The Truth is not Within

The Truth is Not Within

Comments on the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad

by P.T. Mistlberger

Now, all this universe was then undifferentiated. It became differentiated by name and form: it was known by such and such a name, and such and such a form. Thus to this day this universe is differentiated by name and form; so it is said. ‘He has such a name and such a form.’

This Self has entered into these bodies up to the very tips of the nails, as a razor lies hidden in its case, or as fire, which sustains the world, lies hidden in its source. People do not see the Self, for when viewed in parts It is incomplete: when breathing, It is called the vital breath (prana); when speaking, the organ of speech; when seeing, the eye; when hearing, the ear; when thinking, the mind. These are merely Its names according to Its functions…The Self alone is to be meditated upon, for in It all these become unified. Of all these, this Self alone should be known, for one knows all these through It, just as one may find an animal which is lost through its footprints…One should meditate upon the Self alone as dear. He who meditates upon the Self alone as dear—what he holds dear will not perish. They say: ‘Since men think that by the Knowledge of Brahman they become all, what, pray, was it that Brahman knew by which It became all?’

This self was indeed Brahman in the beginning. It knew itself only as ‘I am Brahman.’ Therefore it became all. And whoever among the gods had this enlightenment, also became That Brahman. It is the same with the seers (rishis), the same with men. The seer Vamadeva, having realized this self as That, came to know: "I was Manu and the sun." And to this day, whoever in a like manner knows the self as "I am Brahman," becomes all this universe. Even the gods cannot prevent his becoming this, for he has become their Self…

(Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad 4:7-10)

If there is one expression found repeating in the various wisdom traditions—and heavily emphasized in modern ‘new age’ teachings—it would be that the ‘truth is within’. There seems to be plenty of material to back this assertion up, whether that be Jesus saying ‘The kingdom of God is within you’ (Luke 17:20-21), or the Buddha teaching a means by which enlightenment is attained via deep and sustained introspective meditation. There is certainly good reason for inclining toward the view that truth is ‘within’, as human history has been largely dominated by the themes of outer control and enslavement. It has always appeared to be true, and remains apparently true, that politically, socially, and economically speaking, a tiny minority of the human race has owned the vast majority of resources and controlled the vast majority of human population.

In other words, for the average person it has certainly seemed to be the case that ‘truth’—or at least, what determines truth (and anything else of importance)—is outside of us. As the old tag-line from The X-Files, a 1990s American science-fiction/mystery T.V. show had it, the truth is out there. Most people have always lived in such a way as to believe that ‘truth’ is something imposed on them from the outside. We are raised by parents or other adults who tell us what is true and what is not. We grow up being taught by teachers about what is true in the universe, and what is not. And eventually most people end up being employed by someone else, who also tells them (in so many ways) what is true and what is not. Finally, if we have kids, they too eventually end up telling us what is true and what is not. (Psychologically speaking, this is something they are compelled to do, as a means of differentiating from their family. One cannot establish one’s identity without first asserting some measure of self-knowledge or certainty about things).

Almost everyone is woefully ignorant about at least some basic things. Jay Leno, the popular American comic and talk show host, has for many years had a regular skit on his Tonight Show called ‘Jay-walking’. In this segment, Leno strolls out into a public place (often, amusingly, a college campus), takes people aside, and asks them very basic questions, such as what part of the world a particular (and generally well known country) is in, or who is the current President of the country, etc. Many of these simple questions are answered incorrectly. The audience groans and laughs, but it is a laughter that is somewhat uncomfortable because everyone recognizes, deep within, that there is something basic in life of which they are utterly ignorant of.

These, of course, are mundane (or trivial) truths. More crucially, we are ignorant of the very deepest questions of life, such as ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Where did I come from?’ or ‘What is my destiny?’ Because of all this, the notion apparently found in the world’s perennial wisdom traditions that the ‘truth is within’ becomes very appealing (even if it seems to invite a daunting amount of work to ‘uncover’ this truth). We need not be controlled by what is around us after all; we need not be force fed someone else’s version of the truth. We can, finally, uncover truth ourselves. We can become the sovereign of our own being. We can rule and be the final arbiter of truth. Even more, we can become truth itself!

