Blog@GraceJunction

Is TRUTH Relative

I got on a airplane to travel up to a well known city. After a long wait the aircraft’s engines started to roar and the aircraft hit the runway, however I was startled at the unusual slow speed of the aircraft and guessed something was wrong. Then all of a sudden I saw that the aircraft was moving out of the airport gates and it hit the roads. I got up, the air hostess waved her hands and signed me, as if asking me to jump up, but then I realized that she was infact asking me to sit down. She said we are taking off in a short while, please be seated till the flight is stable and the seat belt signed is switched on.

While I was still trying to understand what was happening. The flight started to bend forwards and make a nose dive, that’s when I noticed, to my utter horror instead of flying up it was trying to dig itself in to the ground! I yelled “Hey what’s this! It was supposed to be a flight to this particular city, but you are hitting the roads and taking us in to the ground!!”

The airhostess with her trained smile replied “Sir, please be patient let me explain it to you. Sir, for us flying doesn’t mean leaving the ground and going up in to the air. The city you named is not on the ground, its infact it is under the ground, we will shortly reach there. Please be angry and kindly be jumping!”

I know you feel like your brains just under went a liposuction! Well, the fact is that – if you believe in relativism this would completely be a normal incident and you would feel your logic challenged, sadly this is what many people in the world believe in. Relativism – “each man can have his own truth”, what is true for you doesn’t mean its true for others.

However Truth by definition is an exclusive term. Each time you make an absolute statement you negate the opposite and are affirming that the opposite is false.

It is logical to understand that you cannot be going both up and down or right and left, at the same moment. There is no escape from the absolute nature of truth. And when ever anyone tries to challenge the absolute nature of truth, they will find themselves digging their own ground or making a thousand qualifications of what they said.

Because when relativists claim “truth is relative” they are in fact making an absolute claim! They are stating that there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that “there is no absolute truth”. So when a relativist states this, what he is saying is not that both He and you ( who refute relativism and approve the absolute nature of truth) are right but only He is right !!. And for truth to be both relative and absolute together at the same time is to have a logic defying understanding, just as there are no square circles, or a bachelor’s wife.

I am sure many of us have been given this illustration “if you look at a glass half full, what will you say? “Is it half empty or half full”, relativists would say, you see it all depends on how you look at it. Further relativism would say that what is half full for you, can be half empty for some one else. At times, if you are not critically thinking you can be overwhelmed by these types of questions. The point they miss firstly, is that the question is not about ones perspective it is in fact, about the truth irrespective of ones perspective, sincerity or beliefs, hence the point relativists are trying to make, using this illustration is baseless and not to the context. As the fact in this case, is that the glass is half filled with water (half empty and half full).

Secondly, during communication we do not need to always define or state what is not. For eg. When you go to sleep you do not ask your better half to switch on darkness! We just have to switch off the light, which exists. You do not ask for half a glass of water and half a glass of emptiness, you just ask for half a glass of water and its implied and understood that the other half of the glass is required empty, as no one drinks emptiness (as some relativists do). If relativism and the basic fact those relativists are trying to prove has to stand true, it would mean that when the glass is full, it is empty also? This, in fact is a logical impossibility.

Now apply this scenario to the court room, where a murderer would state relativism, where would it all lead to? If relativism was true, the world we are living in would have no laws to govern and we would have been in a much worse state that we are now, even with a big portion of humanity which buys in to relativism to justify their deeds.

Now look at this :

Tao says:
Truth said is no longer Truth…

But what he says here must be believed as the truth!!, So what’s your take on it, should we count that as truth?

Buddhism says:
Truth is understood when the man becomes the watcher, so much that the watcher and the watched are one…

So then who was the man looking at in the first instance? Is the one making the statement me? Cos if the one answering, is saying the Truth, that means he has already become the watched ( and that’s me!). While I never ever made the above statement- and that’s absolutely true, Isn’t it!!.

Zen says:
Truth just IS…

Is what? Is it a lie, Is it an illusion(maya), Is it Jesus, who uniquely said “I am the Truth”!

Sree Sree Ravishankar artfully says:
Truth is when you love without knowing that you are in love!!

That’s infatuation! Truth can’t be unreasonable! Else we all need to first have our brains sucked out!

Rajneesh says:
Truth is YOU… why are you worried about it?? it just IS just as you ARE and the tree IS and the stars and moon are…

Have you heard of the bio-terror attack of Rajneesh on Dallas residents to get his candidate on the chair; His philosophy espouses Maya or illusion. So is truth then an ILLUSION? Doesn’t that make his statements illusory too? Humanity has deceit, lie, falsehood, pretense, sham, deception, dishonesty and a whole lot of evil. Does that mean Truth is all of this and still is the TRUTH!

TRUTH is not a concept or an idea, GOD is the one from whom Truth emanates. And Jesus claimed “ I am the Truth”, this very fact must make us verify His Truth claim.

Tags: Art of living, Brain, Buddhism, Claims, False, Illusion, Lies, Logic, Mao, Maya, Perception, Perspective, Rajneesh, Ravishankar, relativism, Religion, Sree Sree, Tao, truth

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 2:49 am and is filed under Art, Articles, Blesson, Justice, Life Lessons, Religions, Society, Spiritual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.