Searching for Truth in an Unmoored World

     What most of us take to be “true” is that which was generally agreed upon within our birth family, tribe, or community. No young person is able to create a set of foundational beliefs out of thin air, so our beliefs are constructed from the stories, images, feelings, thoughts, and prejudices of those with whom we grew up. Some of us, of course, rebel against the ideas we were enculturated to accept, but we quickly adopt beliefs from another group, otherwise our lives fall into chaos and confusion. To live a life in the world we need a set of ideas and beliefs upon which to stand. That is what cultures and civilizations have always provided, by way of stories, religions, philosophies, myths, and other methods of giving guidance for living.

The result is that almost everyone has one or more groups of people with whom they share assumptions and views, those with whom they check out what “truth” is. If most people in our circle believe something, we tend to take it to be objectively real. Of course, no two people have exactly the same views, but we are all members of one or more groups with whom we identify, from very small to very large, and our identity circles go a long way toward defining what is real and true for us.

Some of us are members of close-knit communities (such as those in small rain-forest tribes that have little contact with the outside world); others live in large nations where millions of people hold similar views (there are several different overlapping worldviews in modern China, but many millions accept similar core tenets). Others today live in countries with fiercely competing reality systems, and many of us have relationships with those in several different reality worlds.

Surveying the world today, there are almost 8 billion people and thousands of different groups with different truths, different realities. Many groups believe their views are “objectively” true, and a significant number think their truths can be proven by reason. Most seldom question their own “objective truth”; rather, they seek reinforcement by constantly confirming with others within their own circle or group what the truth is. All these “truths,” however, are actually inter-subjective realities, for they are based on a set of views and opinions accepted subjectively.

As William James made clear, the “conviction that the evidence” proves a theory is never an objective decision, for belief in any theory can never be objectively verified. Why? Because each person must decide how much evidence is sufficient, and this is always a subjective opinion by each person. In other words, there is no objective evidence to indicate when enough evidence has accumulated to prove anything. In the end, each person has to make a subjective decision as to how much evidence is enough, and this decision can never be made objectively.

Skeptico: Well, the world out there seems very real to me, and I trust what I experience.

Wisdom Seeker: Yes, most of us do. But how do you know your experience is not a dream, or hallucination? For that matter, how do you know you are not crazy? What proof do you have? Folks who are schizophrenic think the world they see is quite real.

Skeptico: Well, I check it out with another person.

Wisdom Seeker: Very good Skeptico. That is the starting point. But how do you know that person is not another schizophrenic? Or maybe you are dreaming and the person you are talking to is a figure in your own dream. Or perhaps all the people around you were enculturated into a world that is itself completely mad.

But let’s assume for a moment that neither you nor the people you trust are crazy. In fact, the only way you are able to live a coherent life in the world is to make that assumption. But there is no escaping that you were enculturated into a group with a particular worldview, and you put together your understanding through the lens of that prior conditioning, organized as stories concerning who you are and what the world is like. These stories are not “objectively true,” though. People from totally different cultures see the world quite differently, and different lifeforms almost certainly see it with even greater variation.

Thought Experiment — Which reality is objectively true?
Imagine that a fly, a whale, a bat, and a human being are looking at the same scene. The eyes of each work in radically different ways, so the information entering each information-processing system will be quite different. Further, since each is enculturated to look for and see different things, each will be seeing a very different world “out there.” Which, then, is the “objective reality”?

Facing this honestly means you can never be certain that any reality system is “the truth.” The easiest way to see this is to realize that, even though we have been trying for thousands of years to reach agreement on what “the truth” is, no set of views among the thousands of different belief systems has been able to persuade a majority. In fact, there are more belief systems in the world today than there have ever been.

And, as mentioned, our beliefs were mostly acquired when we were too young to think things through for ourselves. Some might have changed some of their views, but few have changed many, and fewer still have changed how they think answers can be found. (Is it through logic, or listening to parents and elders, or trusting what you personally feel, or through a vison quest, or studying history, or immersion in sacred texts, or finding a teacher, or trusting a close friend, or some other method?)

