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Do you have a viewpoint of truth?

Dr. David Hawkins writes in his consciousness raising book, Power vs. Force:

Although it may sound cynical at first, we must admit that for everyday operational purposes, truth is whatever is subjectively convincing at one’s current level of perception. At the lower levels of consciousness, propositions are accepted as true even when they’re illogical, unfounded, and express tenets neither intellectually provable nor practically demonstrable. This isn’t a phenomenon restricted to the lunatic fringe: Locally, far more often than we’d like to admit, innocent people are convicted and jailed on the testimony of clearly irrational and biased witnesses; and globally, the basis for perennial wars (such as those in Slavic Europe or the Middle East) is an insane belief in the justice of revenge, which virtually guarantees endless conflict.

I think for most people, the fact that nearly everyone in their culture holds a viewpoint of truth that is the same, leads them to conclude that it must be the only truth. In Christian cultures, Christianity undoubtedly must be the truth. In Islamic cultures, Islam must undoubtedly be the truth. The same goes for the Buddhists and the Hindus and Jews. How many people have been killed in the name of religion? It’s ridiculous when we can look upon this mentality objectively, expressed in variation of this: “This is the truth. If you don’t accept it I will have to kill you.”

And this mentality even extends into the subcultures within the primary culture. Again you will see religious wars due to incompatibility of religious views. Look at the bloodshed between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, or the bloodshed between the Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq.

David Bohm, in his groundbreaking book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, emphasizes that what we call truth is no more than a viewpoint of truth. He argues that to defend one’s truth as the only absolute truth is to promote fragmentation and hostility. Just look at all the religious wars over the course of the last few thousand years. It seems that the first response of the human mind is to defend its own view rather than try to understand and incorporate another view. Is openness to different viewpoints so hard?

Spiritual truth is obscured when the demands of dogmatism are seen as more important than the dictates of consciousness. Consciousness has fidelity to love, not to rigidity. To unity and oneness, not to fragmentation; to vision, not to shortsightedness.

The mystics from all religions have the same inner experience, or at least a very similar viewpoint of truth in regards to the oneness of existence. It is only on the surface of religion that differences are seen. A Catholic priest and a Buddhist priest might not understand each other, but the Catholic monk and the Buddhist monk will. This was Thomas Merton’s observation — that only the monks, going beyond the surface of things, share the same inner experience.

I like how Asghar T. Minai sums up his book, Mysticism, Aesthetics, and Cosmic Consciousness: “What this author therefore does not want to be identified with is, those who side with one pole against the other or those who take the formal knowledge of the world as eternal laws, or those who take formal religion as eternal ethical value systems…” He goes on to say that he wants to be identified with David Bohm “when he views both the world viewed and viewer as one, when he refers to it as ‘the context of the undivided wholeness of the entire universe.’”

But Bohm admits that this too is only a viewpoint of truth.

Imagine a culture that stressed the undivided wholeness of the entire universe. Well, if that is a viewpoint of truth you subscribe to, you can start with yourself. As Gandhi so wisely said, “You must be the change that you want to see in the world.”