Absolute Truth is the field of consciousness you experience every day of your life. The term “Absolute Truth” is synonymous with God, Being, Consciousness, and Infinity. Countless other names have been used by perennial philosophers from various religions to describe Absolute Truth.
What is usually referred to as “God” is nothing other than the field of consciousness you constantly experience in the present moment. As astonishing as it might sound, what you are seeking is right under your nose. The present moment is Absolute Truth. The reason why it’s so difficult to realize Absolute Truth is precisely because it’s everywhere and everything; it doesn’t have an opposite.
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.
Eckhart Tolle
Jed McKenna, one of my favorite authors, defines spiritual enlightenment as “That which couldn’t be simpler.” Absolute Truth, as such, must be present at this exact moment. You’re probably wondering, “But if this is the case, why am I not aware of it?” Precisely because you’re immersed in it. What you need to do to realize Absolute Truth is to become aware of water in a reality totally made up of water. As you can imagine, it’s fucking complicated. Such understanding doesn’t come from acquiring new knowledge about water, but from abandoning every assumption that leads you to imagine that reality is composed of something other than water.
What you seek is everywhere; only through your imagination can you believe there’s anything other than Absolute Truth. The best way to hide a priceless treasure is to hide it everywhere; something that’s everywhere would seem to be nowhere. Discriminating the true from the false is a slow and complicated process because everything that tells you there’s anything other than water is false.
Absolute Truth and The Dream of Life
The eternal field of consciousness called the present moment is Absolute Truth because nothing exists outside of it. There is only this single infinite bubble of experience, and the only game in town is to believe that this is not the case.
A good practice to intuit Absolute Truth is to contemplate the picture of a realized mystic like Ramana Maharshi. Just by looking at his eyes, I get the unshakable feeling that he was totally aware that infinity is present at every point in space.
Absolute Truth is Being and Consciousness. Absolute Truth is the medium through which any phenomena in the universe is created. As I’ve previously written, life is the dream of a single Mind and, just like in a dream, everything is made of consciousness. Contrary to popular belief, ordinary reality isn’t made of matter; it’s made of consciousness.
Absolute Truth vs Relative Truth
The easiest way to understand the difference between Absolute Truth and relative truth is to contemplate the analogy of life as a dream. Absolute Truth is the substance that makes up any possible dream. On the other hand, the content of the dream is relative; that which is created by consciousness can perish or transform. Instead, Consciousness itself is eternal.
Brahman is real, the universe is unreal, and the universe is Brahman.
Adi Shankara
Consider this thought experiment: imagine that the forms appearing in the universe were made of water. Water can take any shape to create any kind of scenario. The forms themselves can dissolve and change, but water itself is eternal.
Another important aspect to consider when contemplating the difference between Absolute Truth and relative truth is the realization of the infinite aspect of reality. In an infinite system like the universe, it’s ultimately impossible to measure and label any part of reality. The measuring and labeling is useful for our survival in everyday life, but it doesn’t have any kind of ultimate metaphysical validity to it.
Let me explain. A second can be perceived as ten thousand years, and ten thousand years can be perceived as a second. A grain of sand can be perceived as big as the sun, and the sun can be perceived as big as a grain of sand. It all depends on the level of magnification from which you’re analyzing reality.
To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
William Blake
Infinity renders everything absolutely relative; a common object like a cup is literally infinite. Look around in your current experience of the present moment; everything you are perceiving is infinite. Ordinary life is equally as infinite and magical as anything else you might consider. Ordinary life is not so ordinary after all.
How to Realize Absolute Truth
Absolute Truth is what remains after everything false has been destroyed. The divine nature of life is obscured by the labels the mind projects onto reality. The ego perceives life through the lenses of meaning, value, and purpose, which prevent the perception of Being, as Being precedes any type of conceptualization. The symbolic representations you superimpose on reality prevent you from perceiving the equality of the substance that constitutes everything: Consciousness.
Abandoning the False
Spiritual research is a journey of abandoning everything you think you know, not a journey of acquiring new knowledge. Absolute Truth is present now, at this very moment. What prevents you from being aware of it is every single notion you’ve learned since your birth. The Absolute cannot be reached because it’s already here. The Absolute cannot be obtained because it’s what you are. Absolute Truth is eternally present; what prevents you from recognizing it is everything that tells you otherwise.
