How do we determine what is true?

[Bodhitree]

The world is full of religions, which all espouse different beliefs. How do we determine what is true? It seems to me that if you follow the rules of evidence that very little of what we are told from spiritual sources actually can be proven. So suppose we go to our personal experience, to what extent can we trust our personal experience? Psychedelics seem wonderful but are they better than for example dreams?

[Blackhawk]

Science is good for observable and measurable stuff.

But unobservable stuff is more tricky. Sometimes there's some things we don't know, need to accept it instead of inserting a delusional bullshit belief to fill the void.

[Blackhawk]

Sometimes you can use your own intelligence to pretty much know what's true. But it's tricky, because you can't really trust your mind/intelligence. For example conspiracy theorists would say that their own intelligence tells them that their retarded conspiracy theory is true.

I have a super strong belief that there's life after death, despite that science can't prove it, because my own intelligence tells me that..

Edited July 4, 2021 by Blackhawk

[Consept]

You might like this guys channel, hives a good insight into the nature of people's beliefs https://youtube.com/c/AnthonyMagnabosco210

[AleksM]

Instead of looking outside at what other people think, look within and feel your feelings. You don't have to know everything. Feel your next step. How does a decision make you feel compared to other ones. Does it feel like truth? If it does, it is true for you and you can trust yourself enough then to take that step. When you establish this trust in yourself, you don't have to keep searching. You will find what is true in that moment and that will be the end.

[Moksha]

As a scientist, I understand the rules of evidence. I know experimental design, statistics, and validity. But all of that is bound by the parameters of relative reality.

Ultimate truth is only directly realized. Guides can point the way, but it happens when you are ready for it to happen. Your eyes open, and you see, beyond you, into the seamless Self that infuses every being. When you realize the sameness of yourself in every tree, every rock, and every enemy, that is the epiphany.

[LastThursday]

On 04/07/2021 at 10:30 AM, Bodhitree said:

How do we determine what is true?

Truth is unchanging.

[sethman]

@Bodhitree

On 7/4/2021 at 0:30 PM, Bodhitree said:

The world is full of religions. 

the world isn't full of Religion. The world is full of Religion culture and Religion institutions. 

On 7/4/2021 at 0:30 PM, Bodhitree said:

which all espouse different beliefs.

beliefs are important, they are not to be afraid of or get rid of. beliefs means someone has figured out something, like scientific discovery happen. if one point in your life they meet, you will accept them, otherwise they remain as a belief. 

On 7/4/2021 at 0:30 PM, Bodhitree said:

 

 

[Bodhitree]

One important contribution that I have taken to heart is ehipassiko, the Buddha’s statement to come and see for yourself the truth of any teaching, and to discard those things which you find not to be true. You can take that statement and apply it to any teaching, whether from a guru, from a religion or from a book. It’s where you yourself take responsibility for what you believe. 

In a way, science is an extension of that. It brings more sophisticated tools to determining what you yourself believe to be true, and it brings in a ‘bedrock of belief in natural processes’. If you have a scientific education you will know that lightning is no mystery, that there is no thunder god up there making bolts and throwing them. 

Together, ehipassiko and science rule out a lot of things that in the past had myths and cults around them. It means we should shift our boundaries, take our spiritual desires and draw from a different well. 

[Bodhitree]

On 05/07/2021 at 1:04 AM, Moksha said:

As a scientist, I understand the rules of evidence. I know experimental design, statistics, and validity. But all of that is bound by the parameters of relative reality.

Ultimate truth is only directly realized. Guides can point the way, but it happens when you are ready for it to happen. Your eyes open, and you see, beyond you, into the seamless Self that infuses every being. When you realize the sameness of yourself in every tree, every rock, and every enemy, that is the epiphany.

What do you mean by ultimate truth? Are we talking about cosmic mind, the answer to all questions? Or is it just the experience of Oneness, which could be said to be an ultimate truth?

Edited July 7, 2021 by Bodhitree

[Nahm]

Truth is indeterminable. There is no such thing as a ‘personal experience’. There is no such thing as people! You are not a person! Believing ‘you’ ‘are’ = believing there is ‘a truth’, which ‘you’ could or could not, determine. There is no person believing! 

[Bodhitree]

@Nahm Thanks, that resonates (and shocks). Even though the ‘big truth’ was not exactly what I was looking for, it’s cool, it helps. 

[Nahm]

@Bodhitree

?? Infinite love. 