Let me quickly say again that having a shared inter-subjective reality is essential for human life. We need them to live in relation to each other. One of the great achievements of humankind has been the creation of complex shared-belief worlds. Further, many different shared worldviews have worked well through history — high civilizations such as those of ancient India and China, the city-states of Greece, the Inca world of Peru and other great American tribal societies, Renaissance Italy, the Kingdom of Bhutan, Bali up to the present day — to name a few diverse examples.

None of these cultures was perfect, but these and many more have had sustained periods in which a substantial number of people had fulfilled lives, cultures in which there was widespread good health, prosperity, and creativity. Yet each existed within its own inter-subjective reality, and the nature of the “objective” world as they understood it was very different from many others.

We also have a strong need to believe our views are true. In many cultures, whole systems of reasoning have been developed to “prove” a particular set of beliefs are truly “true.” Yet it has never been hard for those outside any culture to see that the views held within that culture were based on circular, self-reinforcing arguments that could not be objectively proven by reason. In fact, outsiders often see other cultures’ beliefs as completely subjective, even irrational. To expand upon Joseph Campbell’s famous line, “a myth is somebody else’s religion,” we might say that each culture’s belief system, what they take to be objectively true, is simply that culture’s myth.

It is easy for most of us to accept this when applied to the beliefs of others, but it is very hard to accept when applied to our own. Ultimately, though, no matter how objectively true our beliefs seem to us, only those who have entered a system’s self-reinforcing field, either by enculturation or choice, do any beliefs seem objectively true.

Still, it is essential for most of us to live in a shared culture and to believe our views are objectively real. Luckily, through much of history, cultures were separated enough to maintain differing views without too much trouble. When they did overlap significantly, wars were often fought, sometimes with words, other times with spears and guns.

But no inter-subjective reality has ever become dominant all over the world, and it is highly unlikely that one ever will. Nor is it likely that any one has “the truth” about what is “objectively true.” So, as populations increase and frequent migrations are combined with modern communication, more and more of us are being forced to confront a lack of certainty about our beliefs.

This is very disturbing for many of us. It is very hard to seriously entertain the possibility that everything we have taken to be true is only one among many different possible views. The thinking, egoic mind wishes to believe it knows the truth, and it will fight fiercely against the idea that it can never know what is really true. So, as cultures collide ever more frequently, more and more of us are contending with the challenge that the conflicting views of so many “others” present.

In response to these forces, various groups insist that they and only they have “the truth,” without understanding that what they are hanging onto so desperately is simply their group’s inter-subjective reality. They really do think they are right, but they are trapped in the subjective ground within which their beliefs are embedded.

Partly in response to this challenge, the postmodern worldview emerged and has gained strength by rejecting the existence of any underlying truth at all. For postmodernists, the only force in the world is Nietzsche’s “Will to Power.” (Some acknowledge this, while others create a set of rationalizations to “prove” their postmodern ideas.) But those accepting postmodernism’s basic tenets find themselves drifting aimlessly in the postmodern sea, with nothing to hang onto except the assertion of personal preference and the attempt to get as much power and its rewards as possible for themselves and their interest group.

And, as postmodernism’s influence has increased and other groups have adopted its tactics (sometimes consciously, sometimes not), we increasingly find ourselves in a “post-truth” world, awash in a tidal wave of “fake news” in which people simply make up “facts” to support whatever they wish to believe.

Truth and Science

Skeptico: That is why science is coming to our rescue!

Wisdom Seeker: Yes, science and technology have created many wonderful inventions, marvelous tools, and useful objects — medicines, airplanes, lasers, computers, agricultural innovations, incredible buildings, rockets that travel into space, and so much more. We have learned many fascinating and important things about the physical world. And yes, because of these successes, some people have put their faith in science to answer all questions about life and living.

But, alas, science cannot create cultures, fix them when they are broken, or make decisions about many of the most important things in life. Science was developed to understand and manipulate the material world, which it does well, but it has no ability to provide guidance about how to use what it has developed, or to decide between its positive versus harmful uses. Are guns good or bad? It depends on how they are used and when, but science has nothing to say about this question. The bombs and guns science and technology developed have killed millions of innocents during thousands of wars and terrorist attacks. While the carnage was taking place, science stood mute. The internet and social media are powerful forces in the modern world — for both good and ill. But science and technology cannot offer useful guidance as to how to maximize the good and limit the bad.