Alas, these are in time revealed to be immature understandings. They are simply the ego’s version of truth. More precisely, they are the spiritualized ego’s version of truth. The reason this is so, is because whenever we speak of the truth as being ‘within’, we are effectively reducing it to a quantity or object that we somehow possess. If truth is to be ‘within’, then it must be within something. That ‘something’ would seem to be ‘me’. Therefore, I must be something that is distinct, separate, from this thing called ‘truth’, since it is apparently contained within the boundaries of my being. Possessing truth can therefore only be a yet more elaborate illusion, because the whole basis of this ‘truth’ is that there can be no separation in what is Whole. Existence is Whole; all appearance of parts within it is just that, appearance. Ergo, the idea that ‘truth is within’ must be false—as false as the idea that ‘the truth is out there’. (So much for The X-Files).

At first glance such understandings seem fundamentally abstract. What of the practical level? The idea that ‘truth is not out there’ and that ‘truth is not within’ either, both have deeply practical ramifications, even if this may seem unlikely. This is because the key issue is not so much ‘where’ the truth is; it is, rather, understanding clearly just how we have constructed the concepts of within and without, and the ways in which so much of our human psychology is based on this world-view.

The three dimensional universe is based, fundamentally, on the concepts of interiority and exteriority. However, when we speak of ‘within’, what are we truly referring to? Clearly, this cannot be the body, for if we look into the body, we find only matter. What is within the body is the same as what is without the body, just matter at varying levels of organization. So what constitutes the demarcation point between ‘within’ and ‘without’ in the case of the body? The skin? This would seem to be a tenuous and arbitrary designation for a boundary, because the skin itself is changing over time. In addition, the body has orifices, and thus is not a fully sealed off self-contained thing. It is like a door that is perpetually and partly open. If so, then both ‘sides’ of the door—the apparent inside and outside—are in fact connected, like two lakes connected by a narrow waterway. And in the case of the body, this must be so, else it could not breathe, eat, eliminate, or pass gas. Heaven forbid.

A little bit of dispassionate analysis thus shows us that the idea that ‘truth is within’ is merely a reflection of a deeper illusion that we are embedded in, and that is the appearance of space and time. Again, this is not mere abstract consideration; these realizations bear very practical effects. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of our personal relationships. For example, to reflect on how ‘truth is not within; nor is it without’, and to apply that to personal relationships, can yield the following: we open to the possibility that ‘our’ truth is not distinct or superior (or inferior) to the other’s truth, nor theirs to ours. Rather, both of us are within truth. Truth does not exist in me (nor in you). I, and you, rather exist within truth. We exist within the Whole, as manifestations of the Whole.

Similarly, the Self, and ultimate Truth, is not in me (nor in you). Rather, All is the Self, and nothing else exists. As the quasi-Gnostic text A Course In Miracles puts it, ‘What is real cannot be threatened. What is unreal does not exist.’ From this point of view, the notions of within or without fall away and with them, so many of the root causes of our suffering in life.

One should meditate upon the Self alone as dear. He who meditates upon the Self alone as dear—what he holds dear will not perish.

To ‘hold dear’ is, in this context, to prioritize—to love in the true sense of the word. To love something is to pay attention to it. We serve our spiritual path best by paying attention to what is of greatest truth. To ‘meditate upon the Self alone’ is to prioritize truth. In so doing, we become increasingly aware of how we are already immersed in this truth. It is not within us. We are ‘swimming’ in it. Further, we are not distinct from what we swim in. We are not distinct from what we hold ‘dear’. Much as to love someone is (ideally) to know them, to love truth is to know it. To love another greatly is to know them as not separate from us. To love truth greatly is to know it as not separate from our own essential nature.

This self was indeed Brahman in the beginning. It knew itself only as ‘I am Brahman.’ Therefore it became all.

Indeed, how could it be otherwise? The logic is simple and inescapable. There can be no ‘other’, other than as an appearance. All forms in the universe are therefore only appearances. ‘Real’, as far as appearances go, but ultimately separate from nothing.

If only Brahman was ‘in the beginning’, then anything ‘after the beginning’ can only be an extension of Brahman. To say that something is ‘an extension of Brahman’ is merely a convenience. A solar flare ejecting from the Sun is made entirely of ‘Sun-stuff’. It is the Sun in a different form. It is only its appearance that will cause us to differentiate it from the Sun.

And whoever among the gods had this enlightenment, also became That Brahman.

To remember the truth—‘remember’ in the literal sense of the word, to ‘re-member’—to return to being a member of—is, effectively, to return to the truth; to become the truth, to ‘become Brahman’.

