Truth. This is the one word that confounded and had philosophers butt heads about for centuries. During Pilate’s inquisition, Jesus must have known that there was more to the question "Truth, what does that mean?" which is why He refused to answer. In the movie A Few Good Men, it's what what Col. Jessep said Lt.  Kaffee can't handle.

I get mixed emotions at how Christians quote Jesus “I am the way the truth and the life...” On one hand, you can only admire their faith (this excludes those who use the John 14:6 verse as a riposte or a cliche the way Miss Universe candidates would wish for world peace) and you wonder if they really could fathom the wisdom in such profound answer on the other..

Think about it for a moment. Do we really have "access" to the truth when all that we know and feel and understand about everything is filtered through and by our senses?

“What's the big deal?" you might ask. Well, it's bigger than you cared to realize.

Just look at the device you're reading this entry on. You see gray letters on a white grayish elegant background illuminated by a screen made of a plastic-glass. When you say “I see" you are in fact describing the process of light clusters called photons that travel through the lens of your eyes where they are refracted past the retina and taken on at the back of the brain where rays are converted into electrical signals and thus form the "images" you “see”.

In fact, the conversion and transmission electric signals to our brain is responsible for our relationship to everything, leading us to our perception of the world.

So…if the material world you are seeing, hearing, tasting and feeling are all but electrical signals in our brain, how can you know for sure that what's out there is really what our senses tell us?  We cannot. Experiments on colors alone corroborate this i.e. Red is only red in relation to the color of the predominant light of the environment and the “configuration” of the eyes perceiving it. It isn’t so in the view of dogs or snakes or other species.

If you followed really closely, what's "out there" gets even more interesting. Let's suppose you're the stick person in the image above...out in the field flying a red kite. Everything that's taking place….the kite you're holding up steady about 80-100 feet above you with sparrows once in a while flying by on a lovely afternoon with blue sky on the background….all that you would see are happening not outside but inside you..they are electrical signals processed in and by your brain. You look around the vast field where kids are playing, families having picnic…everything that's out there is in fact in your brain. In fact, these electrical signals tell you that you are in the field flying a kite but in reality you are in your brain. The distance between you and the kite, the time it took to get it off the ground…are all processed in your brain. Time and space are deceptive concepts made in our brain.

So you think this is where the pursuit ends? That because the material world is all in our brain, we are alone in this universe? That one is separate from the other and therefore matter dissolves when the “broadcast” stops?

Wrong! And my answer is actually “common sense”...the coolest part. If matter or the material world at large does not have a self-governing existence by itself, can the senses perceive the brain where electrical signals are sent and processed?

To illustrate this interesting point, imagine that you can magically take your brain (with extended nerves so the “circuits” get uninterrupted) out of your cranium and hold it in your hands. It's a grotesque sight, I know, but just imagine it for a second. In your mind’s eye, you would of course see, touch and feel your brain, wouldn’t you?

How could this be? How could the brain, the matter that processes the electrical signals, the matter-perceiver perceive itself? It just doesn’t make sense, does it?

Well, it does. This is where consciousness comes in, the SELF that is not bound by time and space (and the brain least of all)...the non material that perceives everything even where perception takes place. This accounts for the source of all “perception” that is common and connecting all perceivers.

It is the “I”, your non-material self that speaks when you say “I am”. It is the universal “I”. While the brain accepts and processes the electrical signals, this “I” is the creative power that projects what it “chooses” to make up for the electrical signals in the brain and to reflect it in our experience in the material world. It’s the uncaused cause that’s been there before the beginning of time.

Because of this “I”, no one is really born and therefore death is only like time and space: a construct of the human mind.

***