In the modern world, the flood of material goods that science and technology created have not provided most people with deep happiness, fulfillment, or meaning. Instead, many in the most prosperous countries are beset by anxiety, depression, alienation, loneliness, and addiction — much more than in many settled cultures of the past. And science and technology are helpless in the face of the free-floating anger that is bursting forth in the United States as school massacres, road-rage, increasing murder rates, and violent protests.

As if this were not enough to deal with, in our world today we are witnessing oceans rising to the point of endangering large cities; deserts consuming large areas of land that used to be habitable; rainforests and vegetation with which we humans have a crucial symbiotic relationship being devastated; and we are witnessing the vast destruction of productive soil all over the planet. All these things are, in turn, causing mass migrations that are destabilizing many wealthier countries. Science and technology can offer some help in solving these problems, but they created many of the processes that are causing the devastation — without providing any guidance for how to avoid the harm. Crucially, science has nothing to offer in solving the political, economic, and social crises we are facing.

The underlying problem in looking to science for solutions on many issues is the lack of clarity about what science can — and cannot — do. It can create physical devices and systems, but it cannot help with moral decisions, value judgments, communal priorities, or the resolution of conflicts over differing goals. It cannot create healthy schools, families, relationships, or cultures. And science and technology cannot help individuals resolve conflicts within themselves, find what is meaningful, or discover the important values to live by. They cannot provide guidance on how to give and receive love, develop courage, or nurture friendships.

Science cannot even determine what is objectively real “out there.” As physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn made clear, every scientific system is based on a set of assumptions that are unproven and unprovable. Many different scientific systems have worked well, to a certain degree, within a specified set of parameters. But every system has gradually been beset by anomalies that could not be explained or understood within its own parameters. Thus, throughout the history of science, contradictions and unanswered questions accumulated in each system. Then, when the anomalies proved too numerous to be ignored, the old system was overthrown and a new system took its place as the ruling paradigm.

This highlights two main problems science as well as individuals have in looking for final answers to questions: 1) We all check out what is real and true with the people in our group who have accepted the same reality system as have we; and 2) Whatever another person says, each of us must interpret their words and meanings within our personal consciousness. Each of us has to decide separately what other people mean, and there are countless studies that show we constantly misunderstand and misinterpret what other people say. We mostly hear and see things from our ego’s perspective, and our ego is constantly interpreting everything to fit into what it already believes. Further, the ego is not really looking for truth, but trying to figure out how to arrange and interpret information to get what it wants.

Importance for the Modern World

The modern world is sometimes said to begin with René Descartes around 400 years ago, especially his view that reality is divided between our inner, subjective thoughts versus the objective world “out there.” This division inevitably led to the conclusion that our thinking minds are separate from the world around us, which is completely mechanistic and deterministic (and controlled by fixed and unchanging laws that can be completely understood through objective measurements).

We in the educated West today are trained to accept this worldview, that who we are is our subjective living self, while the world outside is composed of mechanized matter, and we can obtain completely objective knowledge about that material world through measurement alone. But upon close scrutiny, this is impossible, because everything we know starts with subjective experience. Everything we know, think, and believe starts with a thought or feeling inside our individual consciousness, and there is no way to know for sure if our thoughts, feelings, or images fit what is actually “out there.” Descartes’ solution to this dilemma was to “prove” that he could know that God exists, and that he could therefore trust his perceptions about God’s creation.

His solution, however, did not work for a lot of people, culminating in the scathing skepticism of David Hume that not only rejected God as a guarantor of truth but also said that science could not find a firm ground for truth either. This prompted Immanuel Kant, around 200 years ago, to show persuasively that subjective images, or “representations” in the mind, are the only reality we can ever really know. (Kant did leave room for the existence of a “numinous” realm, but said we could never know it.) The result of Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” in thinking led to the understanding that objects that seem to be out there in the world, the “things in themselves,” are not necessarily like what we think we see. In fact, what you think you see might not even exist, except in your own individual mind.

