Truth: A Customized Lie

 

A boy came across an ant. The ant was relishing a drop of honey on the floor. Suddenly the boy saw a stream of water approaching the ant. The boy wanted to save the ant by protecting it from getting it flushed into the drain. He tried to push away the ant with his finger. The ant was thrown away but once again it came to the honey drop. This happened many times. Finally, when the boy tried to push it again the ant stung him. The boy shook off his hand and the ant fell aside. The crying boy went to his father and complained. The father told; ant is not your enemy. The ant is able to see and experience the honey drop. The honey drop is its truth. You have a different level of vision and experience, so you are able to see the same truth in the background of another truth (the stream of water). The ant is as much certain of its truth as much as you are certain of yours.

Truth depends upon the precision of the sense organs. Truth also depends on the level of cognition, which makes us to see multiple truths at the same time (ant’s truth is only the honey drop, boy’s truth is honey drop, ant, water stream and drain). A whole truth of one being may be a part of the bigger truth of another being.

Field of Focus:

If you observe the picture below:

In the first part of picture the focus is limited to the rat and it shows the rat is safe and happy. When the field of the focus is widened in the 2^nd picture, we see the dog is approaching the rat and it is not safe. In the 3^rd picture we can see the man is restraining the dog and the rat is safe. In the last picture when the focus is still widened. We can see the cat is approaching the rat and it is not safe. As the field of focus widens the new objects are included in the focus and change the nature of truth.

Vantage point (perspective): From the perspective of two persons the letter is N, and from the perspective of other two person the shape is Z. . 

Frame of reference: When two people see a cloud. One interprets face of a person and other sees a dog in the same cloud. Interpretation of the same truth in a different way changes the nature of the truth.

Belief: There was a man who was carrying a goat. A group of thieves wanted to steal the goat from him. They made a plan. One after the other they approached the man like different strangers and asked him why was he carrying a dog. The man was angry initially, surprised later, confused next, doubted himself and finally he started believing that he was carrying a dog and left it there and went away. The thieves took away the goat. Belief is the one which decides the perception of the truth. A piece of land or a piece of metal (gold) has no value. The belief stuck around it is the one which changes its pricing.

Memory: A set of blind people who had never seen an elephant were asked to describe the elephant.

  They felt the leg as trunk of a tree and tail as a rope. What ever we  perceive our brain tries to match to something which is preexisting in our memory. The tree and rope are in the memory of these blind people. So, memory has strong impact on the perception of the truth. These people are unable to comprehend the whole truth at a time.

Cognition: Our memory, imagination, evaluation, and other complex mental processes helped us in discovering many things which are not perceived by senses (UV rays, Infrared rays, viruses, planets etc). The perception of the world of the person with low level of cognition is quite different from the one with high level of cognition. Galileo’s level of cognition, his truth of the solar system was different from the church who condemned him.

Emotion: “Ashwathama Hatah .........Kunjaraha”. These were the words said by Yudhisthir to Guru Drona. Hearing that “Ashwathama was killed” Drona was wrecked. Drona was killed by the time he came out of that shock. Once Drona believed “Ashwathama is dead “he never bothered to listen to the following word “Kunjaraha” (given after a pause) which means an “elephant by name Ashwathama is killed”. Emotion has a strong bias on the perception of the truth. A thing which we desire more or fear more appears more truthful.

 The information which reaches the retina passes through transparent components of eye. However, the truth we perceive is processed through our knowledge, memory and imagination,  focus, field of focus, concentration, level of cognition, emotion and interpretation. The information which reaches the mind’s eye passes though the above said filters and this processing happens unconsciously. Hence no two persons in the world experiences exactly the same truth.

Truth and time: Just like a rock erodes slowly in a stream of water. All the truths what we see erode with time. Some truths like I am alive, I love my wife, I have a good friend withstand for few decades. Some other truths like the Sun rises in the east, Earth is spherical may take thousands of years to change. The planetary truth appears permanent to us because the life of the planet is considerably longer than our life. Many stars and planet were lost or annihilated in time.

Truth and space: All our sciences (physical, biological, chemical) laws hold good to our planet. Laws of gravitation and relativity hold good in condition where the velocity of object is below the light. They don’t apply on the stars where  time is influenced by the attraction of the stars.

Yogic sciences say “Truth is not the one what you see, the one who is seeing (consciousness) is the truth . Truth is not the one what you experience, Truth is the one who is experiencing “. If two people are seeing a mirage, one strongly believes there is water and the other has a small doubt about what he is seeing. Who is wiser? Obviously the one who has a doubt. This doubt makes him look towards the science of mirage formation. The intellectual knowledge make us believe what we see and interpret as the truth. The yogic science alerts us about filters through which we see the external truth. A filter distorts the truth. Every person has his own customized filter of beliefs, emotions, experiences through which he sees the world. A person sees what he is conditioned to see or what he likes to see but not what is actually there. 

When the cognitive and perceptual filters stand between the existence (outside) and consciousness (within) we experience emotions. When these filters are removed we experience the “existence as it is”. It is called as satya (truth). In this state one knows his true nature (chitta or consciousness) losing his identity. Then the emotions are replaced by bliss (Ananda- experiencing bliss). This is a state of “sat-chit-ananda”.