It is the same with the seers (rishis), the same with men. The seer Vamadeva, having realized this self as That, came to know: ‘I was Manu and the sun.’

With remembrance of the truth, with Self-realization, comes the release of all attachments to identity. We realize we are ‘Manu and the sun’, and everything else as well. Personal identity recedes, as the stars recede in the dawn with the coming of the overwhelming light of the Sun.

And to this day, whoever in a like manner knows the self as ‘I am Brahman,’ becomes all this universe.

To know ourselves, deeply and tacitly and directly, as ‘all this universe’, eliminates the significance behind ideas such as ‘within’ and ‘without’. If I am the universe, then what is ‘within’ me is simply more universe. What is in you is simply more universe. There can be nothing else.

More: there can be no-thing. What ‘remains’ is what some schools of Tibetan Buddhism call ‘luminous emptiness’, but this of course is just another term of convenience. We are rather entering into consideration of the ultimate matter, which is that full realization of non-duality implies not just the cessation of personal identity and separation, it also implies the end of consciousness itself as we typically understand it.

For if all is the Self, then what is actually distinct from the Self to be aware of it? By definition, there can be nothing ultimately distinct from the Whole and therefore there can be no awareness, as we typically understand awareness to be. And that is why the Whole, the Totality of existence, cannot be conscious—that is, conscious as we typically understand consciousness to be. It is, rather, consciousness without an object, which is something altogether different from our typical duality-based ‘consciousness’.

What is it then? We can call it Oneness, but we cannot say this Oneness is the same as our day to day consciousness. It is not. Our typical consciousness is to this Oneness as a shadow is to light.

Even the gods cannot prevent his becoming this, for he has become their Self.

The ‘gods’, however powerful, remain in duality-consciousness. One Self-realized is already the essence of all forms, including the gods, and so has ‘beaten them to the punch’—they cannot ‘prevent’ his realization because there is nothing and no one to prevent.

Application

All such ideas bear practical consequences, and can be approached as psychological teachings as well. We can examine the idea that ‘truth is not within’ in order to expose our deepest ego-insecurities and fears in the uncompromising light of truth. For example, a basic core-fear that obstructs our progress on the path of awakening is the fear of disappearing. There is a good reason why most people ‘fall off the wagon’ of spiritual awakening and return to ego-based patterns, and that is largely because the whole idea of awakening is based on the death of illusions. Foremost of these illusions is our most cherished, that being that we exist as a distinct, discreet entity in relation to others. The idea that our true nature is the Self—and that this Self is all that exists—destroys the illusion of distinct identity utterly and irreparably. This is a terrifying prospect to the ego.

Accordingly, the ego, being endlessly creative, adjusts and compensates by hatching the idea that ‘truth is within’, or that the supreme Self is ‘within’. This way, the ego gets to have its cake and eat it also. There is an old expression from espionage: keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. The ego does this by keeping the most threatening truth of all—the Self is all that exists—the closest, by claiming this Self as its own. It does this by declaring that the truth, the Self, dwells within me. It tries to keep the Self locked up in a safe deep within.

The great wisdom teachings of the Upanishads are having none of this, pointing as they do toward the supreme wisdom that truth cannot be ‘owned’ for the simple reason that there is no safe to put truth in, and no key. And nor is there any safe-keeper.

These are, of course, ultimate considerations. The practicality of our life and what we know of as our spiritual path will at times compel us to speak, or think, so as to refer to truth being ‘within’ us. (And even the Upanishads on occasion make reference to the Self as being located ‘within’, in the Heart). As mentioned, this can be expedient for counteracting centuries of conditioning that informs us that we are merely cogs in a wheel, lacking any inner purpose or inner value. Once we become acquainted with the terrain of the so-called ‘inner’, however, we become capable of realizing the far greater truth that this ‘inner’ is merely a shadow of an ultimate reality.

Names and forms lie at the basis of the ‘shadow universe’ of relative reality, and yet such names and forms are not without value. They are, in fact, tools for communication. For one wishing to share the understanding of non-dual principles, such tools are necessary. In order to communicate with one lost in dreams, it is necessary to know something of the language of dreams.

Even if we find ourselves walking in dreams, as it were—whether the dreams of others, or our own—our light is to remain oriented toward the supreme truth that the Self is not within, without, or anywhere, as such. There is no place for the Self to abide in, because there is no place. There is only the Self.