Well, so far these are all just assumptions, assertions, opinions, statements and perspectives of more or less wise people. But – Pilate’s question – what is truth? Are the above views true?
How can we recognise the objective truth of the fundamental questions of life: Some say that global warming is man-made, others say the opposite; still others claim that the ratio is about 50:50. Some say that national borders must be closed to immigrants, others say they must be opened, still others say they must be opened for family reunification or for these and those or just closed. For all of them, their view of the ‘truth’ is not guided by the common good, but by their own views or interests. Where on this scale can objective truth be found?
Don Quixote mistakes windmills for evil giants, the socialist has different truths than the capitalist and the democrat has different ones than the right-wing populist. Each of the witnesses in court has their version, which differs from the others. Those who believe that vaccinations are implantations of chips by dark forces also believe that windmills are evil giants. The way we deal with ‘truth’ is particularly evident in every talk show or court case, in every confessional dispute, in every neighbourhood dispute, in every parliamentary debate, in every election that is declared stolen and in every referee’s decision as to whether a foul was worthy of a penalty or not.
Furthermore, we can only grasp the totality of the world in fragments and then we also see it through the prism of our own personal priorities, which may vary in importance and be social, economic, national, familial, political, military, etc. These priorities may then be integrative or exclusive: Sermon on the Mount, Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, etc. Each of us is a bit of Don Quixote.
The South Asian wisdom, here as an example from the Buddhist Pali canon (Udana VI.4), denounces our subjective ‘truths’ and blindnesses:
“Once upon a time, a maharaja lived in Savatthi. He ordered: ’Go and find some people who are blind from birth (!), let them all come here and show them an elephant. One was led to the ear, one to the tusk, one to the leg, one to the tail, etc. Then the ruler ordered the blind: ‘Tell me, what is an elephant?’ The one who had touched the tusk replied, ‘An elephant is a kind of plough.’ The one who had touched the leg replied: ‘An elephant is like a tree trunk.’ The one with the tail tassel explained that an elephant is a broom, etc. Then they beat each other up. The Maharaja said: ‘Likewise, all pilgrims of different schools are blind, eyeless, and do not see what makes sense and what is nonsense, what is truth and what is untruth. That is why they quarrel and hurt each other.’ (Wikipedia: The Blind Men and the Elephant)
Well, so far these are all just assumptions, assertions, opinions, statements and perspectives of more or less wise people. But – Pilate’s question – what is truth? Are the above views true?
How can we recognise the objective truth of the fundamental questions of life: Some say that global warming is man-made, others say the opposite; still others claim that the ratio is about 50:50. Some say that national borders must be closed to immigrants, others say they must be opened, still others say they must be opened for family reunification or for these and those or just closed. For all of them, their view of the ‘truth’ is not guided by the common good, but by their own views or interests. Where on this scale can objective truth be found?
Don Quixote mistakes windmills for evil giants, the socialist has different truths than the capitalist and the democrat has different ones than the right-wing populist. Each of the witnesses in court has their version, which differs from the others. Those who believe that vaccinations are implantations of chips by dark forces also believe that windmills are evil giants. The way we deal with ‘truth’ is particularly evident in every talk show or court case, in every confessional dispute, in every neighbourhood dispute, in every parliamentary debate, in every election that is declared stolen and in every referee’s decision as to whether a foul was worthy of a penalty or not.
Furthermore, we can only grasp the totality of the world in fragments and then we also see it through the prism of our own personal priorities, which may vary in importance and be social, economic, national, familial, political, military, etc. These priorities may then be integrative or exclusive: Sermon on the Mount, Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, etc. Each of us is a bit of Don Quixote.
The South Asian wisdom, here as an example from the Buddhist Pali canon (Udana VI.4), denounces our subjective ‘truths’ and blindnesses:
“Once upon a time, a maharaja lived in Savatthi. He ordered: ’Go and find some people who are blind from birth (!), let them all come here and show them an elephant. One was led to the ear, one to the tusk, one to the leg, one to the tail, etc. Then the ruler ordered the blind: ‘Tell me, what is an elephant?’ The one who had touched the tusk replied, ‘An elephant is a kind of plough.’ The one who had touched the leg replied: ‘An elephant is like a tree trunk.’ The one with the tail tassel explained that an elephant is a broom, etc. Then they beat each other up. The Maharaja said: ‘Likewise, all pilgrims of different schools are blind, eyeless, and do not see what makes sense and what is nonsense, what is truth and what is untruth. That is why they quarrel and hurt each other.’ (Wikipedia: The Blind Men and the Elephant)
Blind men and an elephant. Medieval Jain temple. Anekantavada doctrine artwork.jpgCreative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0
In fact, people only see fragments of the objective truth at first. Above all, however, they then bend these fragments until they fit into their world of imagination, regardless of whether it is political, ecological, social or economic. The classic example is Don Quixote, who declares the sails of a windmill to be evil giants and attacks them at a gallop with his lance at the ready. A classic example is the photograph from Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, which shows a far smaller number of attendees than at Obama’s inauguration, which he described as the overwhelming majority – leading his spokeswoman at the time to invent the term ‘alternative facts’.
But you don’t need Don Quixote or Donald Trump to describe the individual’s search for ‘truth’. A glance at everyday practice is enough to show that individual truth always depends on the subliminal influence of the respective form of self-preservation; the truths of the entrepreneur are different from those of the trade unionist. And that’s not all, because in addition to all these difficulties in approaching the overall truth and/or objective truth, there is also the lack of knowledge of the overarching spiritual truth; after all, the elephant only represents the material surface world and not the spiritual superstructure (see Plato’s Allegory of the Cave).
The famous poem by John Saxe (The Blind Men and the Elephant) ends with the words (in free translation; see Wikipedia):
‘Often in the war of theologians,
luminaries fight each other.
What one has recognised as truth,
the others revile as a lie,
and they prattle on about an elephant
that no one has ever seen!’
But it is by no means only a matter of how official statements of the denominations are drawn upon each other. If you look at Wikipedia under the keyword ‘theodicy’, i.e. the question of why there is suffering in the world, and look at the answers of individual theologians, you will see that ‘out of 50 available answers, there are 51 answers’.
And the ‘blind’ can be seen at every party conference, in every conference and in every family quarrel. We are far from being able to claim the ‘truth’, to understand the ‘elephant’.
Regarding the recognition of objective truth, Zhuangzi (Dschuang Dsi), a Taoist wisdom teacher more than two thousand years ago, remarked in his ‘True Book of the Southern Flower Land’ (II , 10):
“Suppose I discuss with you; you defeat me and I do not defeat you. Are you really right? Am I really wrong? Or else I defeat you and you do not defeat me. Am I really right and you really wrong? Is one of us right and one of us wrong, or are we both right or both wrong? You and I cannot know this. But if people are in such a state of uncertainty, who should they call to decide? Should we call someone who agrees with you to decide? Since he agrees with you, how can he decide? Or should we call someone who agrees with me? Since he agrees with me, how can he decide? Should we call someone who disagrees with both of us to decide? Since he disagrees with both of us, how can he decide? Or shall we appoint one who agrees with both of us to decide? Since he agrees with both of us, how can he decide? So I and you and the others cannot agree with each other, and so we should depend on something outside of us? … Forget opinions, views and points of view. Rise into the boundless! And dwell in the boundless!”
