A Corner On Truth

I think about truth a lot. It’s fast becoming my life’s greatest interest – far out-pacing money, music and the Yankees. Daily dealings with all the various concepts of the word “Inspirational” seem to focus my life more and more on the spiritual, and I know that’s a good thing. So I’m not resisting it; in fact, I’m opening up to it. And it’s certainly opening up to me.

We’re in a spiritual age. Looking back through history, these ages come in cycles. This is the next one. Go into any bookstore. Books for seekers abound. Christian music is the one genre of music that has actually grown during this terribly trying time in the music industry. Oprah announces discussions with Eckhart Tolle on line and millions show up to partake. Never before has content for seekers been more available.

I study my own religion, but I read voraciously Wayne Dyer, Yogananda, Ram Dass, Spalding’s Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East, Joseph Smith’s Book Of Mormon, The Gospel According to Jesus, Tolle’s A New Earth and on and on. I like to say, “I’m getting’ it any way I can.” Truth, that is.

One thing strikes me along this road. Why is it that so many people think they have a corner on truth? How preposterous to think that the Christians are right and everybody else is wrong – that the Sunnites are better than the Sheites. There’s gotta be truth to every religion – otherwise, why would people be drawn to it in the first place

I suggest it’s not religion that separates us, but language. “The words are different, so the philosophy’s gotta be different” is the mistake we humans make. And we Christians are some of the worst offenders. How arrogant to think that only Jesus got it right. Jesus did get it right, but he wasn’t alone. Confucius, Lao Tsu, Marianne Williamson, Mohammed, Billy Graham, Buddha, Mother Teresa, Mr. Tolle, Mary Baker Eddy – they all got it right on one level or another.

In Spalding’s Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East which I happen to be reading now, the great Masters recognize Jesus as “the greatest teacher”, “a true prophet”. He is revered, studied and taught right along with their own prophets and gurus.

Why are we so exclusive?

Ultimately, fear and ignorance. Fear of being wrong. And so we wall ourselves off in single-minded blindness to the truths available everywhere. This fear creates in us an ignorance of the great teachings of thousands of deep thinkers that have come before us and are right now among us. A great human mistake. No one has a corner on truth.

God makes truth available to all mankind in all languages. We’re all reaching for the same thing. All religions have found it on some level or another just as all religions have also confused it on one level or another. It’s a human thang.

The book I’m now reading says it very well. “Those associated with the churches must realize that the church but typifies the one thing, the Christ Consciousness in all mankind. If they realize this, where can the diversity lie but in the concept of man’s mortal mind?

See what this diversity has led to, the greatest wars, the intense hate engendered between nations and families and even individuals, and all because one church organization or another has thought that its creed or doctrine was better than that of another. Yet all in reality are the same for they all lead to the same place… The church organizations and those associated with them are coming closer each day and the time will come when they will be united as one. When all are as one, there will be no need of organization.”

“Yet the fault does not lie wholly with the church organizations. Few people have awakened to the realization of what life really holds for them. We find the greater majority drifting through life, dissatisfied, dazed, crushed, or uncertain. Each must learn to lay hold on life and begin to express from his own life center, with purposeful, definite action, the gifts that God has given him. Each must unfold his own life.”

Certainly one reason that the individual turns to a religion is for a meeting of the minds. Then, often, that religion separates itself from the rest of the world in its exclusivity. This is one place where we humans get lost instead of getting found. This is where the seeker gets complacent thinking that he has found the truth, when, in fact, he has only found a corner of it. The whole world of truth lies before us. Stay on the road. We’ll never find it by lingering on the corner.