How do we know what is true?

It’s October in 2024 and no one would be surprised to hear that we have a deep sense of mistrust in both public and even personal information. If someone says a fact, we google it. Even if they are an expert in their field. If a headline appears, something we may have previously believed instantly without question is now met with a bitter skepticism. We don't know what to believe when we hear it. We don’t know if what we are hearing is true. And the risk we continue to take in receiving information without our own personal ballast of truth, is a deep disconnection with our society, other people, and the functional communication of our every day life. We are at risk of losing our selves as a whole, and as individuals, equally. The fragmentation of our minds and hearts is deafening these days, as we all skim headlines and mostly just look away.

On this question Baba may seem esoteric and impractical. We want real answers to the troubling conundrum of our day. How on earth do we sort out corrupt information from reliable? But I’m commenting here because my time with Baba, over 9 years of asking questions and receiving answers, has led me to believe that these answers are practical in the extreme even if at first reading they seem somehow vague and esoteric. Maybe even unrelatable. As if from a time that doesn’t exist. But in my experience, when an answer isn’t what I really wanted to hear, perhaps something that may seem evasive at first, when read 8-10 days later it takes on a whole new meaning. As if life, God, Shiva, Shakti, all intervened to show me in some specific, personal way, that it was, in fact, so.

I’ve learned to lean into these teachings. Go deeper into contemplation, and to let the understanding reveal itself. Unlike the answers we are looking for in our media sources, Baba provides higher truths. And in this post, Baba is essentially saying… we know when we KNOW. And if we don’t know, we must look deeper in ourselves.

Let me just say one more thing as well. This doesn’t mean we ignore facts. What Baba is saying here is the opposite. For example, if we sense that jaded, I don’t know what to believe feeling, instead of ignoring this and moving on with our lives, we believe it. We believe in ourselves. We begin to listen to our deep knowing seated in the Self that something IS wrong. We can choose to investigate further, find physical evidence, primary source material, get back to research basics. Or we can simply let the truth be revealed in our Selves.

A great example of this is in the Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection by Michael Singer. Michael recounts his experience of being asked to take a finance exam when the only thing he’s interested in at the time is meditation. But his spiritual commitment in life is to accept what is and life is presenting him with the task of the exam. Even so, he continues to spend many hours in mediation and no time studying for the exam. The night before the exam, he opens his finance book and studies one or two pages. The next day the only questions on the exam are from these pages.

The point here, is that we have more of the answers than we will allow ourselves to actually believe. Somehow we separate out the politics of our time, the media, the issues and the big bad beefs that we all have with this side or that, from our deeply personal and spiritually recognizable knowing. And so when you read Baba’s answer here, bring to it your full and right understanding. Bring your whole Self. Bring your Spiritual Self that has experienced these coincidental knowings, the somatic understandings and the full depth of your Self on every level. Bring your academic prowess and refer to Abinavagupta and the Doctrine of Spanda. Go to quantum physics and drink in the understanding of plank energy being the entire power of the universe in the smallest measurable proportion. Truth is, in fact, everywhere. Really. You feel it in your body, it rises in your spirit, it is that quiet instant inkling that something isn’t right and the voice that we want to ignore. As we say, we feel it in our bones. And it is, in fact, in our cells. We just have a hard time recognizing it.

Start by letting in the truth in this answer: you already know what is true.

From Baba

Truth is something that is known in the deepest part our very Self.  The issue is not truth and finding out if there is evidence to back up this truth or that truth, the issue is do we know ourselves enough to decipher the energies that are coming our way. My Baba would always know the truth. Everything that anyone said was never the actual truth because as soon as a word is uttered it is a fraction of what we know our own Self to be. So, in a sense there is no truth.

You want to know how to know if someone is going to tell us something that is real, that is what actually happened, or if it is only their perception? This is the everyday question of pragmatic application that many people are very confused over. This truth, that truth, I saw this, he did that, she said this, and I heard that. No, she didn’t say that he said this. This is all lies. Because the truth is inside of us in a form that only our knowing can recognize.

Consciousness is only a fraction of what we can understand. There are higher truths that elude us completely. Universal truths that we are not aware of as we go to the shopping market. There are elderly people who are filled with wisdom and truth and yet the youth will shout them down. This is the way of people, not truth.  And people are made of up mostly of lies.

The question is a common one, especially among families that have troubles. One day a very wealthy man came to my Baba and asked him for the truth. Everywhere he went he was receiving lies. His employees were lying, his wife was lying, his children were lying. In my Baba’s presence all of this fell away and what was LEFT was TRUTH. When everything else is taken from you, when everyone else is gone, what is left? This is your truth. The truth that only belongs to you.

If it is truth, truth will strengthen you. Truth will build you into a stronger, more reliable, more resilient, more cheerful, and less stressful personality. It will be the rock that you use as a picnic table, the seat of your morning prayer and the altar of your devotion. But you must find the truth first. This is what illuminates the lies.

How to find your own truth is very easy. Of course you must be in the presence of a Siddha, a great being and then it is revealed naturally. All of the things that you tell yourself will cease. And there you will be in your essence.  

Or, you can begin to practice devotion to the Self, love of Self and understanding for the Self. When you believe lies it takes you further away from your own being, it makes you irritable, filled with sadness, regret, anger and folly. You make bad decisions and your fortune becomes inauspicious. When you find a place of connection to your Self it will lead you to the truth. The truth does not come from without, the truth comes from within, always.

And so, you can listen to any information when you have a sense of the universal truth of consciousness within you and will understand when it is the truth and when it is false, purely by its own vibration.  The knowledge comes in the subtle energies of the communication beyond words, it is in the subtle energies of All There Is. There is nothing that causes freedom or angst or pain in the Truth. The truth does set you free, but only if you are willing to dig for it in the devotion to the Self in your own heart, in your own consciousness and in your own experience of All There Is.