The difference between living based on subjective views, standpoints and convictions – whereby democratic majorities, i.e. the views of the masses, are also of little help – and living guided by the spiritual ‘boundless’ consists, as already mentioned, in the fact that, in contrast to the ‘boundless’, the truths of everyday people, i.e. the Don Quixotes of this world, consist of assumptions and views and by no means of insight, i.e. knowledge and guidance from the inner voice. This does not refer to objectively valid mathematical functions or physical laws, but to convictions regarding all aspects of lifestyle, from housekeeping, marriage, career behaviour, child-rearing, etc., to ethical, religious and political principles. If all these areas of life were characterised by truth from within, there would be no different views and, for example, neither political parties nor different denominations. But especially in religion and politics, everyone has their own truth and believes that it is the actual truth. In this respect, about 99% of all convictions can hardly be true, and certainly not comprehensively.
The truths of the spiritual person, on the other hand, are based on spiritual impulses, as Krishna and many others, including Jesus, have shown: The three temptations in the wilderness (Mk. 1, 1-12 ff.) show that and how the conscious (!) handling of the whisperings of the instinctual soul works: The tempter ‘came’ to him, demanded to be ‘worshipped’ and promised ‘all the kingdoms of this (!) world and their glory.’ And Jesus replied that God alone (!) is to be worshipped, that He alone is to be served (Matthew 4:10), and that when choosing between matter and spirit, the temptations of matter, such as seduction (sex, lottery, intoxication) or revenge, are to be rejected. But people don’t even know about this choice because they act exclusively according to earthly-material impulses (incentives, fears) and at most attribute the catastrophic consequences (decay of the family, addiction problems, etc.) to their own weakness, but mostly learn absolutely nothing from them (revenge) and in no case do they associate them with the lack of spiritual guidance.
As for the fear impulses at the supra-individual level, the risks and their disasters are gigantic. This is shown by examples such as the fear of religious or political competition over the centuries, the Korean and Vietnam wars, or, at present, the crises in the Middle East between Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites, or Israel with both Shiite and Sunni countries.
Likewise, the Russian incursion into Ukraine is motivated not only by the greed to restore the USSR territories, but above all by the fear of democratic competition from an independent Ukraine in the immediate neighbourhood.
Everyone knows the alternatives for overcoming these temptations of retaliation, greed, the satisfaction of desires, the pursuit of power, enrichment and, above all, the overcoming of fears (see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane) through religions, but hardly anyone follows them: For a start, concrete examples are rare, such as reconciliatory and understandingly resolving a marital crisis, or on a collective level, such as the non-violent liberation of an entire people from colonial tyranny by Gandhi. It is the veil of ego that lies over people’s consciousness and that Hindu wisdom calls Maya: Maya blocks access to inner Christianity by practising external Christianity (following rituals) and by stark contrasts between a blinkered view of faith and an egocentric way of life: ‘One sees clearly only with the heart.’
This can be seen when evangelical Christians in the USA, by far the largest group, carry weapons as a matter of course, while militantly fighting any female self-determination with regard to abortions.
The alternative to personal-earthly truth, then, is to transfer the definition of truth to one’s own inner voice and to increasingly collect practical results of inner inspiration. Then a person learns that his truths are at best partial truths. His decisions, based on the aforementioned inspirations or gut feelings of the boundless, are almost always successful, if one has been able to distinguish the ideas of ‘above’ and ‘below’ clearly enough. They can be recognised by their fruits, which always put self-interest aside and always take into account the greater good. They consciously transfer the responsibility for the corresponding action to the inner guidance. You can only see well with the ‘heart’. A typical example of inner guidance:
My plans for the student exchange trip are in full swing. It is now my favourite class, and for everyone involved it is a matter close to their hearts, also because it is the final trip. Then I get told very clearly in meditation: ‘No.’ But even after several heartfelt inquiries: ‘No!’ It’s not about cancelling the trip, just my participation. Deeply disappointed, I take care of finding a replacement for the trip leader, and a colleague is immediately available.
The trip takes place as planned and, as reported later, is extremely harmonious and successful at first. The course of events on the day of the return journey was as follows: early in the morning, all the suitcases were packed, the bus to the airport was waiting at the hotel door. Then a call from the airline: all flights had been cancelled because the ash from the Icelandic volcanic eruption had reached the atmosphere over Central and Northern Europe, making flight operations impossible. The group and particularly their tour guide were suddenly faced with a series of extreme challenges: the visas were only valid for that day, the passport offices, which were overwhelmed by the situation, caused difficulties upon difficulties, the hotel had to set up emergency accommodation solutions and insistently demanded cash payment for the additional room costs, the telephone lines between hotel, consulate, local travel agency and local school are running hot, everyone is glued to the television, and a group of lively tenth graders needs to be kept busy, supervised, taught and kept under control. In addition, the uncertainty about the duration of this weather adversity gnaws at the patience of those responsible and of the parents at home. After another six nerve-wracking days of wild back and forth, the group arrives home in full, but completely exhausted and at the end of their tether.
Those who repeatedly have such experiences with spiritual inner guidance and care distinguish between belief and knowledge, between assumption and certainty, between endless text exegesis and practical experience : Just because you have read a dozen books about tennis, it doesn’t mean you can play tennis.
The greatest factual proof of the truth of love of one’s enemies is Gandhi’s liberation of 300 million Indians from the colonial tyranny of the British Empire on the basis of love of one’s enemies (see Chapter 9). His success is usually seen in terms of non-violence, but the real reason for it is to be seen in the love of one’s enemies. Furthermore, it is widely apparent that its opposite, in the form of rejection, contempt, hatred, conflict, injury, manslaughter and murder, has been and is the main cause of suffering in the world for thousands of years. On both the individual and collective level, it is apparent across the board how hate works destructively, clearly visible in the example of the brotherly peoples of Israel and Palestine or the Republicans and Democrats, the Sunnis and Shiites, the Nazis and Democrats.
Concrete examples of the redemptive function of love for strangers and enemies are rare because hardly anyone thinks of applying it. Nevertheless, it exists everywhere and time and again, see such examples as Janusz Korczak, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Father Lapsley or Nelson Mandela (see the chapters on love). Love for strangers or enemies is ‘true’ because it is and has been and will be proven.
The intellect-driven actions of man are fundamentally egocentric in structure, remain in the realm of good and evil, and therefore, in principle, sometimes end well and sometimes end badly. The intellect cannot decide what is truth and what is not: “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for God has said, “”You foolish man! What! Jesus‘ statement that he has overcome the world (John 16:33) shows, among other things, that he has solved the fundamental problem of establishing the truth, that he has penetrated the limitation to the material-intellectual world and thus the suppression of the image: ’Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven’ (Matt. 16:17). The purely emotional-intellectual control of life without the understanding of its egocentric background guidance (instinct of self-preservation) – also without the knowledge of the alternative way of life (gut feeling) through intuition – has resulted in the infinite suffering of people in their personal and collective lives, and this without restriction since the existence of mankind.
A rationally conducted discussion, based on the exchange of arguments, is not a means of establishing the truth. In this regard, Zhuangzi should be heard once more:
‘The spiritual person has the truth as an inner conviction that bears fruit, whereas the people of the masses seek to prove it by trying to outdo others with arguments.’
One only has to look around, for example at parliamentary debates with their many and fundamentally opposing claims to ‘truth’. Of course, politics is familiar with the human dilemma of truth. It recognises that the answer of democratic politics to the question of truth is the absurd solution of the majority out of the apparent insolubility – actually insoluble in a secular sense – which is one of the egocentricity of humanity. Most people worldwide actually vote only on the basis of economic prospects: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ And if it’s Nazis who promise economic improvement, then that’s who they vote for.