It’s possible to recognize Absolute Truth only after everything false has been abandoned. What you’re most sure of is exactly what you must be willing to question in order to conduct an honest search for Truth. Spirituality consists of stripping your awareness of everything that’s false, so you can recognize what’s True. The only reason you don’t realize Absolute Truth is that you imagine the existence of the false: you’re convinced that your beliefs, your opinions, and your ideas about reality are Reality.
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”
– Adyashanti
The Challenge of the Ego
Absolute Truth is always present; what hinders its realization is everything we believe to be true but isn’t. If you want to realize truth, your only task is to abandon the false, so that the true can emerge. But abandoning the false involves abandoning everything dear to you, and you are what’s dearest to you. The journey in search of truth is full of traps and pitfalls, where the probability of failure borders on certainty, due to your ego’s tendency to sabotage your own efforts. In fact, the mind will never honestly answer questions about its own existence and its own foundation.
When questioned, the conceptual-self will always affirm its real presence and always defend its beliefs about reality; doing otherwise is not in its interests. The fundamental aspect to understand is that you don’t want to abandon what you believe, because your beliefs are what you are. Every organism has within itself a survival instinct that aims to keep it alive at any cost, and the ego is no exception. Once you seriously embark on the spiritual path, the ego understands it’s in a battle for its own survival and won’t hesitate to play dirty.
Deprogramming the Mind
Since Truth is already present, and what prevents its realization is the patina of falsehood that covers reality, spiritual research consists of the total destruction of the false and not the accumulation of further conceptual knowledge. Valuable teachings are teachings that destroy and don’t build. Spirituality is letting go and not acquiring. Spiritual enlightenment is nothing but the deprogramming of your mind; once free from the mind, the reality of Being will be revealed in all its splendor.
In the Matrix movie, Agent Smith has the task of destroying the anomaly that jeopardizes the entire functioning of the virtual simulation: Neo. Your mind is like Agent Smith, and your Spirit is Neo. Your will to know the truth is perceived as a mortal danger by your mind, just as Neo is perceived as a lethal virus by Agent Smith. Destroying your mind entails the destruction of the conceptual Matrix in which you live and the birth of the understanding of indistinct Being. Deprogramming the mind means remaining in a constant state of non-judgment; for this reason, spiritual wisdom is often defined as divine idiocy. The wise person is one who sees what is and doesn’t see what isn’t, and unfortunately, our entire existence is based on seeing what isn’t. If we stopped seeing what isn’t, all our most beloved illusions would be destroyed.
Absolute Truth and the Limits of Language
“The attempt to express Absolute Truth through language is like trying to drink up the ocean with a fork.”
– Alan Watts
Absolute Truth defies communication through language, symbols, and logic because it is the very substance of which all experience is made. Being cannot be used to point out Being in a reality composed entirely of Being; our linguistic and symbolic tools – themselves manifestations of Absolute Truth – fall short in describing that which encompasses everything.
Imagine you wake up inside a dream, a dream that looks just like everyday reality. How would you point out to the other dream characters that the reality you inhabit is entirely made out of consciousness? Any attempt at pointing out consciousness to others would be useless because there is nothing apart from consciousness inside a dream.
“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”
– Tao Te Ching
Logic, rooted in duality and distinction, crumbles in the face of the non-dual nature of Absolute Truth. The mind, accustomed to categorizing and differentiating, finds itself unable to grasp that which has no opposite, no contrast. Attempting to convey Absolute Truth through these means is akin to trying to capture infinity in a finite container – a futile endeavor that only serves to reinforce the illusion of separation from that which we seek to understand.
You could read all the books ever written on spiritual enlightenment and non-duality, but you won’t get an inch closer to Absolute Truth if you use your acquired knowledge to enrich the illusion of your separate identity and protect you from the naked experience of Being. Researching and studying is key, but don’t make the mistake of adopting a set of spiritual beliefs and settling for second-hand tales. The spiritual practice of your choosing should burn away your false self, so that everything that is left is Truth. The journey to the realization of Absolute Truth is a journey of unknowing. Absolute Truth exists and you can realize it directly, why settle for less?