This means the egoic mind can never escape its own creations, can never know “objective reality.” But the cost of the success of this paradigm shift was the collapse of any firm basis for knowing anything for sure about the world. Thus, in modern science, modern philosophy, and many modern cultures today there is great confusion about whether any real truth exists and, if it does, how we could possibly find it.

When applied to science, this insight means that when a researcher observes anything with an analyzing mind (which is always an ego perspective), the only immediate data the observer has is personal subjective experience, a perception in that individual’s mind. Next comes a personal judgment about which data is relevant, followed by many personal interpretations and decisions about what the data means and how it will be applied to what the researcher subjectively wishes to know.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow Nobel prize winning Daniel Kahneman shows just how much of our “thinking” occurs at an unconscious level. Modern psychology has confirmed this insight over and over, demonstrating that every picture we form in our minds is deeply influenced by a lifetime of training; every thought is dependent on the enculturating assumptions within which we have been immersed from the beginning of our lives. For instance, Kieland Yarrow, a psychologist at the Institute of Neurology in London, found in a series of experiments that “the brain reconstructs conscious perceptions and rewrites the immediate past.” And “Although we have the idea that we see things as they really are, in fact our brain is using shortcuts, best guesses and assumptions about the world to make our perceptions seem continuous.”

And there is no way to escape the understanding, once it has dawned, that our thinking process is always guided by our pre-existing beliefs, wishes, and opinions.

Skeptico: All right, but where do we get our “best guesses and assumptions” when doing research?

Wisdom Seeker: Every research project starts with assumptions about what is worth knowing, about what the important questions to be answered might be. Before any research can begin, a researcher is imbedded in a vast body of prior knowledge as well as previously developed tools for doing the research. This includes all measuring devices as well as the theories governing how the results will be interpreted. Thus, when a researcher observes any instrument, the data that is judged important is determined by years of conditioning, and much data is ignored or dismissed based on these assumptions.

Further, researchers form interpretations in their individual minds about what is being observed, based on a lifetime of enculturation in the field of study that deemed a particular experiment relevant. Relevance and objective observations do not exist in the instrument, but are created in the mind of the observer, which in turn is molded by the community within which the observer was trained.

Thought Experiment — The importance of prior assumptions
Imagine that an important but very complicated experiment in quantum physics has just been concluded at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and a group of people has been assembled to observe the results: The researcher who organized the experiment, Mother Teresa, a highly skilled scientist from a completely different field, the Dalai Lama, a wise Indian medicine woman, and Leo Tolstoy. They all look at the instruments without any words being spoken. No explanations are provided. Would the results be obvious? Would they all see the same thing or interpret the results in the same way?

To imagine this is in some ways amusing. But it makes vivid that the instruments themselves tell us nothing. Sophisticated machines have to do with questions that have been created within a narrow field of study, and that field might undergo a complete revolution tomorrow. Further, interpreting that knowledge in the real world is not an “objective” process, but governed by assumptions that might later be seen as mistaken. In the final analysis, there is no agreement at all as to what is objectively true, except within an existing community of agreement. Those trained in similar ways in a particular field of science might agree with each other at a given point in time and believe they have found objective truth, but this agreement would not necessarily be accepted by French existentialists or Alaskan Eskimo seal hunters. And it might not even be considered true within the same field of science in ten years.

Remember, the assumptions of science have changed radically over the centuries. For instance, much that was taken as objective truth in physics in 1900, before the insights of Einstein and quantum mechanics, is not seen as true today. The way science sees the world “out there” is very, very different today from 120 years ago. Nor is this a matter of the modern view simply being a more refined version, for what was understood to be “truth” in 1900 is, in many ways, in direct conflict with how science sees the world today. Yet the version before 1900 worked, for it was responsible for what we today call with great admiration the “scientific revolution.”

This process of change is still in full swing. Relativity theory and quantum theory, the two most powerful ideas in physics over the last century, have a core conflict about the nature of the world that no one has been able to resolve. Albert Einstein tried hard but ended up with a fractured friendship with Niels Bohr rather than a resolution. The nature of the world as understood by these two pillars of modern physics is very different, and whatever the resolution of the conflict turns out to be, it will involve a very different understanding than the foundations of science today.