A wisdom-based life is not free of disturbances, but it is free of suffering. To counter the objection that this is also nothing more than an opinion, a look at the experiences of those who have taken and described this path and have put it to the test is enough. So anyone who sets out to implement the Sermon on the Mount’s call to love one’s enemies, taking into account the basis for doing so, that is, looking through, will experience wonder upon wonder. However, the fruits that can be recognised along this path do not fall into one’s lap. Rather, a good deal of patience, steadfastness and training is required. It should also be noted that the beginnings are made difficult, because one’s own ego immediately notices that it is in great danger and immediately begins to fight against it like mad to save itself.
However, the ego programme in humans not only has the strategy of fighting the path to selflessness, but also tries to accelerate the path to a completely egocentric life, as Goethe shows with the example of Faust. It does not matter whether it is competitive behaviour in the office, drug use, getting into gambling, dominance conflicts in a partnership, speeding, etc. The Mephisto rule is: ‘The devil always lets you win first.’
Since people do not want to give up their lives, even though they are full of unhappiness, based on their personal points of view, in extreme cases such as Reich citizens, Nazis, cult followers, etc., they insist unshakably like Don Quixote that windmills are evil giants and communists are evil for capitalists – or vice versa.
Our individual, instinct-driven thoughts of self-preservation from ‘below’ differ from the spiritual truth of intuition from ‘above’ – within. Very few people admit to themselves that what they believe to be the truth is in fact their interpretation of the truth. And this interpretation is usually based on one’s own desires. This applies to migrants, party affiliation, attitude to the climate crisis, to war, to everything. There is an important difference between subjective and objective truth, depending on the extent to which perception is guided solely by the mind and its unconscious and largely self-preservation orientation, or by the soul, that is, by the guidance of the ‘boundless’. In this regard, Jesus emphasises, ‘came into the world to bear witness (!) to the truth.’
Truth must be provable and must be able to be experienced. A physical law must be demonstrable in a tangible way, a political ideology must prove itself or be refuted by its failure, as is tyranny – despite exceptions – through countless examples in history. The questions of nuclear power, abortion, celibacy, schooling, etc. are answered so differently from country to country, from group to group and from person to person that they cannot reliably solve the question of truth, because it is almost always guided by interests. That is why democratic groups of people always resort to the emergency solution of determining earthly truth by majority vote. Otherwise, they resort to the use of force, in the preliminary stage through manipulation, lies, undermining of the legal system, etc. This is currently the case for more than half of the peoples when hybrid systems are included.
The individual is dependent on making his decisions based on his prior information, his interests, his feelings and his intellect, and on evaluating his personal and collective experiences – but all too often he does not do this – see ‘Third Reich’ and racists – and often unconsciously leaves them to circumstances such as social background, parental home, etc.
The alternative is a spiritual way of life that aims to achieve dialogue with the inner voice. This provides subjective truths as well as individual advice and guidance. It reveals not only universal truths such as love of one’s enemy, but also guidance tailored to the person asking the question, such as: Should I rent this apartment? Should I complain? Should I take the job nearby or the much better paid one, but further away? She does not answer, for example, the question of whether abortion is good or bad or predominantly good or bad, or whether it is at all within the scope of divine judgement. She answers individually.
If some churches tolerate practised homosexuality and others condemn it, then it automatically follows that many organisations are far removed from the truth, that is, from divine will, regardless of which ones they are. This is because all of them start from the mantra: ‘God wills it!’ And, of course, they want to be the ones who, unlike the others, know which truth it is.
As far as general truths are concerned, the founders of religions concentrated on naming the most important ones for people. Jesus, for example, exposed the partial sham truth of physical death, understood as the end of personal life. Rather, he demonstrated it as a metamorphosis for the higher development of the ‘caterpillar’ into a ‘butterfly’ (see also Lazarus). Furthermore, his mission was – as was also the case with Krishna, Buddha and Lao Tse – to show people their divinity (‘You will accomplish even greater deeds than I.’ Mt. … ) within, using his own person as an example (the ‘Christ in them’, as Paul puts it; 2 2 Cor. 13,5): He fulfilled this mission unceasingly through his teaching, his behaviour and his actions (!), just as Zarathustra, Lao Tse, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha had done before him, and Mohammed, Nanak or Bahai’ullah after him. All in all, Jesus showed the way out of the vale of infinite suffering of the good-bad world with its ‘truths’.
Jesus’ teaching “You are all gods” in relation to every human being has so far been successfully undermined by the churches through their cult of personality around Jesus. They have not presented him as just a person with a fully developed inner Christ, as a role model for spiritual growth and exemplary maturity. Rather, they have propagated and propagate him as the only son of God, stylising his high spiritual quality of his inner voice as the only quality. In doing so, they trample on the aforementioned Christ, the ‘Father in me’, the intuition in every human being.
In order to recognise the truths of creation, it is in many cases unavoidable to interpret the clues of the wisdom texts. Who interprets? Luther found the ridiculous solution that it is the Bible itself that has to provide the interpretations of its statements: Sola scriptura! So the interpretation of the quotations is done by the Bible itself, that is, by other quotations, which of course have to be interpreted by someone (?). This manoeuvre, which requires that the interpretation be interpreted by humans, means that you can no longer go wrong. The Catholic Church takes a rustic approach to defining truth by assigning the interpretation of the Bible to the teaching authority of the church. The Orthodox Church takes a slightly different view of truth. In its rejection of sola scriptura, it is the church’s traditional customs that are always aware of and represent the truth: Truth is therefore what their church has always done. This means that the worship of images of Mary, the monopoly of male priests or the rejection of homosexual partnerships are part of the definition of divine will.
With regard to the sanctioning of abortion in the states of the USA, there are a wide range of variants, from almost unexceptional punishment to complete freedom, even without time limits. In the early Soviet Union, abortion was fully legalised and free of charge in 1920, then banned under Stalinism (‘We don’t have enough people and so much to do.’), later legalised again after the war and even performed free of charge in clinics during the Khrushchev era; due to the lack of contraceptives, this led to abortion as birth control. Was that the ‘will of God’? There is no evidence of this in the scriptures, and Jesus did not comment on it either. Furthermore, the extremely arbitrary nature of state intervention shows that its handling, depending on the severity of the interference in the mother’s decision, obviously cannot have much to do with truth, because it is not spiritually based, but rather on reason, emotion and a control mania. A decision regarding whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term can never be regulated by laws – because, as already mentioned, these are based on the mind (ego) and not on the soul – and cannot know the truth of an individual pregnancy.
Only if the mother-to-be engages in spiritual dialogue can the inner divinity provide guidance in this very individual case, because it is aware of the background and destiny of the person concerned. In doing so, the inner voice does not interfere with free will and its considerations. The decision for or against abortion can never come from any other source than the decision of the mother-to-be. Whether she bases her decision on spiritual or animalistic grounds is also her own business and is associated with karmic consequences.