 

[Moksha]

8 hours ago, Bodhitree said:

What do you mean by ultimate truth? Are we talking about cosmic mind, the answer to all questions? Or is it just the experience of Oneness, which could be said to be an ultimate truth?

By ultimate truth, I am referring to the underlying ultimate reality, beyond the cosmos. Ultimate truth is timeless, changeless, infinite Consciousness, which is beyond all forms and boundaries. It is uncaused, and is the cause of all things.

Relative truth is the dream realm created by Consciousness, bound by illusory time and space, from which all forms arise, and to which all forms return.

Both ultimate and relative truth are real, within the realms that they inhabit. It is all Consciousness, in different states of Self-awareness.

The Bhagavad Gita describes this beautifully, especially in Chapter 8.

The Day of Brahma ends after a thousand yugas and the Night of Brahma ends after a thousand yugas. When the day of Brahma dawns, forms are brought forth from the Unmanifest; when the night of Brahma comes, these forms merge in the Formless again. This multitude of beings is created and destroyed again and again in the succeeding days and nights of Brahma. But beyond this formless state there is another, unmanifested reality, which is eternal and is not dissolved when the cosmos is destroyed.

1,000 yugas equals 4.3 billion years; clearly it isn't literal, just a figurative reference to the near-eternity during which the cosmos lives and grows, before returning to dormancy, in an endless cycle of creation and destruction.

Commentary on this chapter from Eknath Easwaran

Just as day follows night in eternal, unvarying rhythm, so does the entire universe undergo cycles of creation, death, and new birth…It ceases to be – or, rather, it continues only in a subtle, unmanifest form, a dream in the mind of [ultimate Consciousness]…cosmos after cosmos arising from the black immensity of nothingness – is quite similar to modern theories of the expanding and contracting universe put forward by contemporary cosmology.

[Bodhitree]

@Nahm So, talking about the big truth… I’ve been thinking about this some, and going along with the ‘big truth’ asks of me that I engage in a series of mental gymnastics. I think it is like this. There is the body, there is the mind, there is a person. These things can be observed, and are part of the natural arrangement that we humans have been gifted with. What we are really talking about is the nature of mind and the senses, it seems to me. 

How the experience of unity fits into things I am not quite sure of. I will think on it some more. 

[Nahm]

@Bodhitree

If unity is an experience, what then experiences unity, which is not, unity? If there are those two, how is there then, unity?

[Bodhitree]

@Nahm Yes, I get that. But personally I haven’t experienced unity, so I am just operating on the reports of others. And I have experienced a great many other states of mind, so I know how tricky the mind can get. So it seems to me that my mind is just experiencing various dramas with other fragments of mind, some of which are figments of the imagination. It’s an endless play of shadows. 

Actually that’s not entirely true, fragments of mind do unify into more significant segments when meditating, it’s an effect Ive noticed while observing fragments. Interesting. 

Edited July 8, 2021 by Bodhitree

[Bodhitree]

19 hours ago, Nahm said:

Truth is indeterminable. There is no such thing as a ‘personal experience’. There is no such thing as people! You are not a person! Believing ‘you’ ‘are’ = believing there is ‘a truth’, which ‘you’ could or could not, determine. There is no person believing! 

So this is a statement that is in the trend of Neo-Advaita. It belongs with a certain realisation, which I have not had. I could just accept the ideas, but then it becomes a belief, like many others on the surface of mind. The process of revolution, of a renewal in thinking, comes with the experience of realisation. 

The motivation, to provide a shock that frees one from the endless gyrations of the mind, is a kind and generous one. But such a shock is only temporary unless accompanied by realisation. 

[Nahm]

@Bodhitree

I can appreciate that. Also, the suggestion is inspection, uncovering beliefs (not adding more). Without beliefs, only truth could remain… which can’t be determined, as in thought or figured out. 

[Anahata]

17 hours ago, Bodhitree said:

@Nahm Yes, I get that. But personally I haven’t experienced unity, so I am just operating on the reports of others. And I have experienced a great many other states of mind, so I know how tricky the mind can get. So it seems to me that my mind is just experiencing various dramas with other fragments of mind, some of which are figments of the imagination. It’s an endless play of shadows. 

Actually that’s not entirely true, fragments of mind do unify into more significant segments when meditating, it’s an effect Ive noticed while observing fragments. Interesting. 

You have been experiencing unity. You always do. You have to recognize it in the Now.