Creator, Origin, or Source.
- We worship the Creator, the Origin, the Making Source as God or Truth.
- Truth is valued as a way of valuing or preserving the world and our pleasurable independence or invulnerability.
- We worship the Creator because we value and cling to the world and our present and future life or self.
- We are afraid.
- Our worship of the Origin, the subtlest, the highest, the high or higher, the better part, or what is within is an expression of the same motive that pursues the Idols of vulgar experience, the Idols of sensation and release.
- It is not Truth that is attained or even sought by all this seeking.
- Survival, not Truth, is what is sought by all of it.
- Seeking is itself survival. It is action as meditation on self.
- Seeking is self-possession, not possession by God, or Truth, or the Real.
- It is not God or Truth that is valued by the seeker.
- The seeker is afraid, and he values continued delight.
- He turns to pleasures of the body, within the body, above the body, or at the Origin of the body, in hope of continuation.
- He turns because he values what he is, not what is Truth.
- But he does not know what a single thing is, not even his own self.
- If this Ignorance were Realized to be the present Truth of the motivated self, then Truth and not any goal or Idol would determine the Way.
- Therefore, the matter of Truth is the matter of present insight or penetration of the circle of experience, seeking, and self-possession.
The Condition of Conditions
- Truth is the Condition of conditions. It is not itself a condition.
- It has no independent objective or subjective existence.
- Whatever is presently arising as a spontaneous condition, Truth is not other or objective, nor inner and subjective relative to it.
- Truth is simply the Condition of the present condition.
- Truth, or the Condition of present conditions, is always already the case.
- Therefore, the Realization of Truth is not to be gained by reaction to any or all present conditions, nor by any progressive search to attain other or superior conditions.
- The Realization of Truth is a matter of radical, present insight into the arising process of existence.
- The Realization is not progressive but instant.
- But on the basis of such Realization or insight, moment to moment, the Revelation of existence in Truth is never-ending, like a succession of infinities.
The Conventional Offering of Truth
- The conventional offering of "Truth" is of an experiential object or Object.
- It is outside, or inside, or upside, or Topside, or Not-side.
- It is a part. It is in a certain direction.
- It is found over time and progressively.
- It is independent. It is consoling.
- Such Truth or God is reasonable nonsense.
- It is gotten only by those who crave enough.
- But no matter what is gotten, whatever is presently arising, "I" do not know what it is.
- However much "I" may know about it, "I" do not and can never know what it is.
- Therefore, every present configuration, high or low, is Paradox.
- Since none of it or me can be accounted for, it is all an Illusion, unnecessary and Mysterious.
Truth is Universal
- Truth is the Truth of every part.
- It is not only the Truth of the spine, the midbrain, the mind, and the Light.
- It is equally, presently, and simultaneously the Truth of the knee, the toe, the shawl, the eyeglass, and the hair on my lover's arm.
- Therefore, where shall "I" go for Truth's sake?
The Adventure of Fear
- If "I" am afraid - only afraid - then "I" may search among the parts of me or the parts of things.
- "I" may reduce it all to a better or highest part.
- "I" may turn in and up.
- "I" may desire to the point of ecstasy above and beyond.
- But Truth is not my Object then.
- "I" am thus only an adventurer in time and space, propelled to destiny for my own sake.
- Very good. An excellent dream. Except for the fear, the doubt, and the agony of striving.
Confessed In Ignorance
- But when "I" hear the argument of Truth, and insight breaks my stride, the whole adventure and Illusion of experience is undermined, and its dilemma dissolved.
- When "I" am confessed in Ignorance, then all of this arising is no longer confounding and motivating me to objective and subjective absolutes.
- Then all pairs have become a Paradox, and the Way of Truth is not a path to anywhere that is Truth, but it is Truth itself, Sacrifice of self and everything in the Condition of our Mystery.
- Bubba says, Truth is Surrender of the whole body-"I" into Happiness, whatever arises.
Liberation and the Whole Body
- "I" is the whole body.
- Liberation is founded on intuitive insight into the separative gesture that is the whole body itself.