Knowledge and belief describe the boundaries and constitute the contents and projections of the self. And the groups and institutions from which the self derives much of its identity and sense of destiny, also depend for their own on particular bodies of knowledge and belief. None of this fragmentary psychological and cultural content is related to the truth which is one, total, actual, and therefore not reducible to the knowledge of one presuming to stand outside of it. In other words, the very presence and outreach of the tribal and personal self is the negation of truth.
For one who is only interested in the possibility of finding the truth, there is then only one question then: Can individual instances of a general phenomenon of mental conditioning by previous experience and knowledge (personal memory and cultural tradition), revert to the source, the original truth? Can the human being give way to life itself?
It is of utmost importance to realize that this possible transit from the mental reality created by experience and preinformed desire to what is largely independent from such reality, cannot possibly occur in time. So “transit” is not an adequate term for what we are trying to convey here. We are not asking whether the self can move from one state of consciousness to a presumably better one guided by its own or somebody else's prescription. We are asking rather whether the ongoing accumulation and projection of experience that constitutes the self can come to an end.
No one can “know” the truth because it is unrelated to the trappings of the personal self: experience, knowledge, and desire. But complete and direct perception of the actual nature of the self and of the suffering it creates with its fragmentary, conflictive, and enduring mental content, is already on the threshold of truth because such insight cannot but obliterate the self.
Drawing by Kim Schrag
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