Of Truth

In the eyes of the mundane Truth is a grotesque and hideous succubus whom Persius had decapitated; that slithering creature which Athena has cursed out of jealousy for seducing her dear lover, but for those who have devoted their entire lives in search for it, is a maiden of sublime elegance who because of her beauty, has plunged Troy into a bloody conflict with the Greeks. She has seduced many a man, some wise, some naive; different in their approaches but the prize the same. Yet only those whose Endurance rival that of Atlas holding aloft the Heavens on his back, Persistence that of Philosophies condemned by all institutions as heresy yet somehow surviving the onslaught to rise above as the Fire that guides Man into a new paradigm, Prudence that of an experienced general- never taking rash actions and always nurturing constant vigilance, ready to thwart the element of surprise his adversary throws at him, can woo the shy maiden and if fate allows it, be given a chance to peel apart her clothing to take a glimpse of the wondrous things she has hidden inside.                                   

Many have confessed their love for her and only a few have the audacity to say that she has made love to them. In reality what they did was forcefully restrain her, nailing her to the stake for lustful men to ravish and in doing so deflowering the maiden and spilling their wretched seeds all over her body. From them arises one after another, like Furies and Ash-Tree Nymphs spawning from the castrated genitals of Uranus, the bastard daughters to whom later philosophers will hail as “Truth” with each school of philosophers worshiping an illegitimate offspring like idolaters subjugating themselves before the figurines of gods and goddesses. It is a painful sight to behold, especially when these offspring of rape and torture become established values with which other values are gauged. And then men no longer began to question the legitimacy of these values. Their inquiring mind; the spark of intellect, was gradually put out, sterilized, until they could no longer separate the real from the artificial, the sublime from the profane. And so as time went on a generation of brain-dead men came to hold the most scholastic chairs of societies. No longer willing to question, no longer willing to unearth the body of the sublime maiden their teachers have slain and buried, they became blind servants of the decadence; of Faith. Drunk on power, they built institutions which in turn amassed colossal armies to clash against each other. Steel slicing through flesh, gunpowder blasting ranks of men asunder and after the smokes of war had finally settled a banner is uprooted and a new one is erected in its place. It matters not who had won the wars for humanity has lost every. What could have been the fountains of knowledge have now corrupted into those that gush out the blood of the innocent. Yet we continue to bath in these waters, our willful ignorance encouraged the bloodshed to ensue. Perhaps it might be human nature to seek destruction in every way possible. But isn’t Truth supposed to liberate us from this basest of desires, to give us the foundations of the utopia we have long dreamt of establishing?                 

Then, in our attempt to secure the love of that beautiful maiden we have gone to the extreme; we have defiled her, deveined her and dumped her carcass in the ocean of Time where the tides tossed and tossed her body until it was torn to pieces and cast into the deep oblivion. It is the price Fate has forced us to pay for this murder of Truth, that humanity is in this sunken condition; helplessly subsiding into a hotchpotch of chaos and suffering, of brothers endlessly pitting against each other over which fairy tale is the accurate manifestation of Reality, and universities reeking of indoctrination, courtrooms of Injustice and hospitals of unfair treatment- this reversal of values. When Truth is dead and so along with it is slain the sense of what is Right and Wrong. Thanks to our forefathers this is the original sin we all bear, a Mount Olympus on each of our backs. But this is a sin from which redemption is next to impossible, for we have already slaughtered the savior. Yet not all hope is lost. Seth, after killing his brother, Osiris, rived the dead god’s body into fourteen pieces and flung them all over Egypt. Still, the persistent goddess Isis and her sister Nepthys recovered the dismembered parts, sew them together and lo, the great god Osiris was reborn. Likewise, Truth can be revived, even if it is severed into a million pieces. But its slain, decrepit vestiges must first be unearthed or recovered from the maelstrom of Time. And this is the task entrusted to those of us who still see Hope in our struggle against dogmatic institutions. Olympus, although it may house a pantheon of Gods, is still like any other mountain; a product of rock and dirt and if indeed no mountain is impossible for the persistent feet of Man to conquer, then surely we can salvage ourselves from the sin Fate has anchored upon us.                         

To know Truth is the noblest of pursuits yet oft times it is the most foolish. Man sees the Sun, in all of its majesty and splendor, rising from the East and declining to the West, like an Emperor retiring into his slumber. He had retreated daily to his bed-chamber and had made appearance daily again in the morning to oversee his kingdom. And Man, seeing him, thought of him as possessing the qualities of the Absolute for he has shone steadily, from the birth of civilizations, from the very first bricks and clay that laid the foundations upon which magnificent Wonders were to be erected, to the final hours of their demise, to the final stroke of the knight’s sword through the chest of the Monarch, the beheading blow of the revolutionary upon the Despot, the waving of the blood-stained flags that followed the declaration of independence from the once sovereign and virtually untouchable Empire; he has seen it all. Even when the grandest of Pyramids slowly deteriorate into a pile of earth, even when the torrential winds tear apart holes in the great tombs where Kings of Kings lay, he reigns ever vigorous, undisturbed in his daily routine. It was because of this sense of Eternity that sages past worshiped the Sun and equated its Light with the river of Wisdom from where all knowledge flowed. Likewise, the ancients saw in other wonders of Nature the static “unchangingness”-the sky, the mountains, the rivers, in hurricanes, lightning storms and earthquakes they saw destruction and Wrath. And hence Man found in Nature what they thought were the visages of God; the manifestations of the Absolute- its blessing, its discontent, its wrath. And in a struggle to understand them, to interpret these markings of the Divine and to impart that accumulated knowledge to future generations they invented the art of oral transmission and later when their scribes have learned to write, recorded their findings in papyri, clay and stone tablets. And thus, Symbolism was born.                                 

The Mind is likened to an iceberg with the tip of it being the region where consciousness and conscious actions thrive. But there exists a deeper realm which is the bulk of the iceberg, submerged under the sea of thought; the Subconscious mind, inaccessible by conventional means but nevertheless exerting significant influence on it, within which symbols, not words, are cultivated. It is inside this region of the mind where symbols are deciphered, yielding meanings far profounder those of which the conscious mind can ever extract. One could certainly reproduce, although with some difficulty, a mosaic painting of one thousand tiles from only five hundred. The overall image vaguely resembles that of the original but of its intimate details there is very little likeness. Likewise there is never an outrageous commentary of any Symbol; only the depth of the meaning differs, reflecting the expanse of Knowledge. When the King asked each of his five blind advisers to describe the shape of the elephant they each gave an answer, in accordance with the part of the elephant they have laid their fingers on. Only by effectively combining all the five answers can one get a sensible and complete description of the elephant. To constrain symbolic interpretation is futility at its finest; it perverts the very thing Symbolism stands for. The Romans, with their intricate transportation system, served as an examplar for the ancient world. They paved a complex network of feeder roads that extended far into Roman provinces and hence the proverb “All roads lead to Rome”. As such, Symbolism should seek to gain insight of the mysteries of the mysteries, not by one rigid code of conduct but by a multitude of ways, each providing its own unique encounters, obstacles and rewards to a willing mind.                                    

One should approach Truth in a similar manner. Let each man fancy his own castle of sand , with regard to the amount of available sand he can use. Of competition there should be healthy debate but let no quarry escalate to the point where violence may manifest. A brother should help another brother moisten his sand but by no means should he attempt to tamper with his design for the latter reflects his innate capacity. He should not be discouraged, when, the tides come to undo what he has done for Persistence, combined with the fluidity of Intellect and guided by Beauty dissolves obstacles, like concentrated sulfuric acid. Such should be the way in which Truth is apprehended.