![]() ![]() Or is it? What if there is a state outside duality, beyond separation? This nondual state is simply called Being. Separation cannot escape itself, just as water cannot escape being wet-the whole relative setup is a closed system. In separation, also known as duality, truth is forced to be relative, because all the modes of knowing operate through opposites (good versus evil, light versus darkness, facts versus myths, birth versus death, etc.). This gap is known as the state of separation, meaning separate from God, the soul, our true nature, or ultimate realty, depending on what wisdom tradition you come from. They say that a gap exists between relative truth and absolute Truth with a capital T. But this has not been the position taken by the world’s wisdom traditions. Some would say that suffering is simply inescapable the best you can do is to hope you have better luck than most in evading pain and suffering. To be human is to know this fact, and wanting to find a way out is just as human. Then the question arises, Is there an escape from relative truth? The word “escape” seems strange at first sight, but in fact relative truth traps us in a world where all kinds of suffering, violence, war, crime, famine, disease, aging, and dying never seem to end. So modes of knowing aren’t just theoretical or an intellectual game they matter. On the other hand, when climate change deniers block the findings of climate scientists, we sense an urgency that provokes guilt and apprehension about the future. When heated arguments break out between atheists and religious believers, we rightly assume that this has little to do with the issues and challenges of everyday life. Intuitively we understand this, because everyone has a lifetime’s worth of experience shifting from one mode of knowing to another. It’s practical to get out of the way if a block of granite falls off a building, just as it’s practical for the weatherman to announce the times for sunrise and sunset. In the mental life of human beings, what justifies picking one flavor of truth over another is practicality. Relative modes of knowing are equal choices, like flavors of ice cream lined up on a freezer shelf in the supermarket. At the opposite pole from science, there’s a tradition of knowledge that goes inward in order to acquire self-awareness, and in both East and West “Know thyself” has an honored legacy.īut when one mode of knowing competes with another in this way, something illusory is going on. Scientists will adamantly defend the scientific method with the zeal that a churchman in the Middle Ages defended prayer, reflection, contemplation, and meditation as the only way to truth. Relative truth is relative, just as the term says.īut we spend most of our lives defending the mode of knowing we happen to favor. ![]() In reality, neither mode has a privileged position. If one person says that granite is hard while another person, resorting to quantum mechanics, says that granite is composed of clouds of particles winking in and out of a measurable state, ultimately existing as probability waves, then two modes of knowing have clashed. ![]() Relative truth is so vast and diverse that it is easy to mistake what we really know. ![]() One could sort all our modes of knowing into an impressive range of choices as we shift from the five senses to the intellect, from speaking to doing, from feeling to perceiving and interpreting. In their everyday work scientists can largely ignore the radical relativism of the physical world, but pretending that it doesn’t’ exist that scientific objectivity is the end all and be all of truth, is intellectually naïve. After all, it was a scientist, Albert Einstein, who subjected time and space to relativity, while another quantum pioneer, Werner Heisenberg, not only introduced the Uncertainty Principle into modern physics but declared that the atom has no intrinsic qualities. But that is still just another mode of knowing with its own slippery relativism. Science attempts to tighten up relative truth through data, measurements, experiments, and findings that can be replicated. Because relative truth is what experience delivers, it would seem that the story ends there. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |