The Truth
Is there such a thing as “Objective Truth”? Or is truth only in the eye of the beholder?
The quizzes on this and the following pages are designed to help you have some different perspectives on what is real in your life, what is just illusion, and if nothing else, these will surely give you some food for thought. The answers, are based on the wisdom of Dr. Frederick Lenz and his incredible insights on existence.
This test is self-evaluated, which means that we’re not going to tell you what’s right, but if you read and understand the explanation below each question (as you click the + sign below each) and consider the excerpts, most likely you’ll be closer to the answer.
What’s necessary to see the ultimate truth of life?
a. An enlightened person telling you what the truth is
b. Stopping thought completely
c. Reading enough classical and modern philosophy to understand life
d. