Category: Blog

A claim is a statement that is either true or false. If the statement is neither true nor false, it is not a claim. Truth is the description of the quality of a claim. A claim is true when the statement being made matches the way things actually are.

Truth refers to a claim or group of claims in which the statements of the claim correspond to reality. In other words, the statement really does express the reality of the matter. If someone makes the claim that I am a man, and I really am a man, then the claim is true. It is true because it matches or corresponds to the way things really are. Truth is the name of a claim that matches reality.

Truth is the correspondence between a claim and reality. All other attempted definitions must assume this one. All other definitions claim that their definition corresponds to reality, and therefore is true. Which means that all other definitions are false. You can’t assume the truth of one definition to prove another.

The essence of truth is the correspondence between a claim and reality. But the evidence that there is this correspondence includes the coherence of the system of claims and whether they are pragmatically verifiable. In other words, other definitions of truth are evidence of truth and not truth itself.

The whole of Buddhism can be summarized in the Four Noble Truths. The first noble truth is the unsatisfactoriness of existence. Rebirth, old age, sickness, and death are unsatisfactory. We are not happy about being associated with the things and people we do not like, or being separated from those we do like. And we do not like failing to get what we want. Suffering is bound up with the attachments of the mind-body process.

The second noble truth is that there is an origin of this unsatisfactoriness: it is attachment that leads to future rebirth, entangled with delight and desire, taking pleasure in this thing and then that. That is, attachment to sensual pleasures, attachment to continued life, and attachment to wealth.

The third noble truth is that there is an ending of this unsatisfactoriness: it is the fading away and cessation of that very same attachment, with nothing left over; giving it up, letting it go, becoming free from it, and doing away with it.

The fourth noble truth is that there is a way that leads to the ending of this unsatisfactoriness: it is the Buddhist Eightfold Path. That path consists of eight aspects: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right employment, right mental discipline, right mindfulness, and right meditation.

Mystical experiences concern union with Ultimate Reality. They are consciously unitive and should not be confused with spiritual experiences more broadly. William James identified four marks that justify calling an experience “mystical,” and his framework has aged remarkably well.

First is ineffability: the experience cannot be adequately expressed in words. Like the taste of tea, it must be directly encountered to be understood.

Second is the noetic quality: the experience carries a sense of insight or revelation. It presents itself as disclosing something true about the nature of reality.

Third is transiency: mystical experiences are temporary. The heightened awareness fades, though its aftereffects may endure.

Fourth is passivity: while one may prepare for such an experience, one cannot produce it at will. It arrives unbidden—often unexpectedly—and is traditionally described as a gift of grace.

A fifth mark, often overlooked, is self-transcendence. The experience breaks—or at least cracks—the shell of the ego, opening the person to a larger Reality. This can be both liberating and destabilizing.

There is a need for an umbrella term to encompass all experiences that alter consciousness, from simple illumination to full mystical union. “Spiritual experiences” serves best for this range.

Spiritual experiences include all experiences that affect consciousness. Mystical experiences, by contrast, are a subset: they are unitive. They involve an experience of oneness with Ultimate Reality.

Dreams, visions, and similar phenomena fall under spiritual experiences, but they are not mystical in themselves. This distinction helps separate the wheat from the chaff, since not all spiritual experiences lead to the same outcome.

Because the Mystic’s goal is union with Ultimate Reality, visions, dreams, and revelations are not central and are often distractions. The aim is to fix one’s gaze on Ultimate Reality so as to become like it; the goal is transformation.

Ultimate Reality is described by Gotama as the “unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned.” He does not view it as a supreme being, but as Being itself: something permanent, unchanging, and endless bliss. The deathless.

But Ultimate Reality is described in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a personal God. In all three, he is portrayed as a male deity: Father, Ruler, and King. Only the mystics in these traditions dare to challenge this picture, because they have encountered this deity directly, whereas others know it only at second hand.

Advaita Vedānta has a helpful distinction. It divides Brahman with attributes from Brahman without attributes. The idea of a personal God is a useful fiction. It is hard for humans to relate to something so foreign as Ultimate Reality. Such a Wholly Other entity is beyond thought and imagination. It can be off-putting.

So we dress up God in an image and likeness we can relate to. But eventually you will have to experience Ultimate Reality for yourself. When you do, the fiction will dissolve. God is so far beyond us that all our language fails.

Reincarnation, or rebirth as Buddhists call it, is the idea that consciousness goes from one incarnation to another until it reaches Nirvana. Versions of this view were taught by Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Gotama Buddha, Mahavira, Śāṅkara, Plotinus, and a number of modern thinkers. There are in fact good reasons to believe that some such process is true.

The first is the fact that many people experience déjà vu. We sometimes feel we have lived through a moment before in exactly the same way. This could be interpreted as a residual impression from a previous life.

We also know that there is spiritual energy and physical energy. And we know that physical energy is neither created nor destroyed, according to the first law of thermodynamics. If physical energy is neither created nor destroyed, why would spiritual energy be any different? It is neither created nor destroyed, but transmigrates from one incarnation to another.

Near-death experiences also give evidence that there is an afterlife, and many of these suggest that the good we do in this life follows us into the next.

Finally, there are children who remember their previous lives. Scientists have studied this and argued that there is no good explanation except that they actually did reincarnate.