For humans, their own truth is the truth, although the criterion for truth is that it is spiritually guided and practically successful: it can be proven and is characterised by the renunciation of self-interest and unconditional consideration of the greater good. As far as confirmation is concerned, it is almost the norm that people reach a degree of closed-mindedness to all insight that they stick to their truth regardless of even permanent refutations. This can be clearly seen in Don Quixote and the beatings he receives again and again. The same applies to right-wing extremist, fascist and Nazi ideas in people’s minds. The absolute unwillingness to see reason, which is widespread throughout the world, can be seen very clearly in the migrant issue: ‘They aren’t people, they are animals’ and shows the enormous power of egocentrism, which stems from the original fear of threat.
Every human being knows that they have some kind of gentle guidance, an intuitive urge, the inner voice. The Nazarene shows that this is the Son of God, the bearer of truth, the ‘Father in me’, the ‘Boundless’. It is the intuitive instance that guides the destiny of man. If a person allows themselves to listen to their intuition and not to their own mind, and thus learns to listen to this quiet, gentle voice (1 Kings 19:12), they may not know the whole truth of material and spiritual life (material and spiritual ‘elephant’), but they can follow their intuition step by step. In this way, he will safely avoid all the pitfalls that constantly arise in everyday life. For he then grasps the important part of the objective truth that is hidden behind the surface. If he has learned to trust his conscience – because its guidance has proven itself – and obeys it (‘Thy will be done!’), he can actually do no wrong; one sees ‘only well with the heart’ (Saint-Exupéry: The Little Prince).
But it is not that simple. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You have to make a huge personal contribution, and this willingness has to be developed by fighting against your ego. The necessity of this personal contribution – the work on the mixing valve, so to speak – is emphasised by Lessing in his ‘Nathan the Wise’, in which he has the judge say that the power of the ring must be demonstrated for the carefree truth of life. This consists of taking the instructions ‘Do not be afraid!’ and ‘Do not worry!’ seriously and training oneself to follow them. On the spiritual path, one then experiences more and more truth and can thus lead a life free of worry and fear, proven by life experience and success. Anyone who wants to achieve a dialogue with the ‘Father in me’ but is still worrying about their pension, for example, is doing something wrong.
For the average person, an intuitively guided life is nonsense because they have never been educated to it. They lack the experience of divine influence. And the churches have always left no stone unturned to prevent the paths to individual and direct self-awareness of the divine experience. In order to dispute the divine within us, they often turn directly against Jesus: in addition to the example (see above) ‘you are all gods’ they also bypass ‘… you will do even greater works than I do…’ (John 14:12)
Truth is always concrete and in any case true when, firstly, it is based on inner guidance (see the direct line with Johanna) and, secondly, it shows itself in real life as an individual good and is always compatible with the overall good.
Therefore, it is wise to understand the teachings of the scriptures as hypotheses and to use them as a starting point to prove the practicality of these truths, for example, that love of one’s enemy is successful, as is refraining from paying back in the sense of ‘an eye for an eye.’
The wisdom statements in the scriptures of the world religions are not intended as an attempt to force people onto the right path by means of threats – as the denominations did. Rather, their admonitions are reasons to have corresponding experiences based on these statements, which, in the case of individual truth, show the way out of suffering. From a scientific point of view, their commandments can be seen as a kind of deductive imperative (‘Love your enemies…’) that can be logically and specifically derived: Should a military doctor also tend to the wounded enemy? It should then lead to corresponding individual experiences: What happens if I refrain from retaliation against an evil neighbour? In this way, one finally arrives inductively at either the refutation or confirmation of the initial commandment.
In this way, one approaches the truth that, for example, love of one’s enemy is successful. So when I am confronted with such an imperative, I try out how it can work. If it is successful, I have taken an important step towards freeing my life from any enemy. The process of loving one’s enemy, as taught by all the wisdom teachings of all cultures – a ‘duty claim’ (Kant), so to speak – is one of the essential methods for a fulfilled life (see chapter ‘Love’, section Loving one’s enemy). You simply have to put it to the test to see if and how it works.
I would not have been able to write these lines if I had not – guided by my intuition – tried to practice this self-conquest in the form of this love of enemies and had not repeatedly had the confirmation that enemies disappear from my life.
Belief in God is of no use, only experience with God. My truth is then what I have come to know through my study of spiritual teachings and what I have found to be personally confirmed in practice through the way I live my life, and what works all the time. So when I come across principles such as love of one’s enemies, apply them and the results are repeatedly confirmed, that is, prove to be true, then one can speak of truths.
“The beautiful, the true,
it is not outside, the fool seeks it there,
it is within you, you bring it forth.’
(Friedrich Schiller: Theosophy of Julius)
Belief is not knowledge. Belief is an unprovable assumption or conviction; belief is the adoption of something said without proof and without practical evidence. Those who merely believe err and see the world as they want to see the world. But anyone who acquires spiritual knowledge, then constantly collides with the ‘truths’ of the self-preservation of life and then, however, successfully gains certainty from personal, constant experience of devotion, is largely safe from error. The denominations argue endlessly because they believe, that is, they do not know. They replace one interpretation with another, namely theirs. Faith means nothing at all; it is an attitude through which man has the possibility, for reasons of self-protection, to live in a supposedly safe way, and that according to a certain pattern that has been drummed into him. Incidentally, blind faith is not so much a belief in a doctrine such as love of one’s enemy, but predominantly a belief in a person or a book; then one is immediately convinced of possessing the truth. But if doubts remain and you want to continue searching for the truth, the churches are the main obstacle, because instead of teaching how to talk with God, they only speak about God. This leads to endless discussions about God’s mercy, which the public seeks and does not find: if you read ten books about honey, you still won’t know what honey tastes like.
Today I only believe what I know from my inner voice and through the following tangible results. Real faith is proven certainty; everything else is conjecture, assumption, nothing provable. But the spiritual seeker wants the truth and finds its place in his intuition and its positive results. He sees with the ‘heart’:
‘Truth is within ourselves;
’In uns selber ist die Wahrheit
it takes no rise from outward things,
it does not arise from external things,
whatever you may believe.
whatever you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
There is a core in all of us,
where truth abides in fullness;
where truth abides in fullness;
but around wall upon wall,
yet all around walls,
the gross flesh hems it in.
the coarse flesh encloses us.
To know consists in opening a way,
where the imprisoned splendour may escape.”
through which the imprisoned splendour can be released.”
(Robert Browning: Paracelsus. Paracelsus aspires)
There are few social issues that have been more bitterly debated than abortion, the use of nuclear power or the management of the influx of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. For example, it is a truth for the French state that nuclear power (56 nuclear power plants) has been an effective and responsible means of generating energy since the 1970s, and an indispensable one since the climate crisis worsened; in other societies, however, it is controversial or has been abolished altogether. The opposite is considered true there, but only since the reactor disaster in Fukushima. Which ‘truth’ should be followed? In addition, the nuclear powers have been using nuclear submarines since the 1950s, and there are currently an estimated 100 of them.
Is abortion evil or not? The churches have a clear and abstruse answer to this: it is a sin. How the churches know this remains their secret. The answer to the question of the use of nuclear power is just as clear: some know that it is primarily useful, as in France, while others ‘know’ that it is primarily simply too risky, as in Germany. Here, too, there are many different truths worldwide. Abortion could be a redemptive, value-free matter, as many women see it. From the state’s point of view, there have been and still are different ‘truths’ or regulations in this regard, from compromise deadline regulations with which elections could be won to complete liberalisation. The opinions of pregnant women also vary greatly. In any case, there are many truths and usually even conflicting ones, whether an abortion is a bad thing or not; because it could also be an individual matter for the woman concerned. Of course, there are also intermediate forms in which the pregnant women see themselves as being in an inner conflict between conscience and external constraints, either wanting to carry the child but believing that they cannot take responsibility for it, or wanting to terminate the pregnancy at all costs but fearing legal penalties. So what is the truth about abortion: is it good or evil?