An Unchanging Universe and Evolution

If you want a bracing challenge in regard to being open-minded, consider the work of the great mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in his book Science and the Modern World. Tracing the assumptions upon which modern science is based back to their source, he makes a convincing case that they are based on the ideas of medieval Christian thought. He points out that modern science assumes that its core laws and principles have always been true, from the beginning of the universe, and that these laws are true everywhere in the universe. But these are assumptions for which there is no proof. Whitehead demonstrates that these assumptions arose from the medieval view that God created a stable universe governed by constant and uniform laws, and everyone who built modern science simply assumed this to be the case.

Since that time, these assumptions have been woven into science at its core, but no one has provided any scientific basis for this belief. Furthermore, the science we have cannot even question it, for everything it does is based on these assumptions — that the whole universe is and always has been governed by stable and unchanging laws such as gravity, the speed of light, and the fixed charge of an electron. Without assuming these and many other things are constant, we would have to develop a completely different science, one in which the laws of the universe change from time to time. This, however, is unimaginable from the point of view of the science we have, because it relies on these beliefs to create theories and do experiments. We can’t change these assumptions because science is so fundamentally based on them that if they changed, science as we know it would completely fall apart.

Paradoxically, within the governance of these unchanging laws and constants we have come to believe in recent centuries that everything is constantly changing. Few pause to consider the implications of this clash of ideas. For a moment, however, expand your thinking as far as you can and consider the implications of the current mainstream scientific theory that everything has been evolving since the beginning of time. If this is true, why wouldn’t the underlying laws of nature and all the constants be evolving as well? Or consider the current assumption that the universe has been expanding since its beginning, that the whole universe was once an infinitesimally small speck, but that speck has now become a universe 92 billion light-years across. If the universe has changed so radically, and is still changing, why wouldn’t the laws and constants be changing as well?

In addition, in every scientific field there is growing recognition about how many beliefs have changed. Many ideas held to be unassailable before Copernicus have vanished, and many of the core ideas established by the Newtonian revolution have fallen by the wayside with the advance of relativity and quantum theory. Isn’t it likely, then, that many assumptions will be quite different one hundred years from today? Now try to imagine what people five hundred years from today will think about all we take to be objectively true. Might even some of the unassailable laws and constants have fallen?

The Buddha said nothing is permanent, everything is always changing. But if so, why would we assume that the core laws and constants affecting the material world are not changing as well? That would certainly leave room for some of the extraordinary events the Buddha, Jesus, and countless saints and sages have accepted as real throughout history. Our current science has a hard time making room for this possibility, but the great modern physicist Werner Heisenberg said, “Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”

Thought Experiment — The possibilities arising from being open-minded
Consider for a moment the possibility that the most basic laws and constants of the universe could, in fact, be changing. Put yourself in the mindset of a fantasy writer and let your imagination roam. Or look at it from the point of view of a creative science fiction writer. Or a Copernicus, Newton, or Einstein. Or a mystic. Perhaps you will begin to touch some deeper truth.

Again, it is crucial that we use science to answer questions it was created to solve and use its answers as the best current guesses available regarding the material world. In these areas, we should use it when deciding public policy, as well as in our personal lives. At the same time, we must be vividly aware of what science can, and cannot, do. Becoming fundamentalists about science is not the best approach to life.

Considering Consciousness

It is especially important to be open-minded in one of the most important but least understood fields of study today, consciousness itself. Listen to Alva Noë, a leading thinker in the field. (He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences):

“After decades of concerted effort on the part of neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers, the only agreement about how the brain can make us conscious, how it can give rise to ‘sensation, feeling, and subjectivity’ is: ‘We don’t have a clue.’”

And Jerry Fodor, a cognitive scientist and leading philosopher of mind:

“Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious.”

If we have no idea how matter or the brain could give rise to consciousness, then where did consciousness come from? No one knows, at least in any scientific way. One creative thinker who is exploring this field is Thomas Nagel, whose paper “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?” is one of the most read and cited papers of all time. In it, Nagel says that the subjective nature of consciousness undermines any attempt to explain consciousness through objective means, and “any shift to greater objectivity … does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it.” If this is true, then objective science will never be able to understand consciousness.

