“The Hardest Question ever asked: What is Truth?”
This is an article that I read on a site called Big Think through a posting on Linkedin, it really caught my attention. I found that there was no way to comment on this on the Big Think site and only a few, well one besides mine on Linkedin. Hence I thought I might elaborate more on this question, What is Truth?
The article states the following open paragraph along with the above picture.
“In the Gospel According to John, the author retells a conversation between Jesus of Nazareth, who is on trial, and Pontius Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judaea. Toward the end of the interrogation, Jesus tells Pilate, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Infamously, Pilate responds, “What is truth?”
“Pilate’s tone is not clear. Was he asking a genuine question out of curiosity? Was he being sarcastic? Or was he asking the question in desperation, following a lifelong, exhausting search for the truth? We don’t know. What we do know is that he didn’t stick around for an answer.”
Science vs. Philosophy
The article then delves into the question that Pilate’s raises instead of the words of Jesus. Science tries to tell us truth is within the five senses and can only be proven true by hard facts, which is a level of truth, yes but it ends there. This article finishes with looking for a scientific answer to truth.
“Many scientists would take this a step further and argue that the scientific method is the foremost system for determining facts. Therefore, science is the best tool to determine reality and truth.”
The article does not really delve to deep into the philosophy aspect of truth and mainly tries to stay on the science end of the answer. Perhaps one in this article could open the can of religious worms and try and dig deep into the philosophies of each and every religion, but that would be too complicated for this article and this web site.
So What did Jesus mean?
In a great read, Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God on page 15, it is revealed what Jesus of course knew in his saying “Everyone on this side of truth listens to me”.
“All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by on of two emotions-fear and love”. In truth there are only two emotions-only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposite ends of the great polarity which I created when I produced the universe, and your world, as you know it today. These are the two points-the Alpha and the Omega-which allows the system you call “relativity” to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist. Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. there are no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two.“
The side of “Truth” that Jesus was referring to was Love and Pilate was acting from the other side of truth, “Fear”.
Science, Philosophy and religion all dismiss spirituality and the mysticism of life, those Sages, Sadhus, Shamans and those who can deeply meditate, know the truth that Jesus was talking about. The absolute pure Love that is the centre of our true selves. We are born from love and we die into love, as Love is what we are. That is the truth that Jesus was talking about.