Pitfalls in the Search for the Truth, Reality and a Theory of Everything

This isn’t just for those who call themselves Truth Seekers, but those of a scientific bent who follow the peer reviewed path.

What started you on your quest for Truth? Most likely it was when you found out that something you thought to be true was indeed false. (For me it was Santa Claus) That experience started you looking more deeply into some other things, and you uncovered more inconsistencies. The result is that you had to change your beliefs to match your new understanding.

I’ve been doing this for a long time. I was president of a group named “Youth in Truth” as a teenager. Now i’m in my 70’s and still searching. In all that time i have found, one time after another, that what i once thought to be true was instead false, all the while the real Truth was always just around the corner.

One thing that drives we Seekers of Truth is that we hate to be wrong. It’s in our DNA. We strive with every breath to be right. Where things seem to be wrong, we want to make them right. The problem with that is who determines what is right or wrong? That’s one of the first things a seeker must deal with.

The very nature of our relationship with reality is that we never see the real thing. We are dependent on the interpretation of the input from our senses. This interpretation, the criteria we use to judge input, is something we have LEARNED, mostly second hand. Our culture has told us what to believe, and we use those beliefs to judge. When we challenge the beliefs laid on us by our culture, we erode a little of the underpinnings of our own beliefs.

Truth: We are mostly expecting to find a thing we call “Truth”, an absolute reality that exists independent of our own human involvement. We expect that every subject can be reduced to this absolute core identity. However, the information, the facts we gather, have no meaning without a context, an interpretation that gives them substance. This context is a completely individual construct, taught and learned by clever, but not very wise human animals. This context is reality as seen by the individual within a certain cultural framework with no direct relationship to ANY fundamental truth. This context, the one both you and i work from, is a total fabrication. It is a world view compiled from highly questionable sources, mostly other seekers working from the same questionable sources. It is very likely that the entire cultural belief structure that has been laid on us is wrong. With that a possibility, the very best we can hope to do is to find inaccuracies in our own version of truth.

Although the search for absolute Truth is in vain, that doesn’t make it a fool’s journey. Although an absolutely true reality may actually exist, we have no way of observing it without using our nervous system’s sensors, filters, analytics and memory. Our nervous system provides us with a virtual reality experience of the outside world. Each of us builds and verifies our own version of truth starting in the womb.

That which we are most sure of turns out to be just another mental phantom. So, what you are risking by seeking a deeper truth is the core beliefs you count on to evaluate incoming information. You might think you are above that. Your enlightenment has given you a measure of that illusive truth, but enlightenment isn’t a destination, it is a pathway. And that path leads to the eventual dissolution of your core beliefs.

It’s like the levels in a video game, or the corporate ladder, or boiling water. When you step up a level, the rules change. At some level you will find that you must abandon your core beliefs all together. All those beliefs that once were your Truth turn out to be bogus. They are human trivialities that have no value at higher levels.

One of my favorite examples is the professional sports leagues. It doesn’t matter what sport, if it has a pro league you can be sure it fits this pattern.
We’ll start at the bottom. Kids learn to play the game, they learn the basics of the sport. As the levels get higher, the learning becomes more complex, but still is directly related to the performance in the game. Kid grows up, turns pro. Lots of things change at this level. There are contracts and money added to the mix.

Now the kid knows the game backwards and forwards and moves up to being a coach. At this level the rules change, new responsibilities and challenges. From coach he moves up to GM, a whole new ball game. Everything learned in the past is important, but the new rules change everything.

Somewhere near this pinnacle of success our sports hero will find out that all the sport, with all it’s rules and competition is really a front for a system with an entirely different rule set. This invisible set of rules trumps all the others. This rule set has been in place from the very beginning of the sport. This rule set was the reason the sport was organized in the first place. Of course this shadow benefactor from all sports is gambling.

Civilization has a similar shadow rule set that trumps all others. It is the reason for the existence of civilization itself.

If you have been raised in our western civilization, either with a science or religious background, just about everything you know to be true is in fact false. For example, we have been brainwashed into believing it is right and proper to rip apart our environment for profit. We have been led to believe that we are separate from Nature. We have been convinced that we must fight against Nature in order to survive. We have been conned into believing that human beings are special, either the descendants of the gods or the pinnacle of evolutionary progress. These fundamental beliefs translate into a screwed set of values and priorities. The result of applying these values is the mess we find ourselves in today.

So, if you want to stick to political, historical or spiritual truth, good luck. No matter what, searching for truth will eventually bring you face to face with the profound errors in your own world view.

After a while you may begin to notice that these lies all work together to extract certain behavior from us. These aren’t lies of misunderstanding, on the contrary, taken as a set of protocols, the lies fed us over the centuries show a coherence only possible with a deep understanding of “human nature”. Civilization demonstrates a degree of organization, coordination, consistency and yes, understanding not likely to be carried off by human beings.

So, who is at the bottom of this massive deception and what is the end game? Stay tuned.