What is “The Truth”?

I am obsessed with “the truth.” Maybe it’s a hallmark of being a journalist, but I’m constantly searching for “the Truth” with a capital T. When people throw out platitudes like “the truth is relative,” and “everybody has their own truth,” I’m unsatisfied because why? Why is the truth relative? Why does everyone have their own truth?

Last week, I wrote about logic versus intuition, and defined intuition as a reflection of consciousness. I also said perhaps the reason why intuition can be wrong is that the reflection isn’t clear and maybe it’s like smudges on a mirror.

This week I did some more investigation because I wasn’t fully satisfied with that answer. My spiritual teacher says there are “layers of the mind” and this affects the different ways in which humans operate. One layer is responsible for satisfying what we sense through the body. So, for instance, if I’m cold and reach for a blanket, that’s one layer of the mind. Another layer of the mind deals with conscious thought like problem-solving and intellectual reasoning.

The layer I’m interested in at the moment is the layer where intuition comes in. My teacher uses a Sanskrit word that I am sure to mispronounce, but the English translation is “supramental” or “higher mind.” This is the layer responsible for scientific discoveries and creative insight. When the lower levels of the mind are quiet, the higher mind comes through. This is what Michelangelo is referring to when he likened the creative process to “a seizure of the soul” or when Albert Einstein said in reference to discovering relativity, “There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition.”

So what happens after the message gets delivered, if you will? When a person gets an intuitive hit, it still has to filter through their mind and sift through biases and experiences, aka, the smudges on a mirror. That explains why the truth is relative – because each person has their own experiences and biases the intuitive message is coming through. For each person, the reflection of consciousness looks a little bit different.

That means there is an absolute truth, but I am not able to access it because my mirror is too dirty. The quickest way to clean the mirror, according to my teacher, is to meditate because meditation silences the lower layers of the mind and allows a person to access the higher ones. If you can believe it, the layer where intuition lives is not the highest layer of the mind! The higher layers are ones where duality ceases to exist and a person sees everything as an expression of Spirit. But that is perhaps another post for another time.

I dream of a world where we all quiet our minds and allow something greater than us to come through. A world where we understand that behind the relative truth is an absolute truth that maybe we can’t quite see. A world where we each seek to know that absolute truth and arrive at those higher layers.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.