Conflagration

That which is True has a transcendental quality; it blazes through the cobwebbed barriers of culture, geography, personality, matter, and time. That which is True, in a causal sense, exists beyond relativity and rationalizations; reality requires no explanation or apologetics. It is, regardless of the words that we use to describe (or diminish) it. The first principles, whether those of the atheistic physicist or the Zoroastrian Magi, share one thing in common: they simply are.

Absolute Truth, and by consequence, understanding of Absolute Truth, stands beyond opposites, relativity, logic, and explanation. I won’t delve into what Absolute Truth might be, firstly, because I can’t bottle lightning and claim to know what THAT is, and secondly, because no two individuals can singularly agree on what “Absolute Truth" might be.

Relative truth is easy; Absolute Truth is ineffable.

I can, however, with some measure of confidence, share what Absolute Truth is not. This is informed by personal experience - whatever that’s worth - and the words of countless wisemen, sages, prophets, saints, mavericks, playwrights, pragmatists, polymaths, and pure-hearted peasants drawing far back into the mists of time.

I believe that the Truth, in a final sense, is Christ - but, I don’t know the Truth, in its fullness.

You don’t know an apple by the word “apple;” you know an apple by tasting it.

If I’m ignorant to every cause, how can I begin to understand the manifold effects?

What is Christ? Beyond words, and ideations, and abstractions, and projections?

Am I created in God’s image, or have I created God in mine?

I’ve found tremendous value in the via negativa - rather than searching for what Truth is, instead, casting away what is known to be untrue. This approach, little by little, by degrees, gradually, may produce something tangible to the soul. A knowing that is greater, stronger, than previously known.

(For an introduction to this stream of thought, framed in the Catholic tradition, see The Cloud of Unknowing or Theologia Germanica.)

I know, in contemporary Western terms, that the traditional cardinal sins are untrue.

Pride, greed, envy, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth - terms that represent interior unrealities.

Sin, simply, is that which keeps us from God - from Absolute Truth; in this regard, sin is ignorance or falsehood. Sin, maya, whatever we call it, is an interior condition, with effects made manifest outwardly. The words we use to describe the thing, are not the thing.

“Thoughts, words, deeds.”

Sin has the capacity to touch all men; likewise, Truth has the same capacity.

There is a primacy of the interior man - outward acts and appearances are a basin, fed from cascading waterfalls of unseen causes. The source lies upward, yet, we dive headlong into the shallow waters of time, matter, and egotism; we attempt to use mortal bodies and tongues to contain infinity and eternity.

The man whom I call my enemy, based upon geography, or language, or superficialities - in violation of the command of the Savior - is not so different from myself in constitutive reality…

The Truth transcends, pervades, and unites all; the phantasm of sin veils and destroys.

In the words of Gautama Buddha, a sage of the East:

"The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs…”

Adittapariyaya Sutta

The Truth is certainly not found in a landscape of hellfire and delusion; but, it may lay on the other side of it. All genuine mythologies, all great works of drama, depict this: a monumental travail, or temptation, or torment - prior to a final victory.

“And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself

Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns,

And I was thirsty even unto death…”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Idylls of the King

Christ lies on the other side of sin; He awaits the decision of his prodigal sons.

The crossing of this burning ground, “a land of sand and thorns," is an active process; it’s the greatest risk and the greatest adventure. Our most cherished works of modern fiction, from The Lord of the Rings to Star Wars allegorically depict this.

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” 

Matthew 16:24

This final victory is preceded by countless little ones, won on the battlegrounds of daily life - its temptations, its boredoms, its annoyances, its adventures, its romances, its fragrances and carousels, its bread and its circuses, its vainglories, its ambitions, its wars, its fears, its sorrows, and its joys.

Truth blazes from within; falsehoods burn from without.