Everyone has a different answer because it cannot be found on the earthly plane, but on the spiritual one. The great wisdom teachers have given clear information on this in unison, if not in concrete terms, then at least in principle: Jesus demonstrates this in the ideal way in the feeding of the five thousand. Here, too, he was faced with a major problem: his solution, his finding of the truth as to how to feed them, was successful, as could be seen. It consisted of turning inwards, to ‘the Father in me’ who ‘does the works.’ Other evangelists opted for the wording ‘looked upwards.’ (Whether they had the old man with the white beard on the cloud in mind is more than questionable.) But this also provides the answer to the problem of abortion. It can be resolved spiritually by the woman concerned turning to her inner voice and finding guidance in this dialogue – which the churches will not like to hear. And this solution can be very different depending on the situation. In any case, however, she hands over responsibility to her own sonship of God and no longer tries to solve the problem herself as a person, as Jesus points out: ‘I can do nothing of myself; the Father in me does the works.’
However, it is important that she can also distinguish whether her question, when directed inward, that is, to her ‘gut feeling’, is actually answered by the spirit soul ‘from above’ or whether it is not rather answered from ‘below’, superimposed by the fears of the ego and self-preservation.
Since the absolute majority of women are not familiar with the spiritual path, this majority is forced to remain on the good-evil level and see how they resolve it with its means, which can end well or even badly. In any case, the question of abortion is an individual and, above all, a spiritual matter in which the state and the church have no business: ‘Thy will be done!’ (That abortion is neither good nor evil and why can be found in the chapter ‘What is evil for?’). The truth of every problem can be found spiritually within.
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Eva says:
I stopped believing in God when I was 11. At the age of 47, I ‘experienced’ him. Since then, I know something, even if I don’t understand it. I no longer have to ‘believe’ in something or someone.
I also don’t believe that there is any objective truth at all among all the subjective ones. In quantum physics, it has been found that particles behave differently than they would otherwise as soon as someone observes them. At least, that’s how I understood this incredible discovery. How could there be any objective truth? In my opinion, there are only subjective truths.
Blind men and an elephant. Medieval Jain temple. Anekantavada doctrine artwork.jpgCreative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0
In fact, people only see fragments of the objective truth at first. Above all, however, they then bend these fragments until they fit into their world of imagination, regardless of whether it is political, ecological, social or economic. The classic example is Don Quixote, who declares the sails of a windmill to be evil giants and attacks them at a gallop with his lance at the ready. A classic example is the photograph from Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, which shows a far smaller number of attendees than at Obama’s inauguration, which he described as the overwhelming majority – leading his spokeswoman at the time to invent the term ‘alternative facts’.
But you don’t need Don Quixote or Donald Trump to describe the individual’s search for ‘truth’. A glance at everyday practice is enough to show that individual truth always depends on the subliminal influence of the respective form of self-preservation; the truths of the entrepreneur are different from those of the trade unionist. And that’s not all, because in addition to all these difficulties in approaching the overall truth and/or objective truth, there is also the lack of knowledge of the overarching spiritual truth; after all, the elephant only represents the material surface world and not the spiritual superstructure (see Plato’s Allegory of the Cave).
The famous poem by John Saxe (The Blind Men and the Elephant) ends with the words (in free translation; see Wikipedia):
‘Often in the war of theologians, luminaries fight each other.
What one has recognised as truth,
the others revile as a lie,
and they prattle on about an elephant
that no one has ever seen!’
But it is by no means only a matter of how official statements of the denominations are drawn upon each other. If you look at Wikipedia under the keyword ‘theodicy’, i.e. the question of why there is suffering in the world, and look at the answers of individual theologians, you will see that ‘out of 50 available answers, there are 51 answers’.
And the ‘blind’ can be seen at every party conference, in every conference and in every family quarrel. We are far from being able to claim the ‘truth’, to understand the ‘elephant’.
Regarding the recognition of objective truth, Zhuangzi (Dschuang Dsi), a Taoist wisdom teacher more than two thousand years ago, remarked in his ‘True Book of the Southern Flower Land’ (II , 10):
“Suppose I discuss with you; you defeat me and I do not defeat you. Are you really right? Am I really wrong? Or else I defeat you and you do not defeat me. Am I really right and you really wrong? Is one of us right and one of us wrong, or are we both right or both wrong? You and I cannot know this. But if people are in such a state of uncertainty, who should they call to decide? Should we call someone who agrees with you to decide? Since he agrees with you, how can he decide? Or should we call someone who agrees with me? Since he agrees with me, how can he decide? Should we call someone who disagrees with both of us to decide? Since he disagrees with both of us, how can he decide? Or shall we appoint one who agrees with both of us to decide? Since he agrees with both of us, how can he decide? So I and you and the others cannot agree with each other, and so we should depend on something outside of us? … Forget opinions, views and points of view. Rise into the boundless! And dwell in the boundless!”
The difference between living based on subjective views, standpoints and convictions – whereby democratic majorities, i.e. the views of the masses, are also of little help – and living guided by the spiritual ‘boundless’ consists, as already mentioned, in the fact that, in contrast to the ‘boundless’, the truths of everyday people, i.e. the Don Quixotes of this world, consist of assumptions and views and by no means of insight, i.e. knowledge and guidance from the inner voice. This does not refer to objectively valid mathematical functions or physical laws, but to convictions regarding all aspects of lifestyle, from housekeeping, marriage, career behaviour, child-rearing, etc., to ethical, religious and political principles. If all these areas of life were characterised by truth from within, there would be no different views and, for example, neither political parties nor different denominations. But especially in religion and politics, everyone has their own truth and believes that it is the actual truth. In this respect, about 99% of all convictions can hardly be true, and certainly not comprehensively.
The truths of the spiritual person, on the other hand, are based on spiritual impulses, as Krishna and many others, including Jesus, have shown: The three temptations in the wilderness (Mk. 1, 1-12 ff.) show that and how the conscious (!) handling of the whisperings of the instinctual soul works: The tempter ‘came’ to him, demanded to be ‘worshipped’ and promised ‘all the kingdoms of this (!) world and their glory.’ And Jesus replied that God alone (!) is to be worshipped, that He alone is to be served (Matthew 4:10), and that when choosing between matter and spirit, the temptations of matter, such as seduction (sex, lottery, intoxication) or revenge, are to be rejected. But people don’t even know about this choice because they act exclusively according to earthly-material impulses (incentives, fears) and at most attribute the catastrophic consequences (decay of the family, addiction problems, etc.) to their own weakness, but mostly learn absolutely nothing from them (revenge) and in no case do they associate them with the lack of spiritual guidance.
As for the fear impulses at the supra-individual level, the risks and their disasters are gigantic. This is shown by examples such as the fear of religious or political competition over the centuries, the Korean and Vietnam wars, or, at present, the crises in the Middle East between Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Shiites, or Israel with both Shiite and Sunni countries.
Likewise, the Russian incursion into Ukraine is motivated not only by the greed to restore the USSR territories, but above all by the fear of democratic competition from an independent Ukraine in the immediate neighbourhood.