None of this is to imply that the laws and constants that science is based upon are untrue — only to show that they are embedded in assumptions that are unproven and will likely change. They work well in many ways, and we should continue to use them when they are useful. But they are assumptions, and we need not believe they govern all of reality or provide final truth. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.”

There is so much we do not see — about the world, about ourselves. If you look at anything from within a set of assumptions, everything you will be able to see will be governed by those assumptions. This approach will never lead to the final truth. Those who believe their thinking, scientific minds are the only way to truth ignore the wisdom of the great traditions. Those who put their faith in the egoic mind have fooled themselves and as a result find their lives empty of meaning, with cultures that are breaking apart or becoming severely authoritarian. If we are to see more clearly, more deeply, more truly, we must broaden our horizons.

In his book, Quantum Questions, Ken Wilber points out that all the great scientists who created modern physics understood that science was not designed to find final “truth,” but only to investigate the material world, a process that would be forever changing. There would always be new experiments and new insights in science — even new paradigms. But this meant that science would never be able to answer any of the ultimate questions about life and living. Sir Arthur Eddington captured this beautifully: “We have learned that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science lead not to a concrete reality, but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which (the methods of physics) are unadapted for penetrating.”

Thus Einstein, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Irwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Eddington, and all the other brilliant scientists who created quantum mechanics began to look elsewhere for deeper truths, and Ken Wilber provides extensive quotes showing that each developed an essentially mystical view of the nature of reality.

A Foothold Beyond

For those who can learn to see in a broader way, wisdom figures of every culture tell us there is much more to reality than our everyday assumptions can reveal. In fact, they tell us there is an ultimate unity that can be experienced when a person is able to look out from an “I” that is greater than the egoic mind. Throughout history, many of the wisest among us have reported experiencing this larger “I” — some all the way to an identity encompassing all and everything. Listen to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of Universal Being circulate through me.”

There are many others. Seventeenth century German mystic and theologian Jacob Boehme, after a profound spiritual experience, declared, “The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.” And in her experience of the highest level, the Seventh Mansion, Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila made it vividly clear that it is possible to move into “ultimate union” while still living an earthly life.

Keep in mind, however, that when the egoic mind looks for this unity, it can never find it, for all it can ever see are the images it creates and projects on the world from within its assumptions. As the Talmud is sometimes quoted as saying: “We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.”

For those, however, who can get beyond the thinking mind for a moment, the eyes from which they look might be able to glimpse the broader reality. Get to know this greater “I” and you will understand why one of the most brilliant psychologists who ever lived, William James, emphatically stated that mystical experiences should be taken seriously:

“The study of the mystics, the keeping company … with their minds, brings with it as music or poetry does — but in a far greater degree — a strange exhilaration, as if we were brought near to some mighty Source of Being, were at last on the verge of the secret which all seek. The … actual words employed, when we analyse them, are not enough to account for such effect. It is rather that these messages from the … transcendental self of another, stir our own deeper selves in their sleep.”

In other words, hearing or reading reports of the mystical experience of another has the capacity to stir an awakening of our own greater “I” from the narrowness of the egoic mind.

Another important way of thinking about the value of this greater knowing comes from Ken Wilber, one of the best-known philosophers of the late 20^th and early 21^stcenturies:

“Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story — the story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless, and eternal, and infinite fashion.

“Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss.

“But then, I wonder. Maybe the sequence really is from matter — to body — to mind — to soul — to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace.

“And in the highest reaches — maybe, just maybe — an individual’s consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature.

“It’s at least possible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot — signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think the sages are the leading edge of the self-transcending drive. I think they embody the very drive of the Kosmos toward greater depth and expanding consciousness. I think they are riding the edge of a light beam, racing toward a rendezvous with God.

“And I think they point to the same depth in you, and in me, and in all of us. I think they are plugged into the All, and the Kosmos sings through their voices, and the Spirit shines through their eyes. And I think they disclose the face of tomorrow, they open us to the heart of our own destiny which is already right now in the timelessness of this very moment.”

We will therefore follow the lead of Emerson, Ken Wilber, the Buddha, Teresa of Avila, and countless other mystics of the Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Confucian, Taoist, and Shamanic traditions and explore further in the next essay the world of mysticism.