What is truth?

If we ask ourselves this question, it may be useful to question what we mean exactly by “truth” as it means different things to different people. Let us here explore how this concept is being handled in traditional Advaita Vedanta, a philosophical system with its roots in ancient India.

Advaita Vedanta is not a belief system but a system of knowledge that leads us through an experimental approach to reality where we learn to observe in order to understand what we are as beings going through a human experience.

For example, one of its methods is to learn to distinguish between what is object and what is subject. I see a cat, the cat is an object to me the subject looking at that object. Therefore there are two: the seer and the seen. We then go further. When I say: I see a cat, if I close my eyes, I don’t see the cat any more. If I open my eyes, the cat is seen again. So we have the eyes allowing the sense of seeing which allows information “cat” to reach the mind which interprets it as a something called “cat” in English language. So there is a seer who now also sees the eyes which become the new object to me, the seer. We don’t stop there: I am now at the observation point of what we may call “the mind” which decides that the object seen by my eyes is a cat. At that level I can observe my thoughts, my mental elaboration, if I slow down the mental processing. So there is me, the observer observing mental processes, thoughts, questions, feelings of interest, boredom or passion about what I am studying at the moment.

Thus we have found a subject, the one observing activities or movements of the mind (vritti in Sanskrit) which are an object to me, the subject. In Sanskrit this subject is called Sakshi, the Witness.

Thoughts come and go, they are many, but the seer does not come and go like thoughts and feelings do. The Witness is there all the time, any time, and seems immovable.

What is difficult for us is that we want to objectify this I who is the subject of all our experiences. This is impossible and rightly so! The subject, the seer can never be the seen or an object. You can only experience it. Here we understand that this is not a matter of belief but of experiencing what is being pointed at. There is a huge difference between belief and knowledge and between knowledge and Knowing!

Therefore if we want to explore further what we are beyond the experience of the Witness, Sakshi, we have to delve deeper and deeper within. In the long run no teacher or book can do that job for us. It is an individual inner striving that we will to engage in if there is the yearning for it.

From my own experience, in hindsight looking back on interaction with people during my day, I see myself or rather see this personality of mine acting, talking, expressing views. I am aware “it is not me”, it is a personality which can be defined, examined through tools like astro-design. But I am none of that. I am experiencing Sakshi, the Witness which could be described as an impersonal, non-judgmental mirror-like inner Presence in which all activities of personality are witnessed, no more, no less. You could say it is pure Awareness. At least it is a stage of realizing that we are Consciousness. This is a first step, there is more to Consciousness than meets the eye or I-consciousness that we become aware of. It is a level of consciousness we now endeavor to identify with instead of the habitual limited human consciousness solely identified by conditioning with our body-mind entity.

When through constant daily practice we choose to consciously identify with Sakshi, it will naturally promote inner peace and mental stability which helps to not be so easily swayed by outward activities and world events. We come to realize we are that pure Consciousness, having a temporary human incarnated experience in the materiality of planet Earth. We still act, feel, emote, think, but we know we are essentially not what people see, hear and believe of us. That brings inner freedom and relaxation.

When that is firmly established over a period of time, we can explore further the nature of who we are. We now have a more reliable ground to be anchored in and sustain our uprightness in the midst of the reality we find ourselves in, be it 3D Earth or the various levels of 4 D which are still under the influence of Dark energies.

It is said “Truth is not for the faint in heart”. Indeed it needs a certain amount of fortitude to not be pulled away from our inner spiritual essence when faced with the less than pretty reality of the world we live in. Some say ignorance is bliss; it may be temporarily partially so, but if you want to reach levels of Creation which are pristine and free from all Darkness, you will have to sharpen your sense of discrimination in order not to be fooled by any scam be it material, political, social or spiritual. Without a sharp sense of discrimination and an acute intuition we may easily fall in the trap of illusions and delusions that are scattered along our way and aim at confusing us by all manners. This has been achieved quite successfully on the vast majority of the human population.

But we must remember that no matter how many teachings we follow and practices we perform along the way, the walking is ours, nobody else. This is the way to find our true spiritual independence, relying only on direct knowing and experience, on our own individual aspiration to reconnect with our multi-dimensional Being; this will safely lead us to a final recognition of our Original Source and Creator which we had forgotten amidst the load of materialistic polluted distorted beliefs and habits in which we were plunged in and conditioned from a very young age to believe that this or that is the truth or be told that we should conform to the way things are as presented to us by family, social background, schools and peers as if that presentation would be once and for all the only valid Truth or Reality. We may question that..

René Descartes, the French philosopher (1596-1650), used to say:

« Pour atteindre à la vérité, il faut une fois dans sa vie se défaire de toutes les opinions que l’on a reçues et reconstruire de nouveau, et dès le fondement, tous les systèmes de ses connaissances ».