The need for eternal truth

At times we come across some movies that alter the way you perceive life. One such movie that i happened to view recently is “The Man from Earth”. The movie essentially resolves around a character that is a college professor and at his farewell discloses to his fellow professors that he is a 14,000 year old cave man. Amazed by this “weird” but fascinating confession, his colleagues who hailed from streams such as biology, history, philosophy, scientology started quizzing him to verify his claim. However, the beauty and bane of such a claim is that the part supported by historical data can be assumed to be the obvious truth and the part not supported by historic data can be assumed to be false. Thus, the fascinated audience cannot dispute the testimony but simultaneously could not agree with the same.

However, considering the impossibility of the story, they decide to continue with it to kill the otherwise humdrum and the conversation takes an unexpected turn when it is asked if the character has been a significant religious figure in the past. Initially reluctant to answer and rightly so considering the audacity of the answer that followed, the central character finally unveils that he was Jesus and the religion contours that exist in the present day are not only starkly different from those intended but are preposterous to say the least. He discloses how a simple teaching actually developed into a new religion called as Christianity with a plethora of wrong activities and misinterpretations. He claims to give a new version of “The Old Testament” in just ten sentences which essentially actually captured the soul of the religion. Over and above, the various ceremonies and rituals are just reckless embellishments added to serve all ulterior motives besides salvation. However, this idea that there present religion is at best “a grand and ineffective embellishment of the “external truth” was not acceptable to the people present especially to the scientologists as surely the idea of God is assumed to be so fundamental to the existence of the world that it is not even open to a honest reconsideration. So strong was the reaction against this move that the central character had to eventually admit that we was lying and trying to fool around.

The above episode paves way for a more fundamental question with regards to the need and presence of an eternal truth. Most human beings have this inevitable need of an eternal truth or belief about which their life evolves. This eternal truth could be in the form of religion, existence of life in the other world, existence of a particular relation for lifetime be it our lover, parents, friends, siblings etc. We all are aware about this fundamental essence of life that the only constant thing in life is change. While most of us know this, but the bigger and most pertinent question is whether we mentally are willing to embrace change and be receptive to the fundamental idea that so called “absolute and eternal truth” is essentially transient in nature and hence evolutionary. I strongly believe that, except the obvious facts which are irrefutable, all others are either opinions or judgments and the element of truthfulness imparted to these are not intrinsic but rather stems from the intensity of belief with which one wants to believe in these. An interesting element here is that a plethora of times (both consciously and unconsciously), the so called eternal truth more than our belief stems from our deep-rooted need to build our lives around a static platform which is immortal. Often, we don’t realise it but in our most testing times we turn to these so called “eternal truths” which provide solace to out disturbed souls and provide us comfort against suffering. This “eternal truth” helps in allowing us to make a sense of this chaotic world which otherwise is perhaps meaningless but our perception essentially transforms this into a cause and effect relationship.

I wonder what is so naive or preposterous of this idea that essentially any belief is true only till the time it seems true and probably there is no eternal truth because of the intrinsic hollowness of every belief. I believe it allows us to be free and better embrace the “meaningless” nature of life and enhance adaptability of life. Let us stop making sense of life as it is or has been or for that matter will be but start living it completely without prejudice, meaning and fear of what beholds the future. Unfortunately, we spend so much time making sense of life as per our eternal truth and framing responses that at times may digress us from our own self-imposed and must celebrated objectives. It’s high time that we realise that there is no eternal truth and perhaps its time for us to be more open, less scared and embrace the fact that there are a zillion versions of truth as it is a fig of our imagination hence each one of us is equally correct and equally wrong.