Everyone knows the alternatives for overcoming these temptations of retaliation, greed, the satisfaction of desires, the pursuit of power, enrichment and, above all, the overcoming of fears (see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane) through religions, but hardly anyone follows them: For a start, concrete examples are rare, such as reconciliatory and understandingly resolving a marital crisis, or on a collective level, such as the non-violent liberation of an entire people from colonial tyranny by Gandhi. It is the veil of ego that lies over people’s consciousness and that Hindu wisdom calls Maya: Maya blocks access to inner Christianity by practising external Christianity (following rituals) and by stark contrasts between a blinkered view of faith and an egocentric way of life: ‘One sees clearly only with the heart.’
This can be seen when evangelical Christians in the USA, by far the largest group, carry weapons as a matter of course, while militantly fighting any female self-determination with regard to abortions.
The alternative to personal-earthly truth, then, is to transfer the definition of truth to one’s own inner voice and to increasingly collect practical results of inner inspiration. Then a person learns that his truths are at best partial truths. His decisions, based on the aforementioned inspirations or gut feelings of the boundless, are almost always successful, if one has been able to distinguish the ideas of ‘above’ and ‘below’ clearly enough. They can be recognised by their fruits, which always put self-interest aside and always take into account the greater good. They consciously transfer the responsibility for the corresponding action to the inner guidance. You can only see well with the ‘heart’. A typical example of inner guidance:
My plans for the student exchange trip are in full swing. It is now my favourite class, and for everyone involved it is a matter close to their hearts, also because it is the final trip. Then I get told very clearly in meditation: ‘No.’ But even after several heartfelt inquiries: ‘No!’ It’s not about cancelling the trip, just my participation. Deeply disappointed, I take care of finding a replacement for the trip leader, and a colleague is immediately available.
The trip takes place as planned and, as reported later, is extremely harmonious and successful at first. The course of events on the day of the return journey was as follows: early in the morning, all the suitcases were packed, the bus to the airport was waiting at the hotel door. Then a call from the airline: all flights had been cancelled because the ash from the Icelandic volcanic eruption had reached the atmosphere over Central and Northern Europe, making flight operations impossible. The group and particularly their tour guide were suddenly faced with a series of extreme challenges: the visas were only valid for that day, the passport offices, which were overwhelmed by the situation, caused difficulties upon difficulties, the hotel had to set up emergency accommodation solutions and insistently demanded cash payment for the additional room costs, the telephone lines between hotel, consulate, local travel agency and local school are running hot, everyone is glued to the television, and a group of lively tenth graders needs to be kept busy, supervised, taught and kept under control. In addition, the uncertainty about the duration of this weather adversity gnaws at the patience of those responsible and of the parents at home. After another six nerve-wracking days of wild back and forth, the group arrives home in full, but completely exhausted and at the end of their tether.
Those who repeatedly have such experiences with spiritual inner guidance and care distinguish between belief and knowledge, between assumption and certainty, between endless text exegesis and practical experience : Just because you have read a dozen books about tennis, it doesn’t mean you can play tennis.
The greatest factual proof of the truth of love of one’s enemies is Gandhi’s liberation of 300 million Indians from the colonial tyranny of the British Empire on the basis of love of one’s enemies (see Chapter 9). His success is usually seen in terms of non-violence, but the real reason for it is to be seen in the love of one’s enemies. Furthermore, it is widely apparent that its opposite, in the form of rejection, contempt, hatred, conflict, injury, manslaughter and murder, has been and is the main cause of suffering in the world for thousands of years. On both the individual and collective level, it is apparent across the board how hate works destructively, clearly visible in the example of the brotherly peoples of Israel and Palestine or the Republicans and Democrats, the Sunnis and Shiites, the Nazis and Democrats.
Concrete examples of the redemptive function of love for strangers and enemies are rare because hardly anyone thinks of applying it. Nevertheless, it exists everywhere and time and again, see such examples as Janusz Korczak, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Father Lapsley or Nelson Mandela (see the chapters on love). Love for strangers or enemies is ‘true’ because it is and has been and will be proven.
The intellect-driven actions of man are fundamentally egocentric in structure, remain in the realm of good and evil, and therefore, in principle, sometimes end well and sometimes end badly. The intellect cannot decide what is truth and what is not: “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for God has said, “”You foolish man! What! Jesus‘ statement that he has overcome the world (John 16:33) shows, among other things, that he has solved the fundamental problem of establishing the truth, that he has penetrated the limitation to the material-intellectual world and thus the suppression of the image: ’Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven’ (Matt. 16:17). The purely emotional-intellectual control of life without the understanding of its egocentric background guidance (instinct of self-preservation) – also without the knowledge of the alternative way of life (gut feeling) through intuition – has resulted in the infinite suffering of people in their personal and collective lives, and this without restriction since the existence of mankind.
A rationally conducted discussion, based on the exchange of arguments, is not a means of establishing the truth. In this regard, Zhuangzi should be heard once more:
‘The spiritual person has the truth as an inner conviction that bears fruit, whereas the people of the masses seek to prove it by trying to outdo others with arguments.’
One only has to look around, for example at parliamentary debates with their many and fundamentally opposing claims to ‘truth’. Of course, politics is familiar with the human dilemma of truth. It recognises that the answer of democratic politics to the question of truth is the absurd solution of the majority out of the apparent insolubility – actually insoluble in a secular sense – which is one of the egocentricity of humanity. Most people worldwide actually vote only on the basis of economic prospects: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ And if it’s Nazis who promise economic improvement, then that’s who they vote for.
A wisdom-based life is not free of disturbances, but it is free of suffering. To counter the objection that this is also nothing more than an opinion, a look at the experiences of those who have taken and described this path and have put it to the test is enough. So anyone who sets out to implement the Sermon on the Mount’s call to love one’s enemies, taking into account the basis for doing so, that is, looking through, will experience wonder upon wonder. However, the fruits that can be recognised along this path do not fall into one’s lap. Rather, a good deal of patience, steadfastness and training is required. It should also be noted that the beginnings are made difficult, because one’s own ego immediately notices that it is in great danger and immediately begins to fight against it like mad to save itself.
However, the ego programme in humans not only has the strategy of fighting the path to selflessness, but also tries to accelerate the path to a completely egocentric life, as Goethe shows with the example of Faust. It does not matter whether it is competitive behaviour in the office, drug use, getting into gambling, dominance conflicts in a partnership, speeding, etc. The Mephisto rule is: ‘The devil always lets you win first.’
Since people do not want to give up their lives, even though they are full of unhappiness, based on their personal points of view, in extreme cases such as Reich citizens, Nazis, cult followers, etc., they insist unshakably like Don Quixote that windmills are evil giants and communists are evil for capitalists – or vice versa.
Our individual, instinct-driven thoughts of self-preservation from ‘below’ differ from the spiritual truth of intuition from ‘above’ – within. Very few people admit to themselves that what they believe to be the truth is in fact their interpretation of the truth. And this interpretation is usually based on one’s own desires. This applies to migrants, party affiliation, attitude to the climate crisis, to war, to everything. There is an important difference between subjective and objective truth, depending on the extent to which perception is guided solely by the mind and its unconscious and largely self-preservation orientation, or by the soul, that is, by the guidance of the ‘boundless’. In this regard, Jesus emphasises, ‘came into the world to bear witness (!) to the truth.’
