Knowing the Truth

Once we have accepted the Truth we must brace ourselves to explore and deal with the consequences of the Truth. For instance, if I am one day confronted with the fact that X is true, and Y contradicts X, then Y is no longer true, even if I have believed in Y my whole life. If my whole life is based on Y being true, then my whole life is going to change. The more I experience X, the more things about Y I discover to be wrong.

We should use the word "know" in its original sense: intimate experience and oneness. "Adam knew his wife Eve", meaning they had intercourse with one another. It is not a mental assent or head knowledge, i.e. "Oh I know that." It is a coming into union with Truth experientially and existentially. The Truth is there for us to know, but we cannot know the Truth until we accept it. The prophet does not (or should not) just bring a message, the prophet IS the message. If the message has not changed the messenger then it is nothing but empty words. Once we accept it we will be changed by it. Truth is not Truth if it has not changed you. If it is an ethereal thing out in space that you can just pontificate about then it is not Truth.

When we know the Truth, that is, when we are one with Truth so that it is ours experientially and not just theoretically, then the Truth will make us free. Talking about Truth will not make us free, but knowing it will. How do we know it? Through experience. I daresay we do not know the Truth through study. Oh, we can learn about it through study, but we cannot know it through study. To know it is to live it. To live it is to know it. What are you doing with it? Has it changed you? That is what makes it Truth.

Not once have I talked about understanding the Truth, and there is a reason. We cannot seek understanding as a thing in itself. If we know the Truth then understanding will follow, but knowing is never the result of understanding. Indeed, we often mistake understanding for knowing, at our peril. If our understanding does not flow out of our knowing, then our understanding will eventually be revealed as misunderstanding.