Truth must be provable and must be able to be experienced. A physical law must be demonstrable in a tangible way, a political ideology must prove itself or be refuted by its failure, as is tyranny – despite exceptions – through countless examples in history. The questions of nuclear power, abortion, celibacy, schooling, etc. are answered so differently from country to country, from group to group and from person to person that they cannot reliably solve the question of truth, because it is almost always guided by interests. That is why democratic groups of people always resort to the emergency solution of determining earthly truth by majority vote. Otherwise, they resort to the use of force, in the preliminary stage through manipulation, lies, undermining of the legal system, etc. This is currently the case for more than half of the peoples when hybrid systems are included.
The individual is dependent on making his decisions based on his prior information, his interests, his feelings and his intellect, and on evaluating his personal and collective experiences – but all too often he does not do this – see ‘Third Reich’ and racists – and often unconsciously leaves them to circumstances such as social background, parental home, etc.
The alternative is a spiritual way of life that aims to achieve dialogue with the inner voice. This provides subjective truths as well as individual advice and guidance. It reveals not only universal truths such as love of one’s enemy, but also guidance tailored to the person asking the question, such as: Should I rent this apartment? Should I complain? Should I take the job nearby or the much better paid one, but further away? She does not answer, for example, the question of whether abortion is good or bad or predominantly good or bad, or whether it is at all within the scope of divine judgement. She answers individually.
If some churches tolerate practised homosexuality and others condemn it, then it automatically follows that many organisations are far removed from the truth, that is, from divine will, regardless of which ones they are. This is because all of them start from the mantra: ‘God wills it!’ And, of course, they want to be the ones who, unlike the others, know which truth it is.
As far as general truths are concerned, the founders of religions concentrated on naming the most important ones for people. Jesus, for example, exposed the partial sham truth of physical death, understood as the end of personal life. Rather, he demonstrated it as a metamorphosis for the higher development of the ‘caterpillar’ into a ‘butterfly’ (see also Lazarus). Furthermore, his mission was – as was also the case with Krishna, Buddha and Lao Tse – to show people their divinity (‘You will accomplish even greater deeds than I.’ Mt. … ) within, using his own person as an example (the ‘Christ in them’, as Paul puts it; 2 2 Cor. 13,5): He fulfilled this mission unceasingly through his teaching, his behaviour and his actions (!), just as Zarathustra, Lao Tse, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha had done before him, and Mohammed, Nanak or Bahai’ullah after him. All in all, Jesus showed the way out of the vale of infinite suffering of the good-bad world with its ‘truths’.
Jesus’ teaching “You are all gods” in relation to every human being has so far been successfully undermined by the churches through their cult of personality around Jesus. They have not presented him as just a person with a fully developed inner Christ, as a role model for spiritual growth and exemplary maturity. Rather, they have propagated and propagate him as the only son of God, stylising his high spiritual quality of his inner voice as the only quality. In doing so, they trample on the aforementioned Christ, the ‘Father in me’, the intuition in every human being.
In order to recognise the truths of creation, it is in many cases unavoidable to interpret the clues of the wisdom texts. Who interprets? Luther found the ridiculous solution that it is the Bible itself that has to provide the interpretations of its statements: Sola scriptura! So the interpretation of the quotations is done by the Bible itself, that is, by other quotations, which of course have to be interpreted by someone (?). This manoeuvre, which requires that the interpretation be interpreted by humans, means that you can no longer go wrong. The Catholic Church takes a rustic approach to defining truth by assigning the interpretation of the Bible to the teaching authority of the church. The Orthodox Church takes a slightly different view of truth. In its rejection of sola scriptura, it is the church’s traditional customs that are always aware of and represent the truth: Truth is therefore what their church has always done. This means that the worship of images of Mary, the monopoly of male priests or the rejection of homosexual partnerships are part of the definition of divine will.
With regard to the sanctioning of abortion in the states of the USA, there are a wide range of variants, from almost unexceptional punishment to complete freedom, even without time limits. In the early Soviet Union, abortion was fully legalised and free of charge in 1920, then banned under Stalinism (‘We don’t have enough people and so much to do.’), later legalised again after the war and even performed free of charge in clinics during the Khrushchev era; due to the lack of contraceptives, this led to abortion as birth control. Was that the ‘will of God’? There is no evidence of this in the scriptures, and Jesus did not comment on it either. Furthermore, the extremely arbitrary nature of state intervention shows that its handling, depending on the severity of the interference in the mother’s decision, obviously cannot have much to do with truth, because it is not spiritually based, but rather on reason, emotion and a control mania. A decision regarding whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term can never be regulated by laws – because, as already mentioned, these are based on the mind (ego) and not on the soul – and cannot know the truth of an individual pregnancy.
Only if the mother-to-be engages in spiritual dialogue can the inner divinity provide guidance in this very individual case, because it is aware of the background and destiny of the person concerned. In doing so, the inner voice does not interfere with free will and its considerations. The decision for or against abortion can never come from any other source than the decision of the mother-to-be. Whether she bases her decision on spiritual or animalistic grounds is also her own business and is associated with karmic consequences.
For humans, their own truth is the truth, although the criterion for truth is that it is spiritually guided and practically successful: it can be proven and is characterised by the renunciation of self-interest and unconditional consideration of the greater good. As far as confirmation is concerned, it is almost the norm that people reach a degree of closed-mindedness to all insight that they stick to their truth regardless of even permanent refutations. This can be clearly seen in Don Quixote and the beatings he receives again and again. The same applies to right-wing extremist, fascist and Nazi ideas in people’s minds. The absolute unwillingness to see reason, which is widespread throughout the world, can be seen very clearly in the migrant issue: ‘They aren’t people, they are animals’ and shows the enormous power of egocentrism, which stems from the original fear of threat.
Every human being knows that they have some kind of gentle guidance, an intuitive urge, the inner voice. The Nazarene shows that this is the Son of God, the bearer of truth, the ‘Father in me’, the ‘Boundless’. It is the intuitive instance that guides the destiny of man. If a person allows themselves to listen to their intuition and not to their own mind, and thus learns to listen to this quiet, gentle voice (1 Kings 19:12), they may not know the whole truth of material and spiritual life (material and spiritual ‘elephant’), but they can follow their intuition step by step. In this way, he will safely avoid all the pitfalls that constantly arise in everyday life. For he then grasps the important part of the objective truth that is hidden behind the surface. If he has learned to trust his conscience – because its guidance has proven itself – and obeys it (‘Thy will be done!’), he can actually do no wrong; one sees ‘only well with the heart’ (Saint-Exupéry: The Little Prince).
But it is not that simple. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You have to make a huge personal contribution, and this willingness has to be developed by fighting against your ego. The necessity of this personal contribution – the work on the mixing valve, so to speak – is emphasised by Lessing in his ‘Nathan the Wise’, in which he has the judge say that the power of the ring must be demonstrated for the carefree truth of life. This consists of taking the instructions ‘Do not be afraid!’ and ‘Do not worry!’ seriously and training oneself to follow them. On the spiritual path, one then experiences more and more truth and can thus lead a life free of worry and fear, proven by life experience and success. Anyone who wants to achieve a dialogue with the ‘Father in me’ but is still worrying about their pension, for example, is doing something wrong.
For the average person, an intuitively guided life is nonsense because they have never been educated to it. They lack the experience of divine influence. And the churches have always left no stone unturned to prevent the paths to individual and direct self-awareness of the divine experience. In order to dispute the divine within us, they often turn directly against Jesus: in addition to the example (see above) ‘you are all gods’ they also bypass ‘… you will do even greater works than I do…’ (John 14:12)
Truth is always concrete and in any case true when, firstly, it is based on inner guidance (see the direct line with Johanna) and, secondly, it shows itself in real life as an individual good and is always compatible with the overall good.
Therefore, it is wise to understand the teachings of the scriptures as hypotheses and to use them as a starting point to prove the practicality of these truths, for example, that love of one’s enemy is successful, as is refraining from paying back in the sense of ‘an eye for an eye.’
The wisdom statements in the scriptures of the world religions are not intended as an attempt to force people onto the right path by means of threats – as the denominations did. Rather, their admonitions are reasons to have corresponding experiences based on these statements, which, in the case of individual truth, show the way out of suffering. From a scientific point of view, their commandments can be seen as a kind of deductive imperative (‘Love your enemies…’) that can be logically and specifically derived: Should a military doctor also tend to the wounded enemy? It should then lead to corresponding individual experiences: What happens if I refrain from retaliation against an evil neighbour? In this way, one finally arrives inductively at either the refutation or confirmation of the initial commandment.
In this way, one approaches the truth that, for example, love of one’s enemy is successful. So when I am confronted with such an imperative, I try out how it can work. If it is successful, I have taken an important step towards freeing my life from any enemy. The process of loving one’s enemy, as taught by all the wisdom teachings of all cultures – a ‘duty claim’ (Kant), so to speak – is one of the essential methods for a fulfilled life (see chapter ‘Love’, section Loving one’s enemy). You simply have to put it to the test to see if and how it works.
I would not have been able to write these lines if I had not – guided by my intuition – tried to practice this self-conquest in the form of this love of enemies and had not repeatedly had the confirmation that enemies disappear from my life.
Belief in God is of no use, only experience with God. My truth is then what I have come to know through my study of spiritual teachings and what I have found to be personally confirmed in practice through the way I live my life, and what works all the time. So when I come across principles such as love of one’s enemies, apply them and the results are repeatedly confirmed, that is, prove to be true, then one can speak of truths.
“The beautiful, the true,
it is not outside, the fool seeks it there,
it is within you, you bring it forth.’
(Friedrich Schiller: Theosophy of Julius)
Belief is not knowledge. Belief is an unprovable assumption or conviction; belief is the adoption of something said without proof and without practical evidence. Those who merely believe err and see the world as they want to see the world. But anyone who acquires spiritual knowledge, then constantly collides with the ‘truths’ of the self-preservation of life and then, however, successfully gains certainty from personal, constant experience of devotion, is largely safe from error. The denominations argue endlessly because they believe, that is, they do not know. They replace one interpretation with another, namely theirs. Faith means nothing at all; it is an attitude through which man has the possibility, for reasons of self-protection, to live in a supposedly safe way, and that according to a certain pattern that has been drummed into him. Incidentally, blind faith is not so much a belief in a doctrine such as love of one’s enemy, but predominantly a belief in a person or a book; then one is immediately convinced of possessing the truth. But if doubts remain and you want to continue searching for the truth, the churches are the main obstacle, because instead of teaching how to talk with God, they only speak about God. This leads to endless discussions about God’s mercy, which the public seeks and does not find: if you read ten books about honey, you still won’t know what honey tastes like.
Today I only believe what I know from my inner voice and through the following tangible results. Real faith is proven certainty; everything else is conjecture, assumption, nothing provable. But the spiritual seeker wants the truth and finds its place in his intuition and its positive results. He sees with the ‘heart’:
‘Truth is within ourselves;’
it takes no rise from outward things,
it does not arise from external things,
whatever you may believe.
whatever you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
There is a core in all of us,
where truth abides in fullness;
where truth abides in fullness;
but around wall upon wall,
yet all around walls,
the gross flesh hems it in.
the coarse flesh encloses us.
To know consists in opening a way,
where the imprisoned splendour may escape.”
through which the imprisoned splendour can be released.”
(Robert Browning: Paracelsus. Paracelsus aspires)
There are few social issues that have been more bitterly debated than abortion, the use of nuclear power or the management of the influx of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. For example, it is a truth for the French state that nuclear power (56 nuclear power plants) has been an effective and responsible means of generating energy since the 1970s, and an indispensable one since the climate crisis worsened; in other societies, however, it is controversial or has been abolished altogether. The opposite is considered true there, but only since the reactor disaster in Fukushima. Which ‘truth’ should be followed? In addition, the nuclear powers have been using nuclear submarines since the 1950s, and there are currently an estimated 100 of them.
Is abortion evil or not? The churches have a clear and abstruse answer to this: it is a sin. How the churches know this remains their secret. The answer to the question of the use of nuclear power is just as clear: some know that it is primarily useful, as in France, while others ‘know’ that it is primarily simply too risky, as in Germany. Here, too, there are many different truths worldwide. Abortion could be a redemptive, value-free matter, as many women see it. From the state’s point of view, there have been and still are different ‘truths’ or regulations in this regard, from compromise deadline regulations with which elections could be won to complete liberalisation. The opinions of pregnant women also vary greatly. In any case, there are many truths and usually even conflicting ones, whether an abortion is a bad thing or not; because it could also be an individual matter for the woman concerned. Of course, there are also intermediate forms in which the pregnant women see themselves as being in an inner conflict between conscience and external constraints, either wanting to carry the child but believing that they cannot take responsibility for it, or wanting to terminate the pregnancy at all costs but fearing legal penalties. So what is the truth about abortion: is it good or evil?
Everyone has a different answer because it cannot be found on the earthly plane, but on the spiritual one. The great wisdom teachers have given clear information on this in unison, if not in concrete terms, then at least in principle: Jesus demonstrates this in the ideal way in the feeding of the five thousand. Here, too, he was faced with a major problem: his solution, his finding of the truth as to how to feed them, was successful, as could be seen. It consisted of turning inwards, to ‘the Father in me’ who ‘does the works.’ Other evangelists opted for the wording ‘looked upwards.’ (Whether they had the old man with the white beard on the cloud in mind is more than questionable.) But this also provides the answer to the problem of abortion. It can be resolved spiritually by the woman concerned turning to her inner voice and finding guidance in this dialogue – which the churches will not like to hear. And this solution can be very different depending on the situation. In any case, however, she hands over responsibility to her own sonship of God and no longer tries to solve the problem herself as a person, as Jesus points out: ‘I can do nothing of myself; the Father in me does the works.’
However, it is important that she can also distinguish whether her question, when directed inward, that is, to her ‘gut feeling’, is actually answered by the spirit soul ‘from above’ or whether it is not rather answered from ‘below’, superimposed by the fears of the ego and self-preservation.
Since the absolute majority of women are not familiar with the spiritual path, this majority is forced to remain on the good-evil level and see how they resolve it with its means, which can end well or even badly. In any case, the question of abortion is an individual and, above all, a spiritual matter in which the state and the church have no business: ‘Thy will be done!’ (That abortion is neither good nor evil and why can be found in the chapter ‘What is evil for?’). The truth of every problem can be found spiritually within.
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Eva says:
I stopped believing in God when I was 11. At the age of 47, I ‘experienced’ him. Since then, I know something, even if I don’t understand it. I no longer have to ‘believe’ in something or someone.
I also don’t believe that there is any objective truth at all among all the subjective ones. In quantum physics, it has been found that particles behave differently than they would otherwise as soon as someone observes them. At least, that’s how I understood this incredible discovery. How could there be any objective truth? In my opinion, there are only subjective truths.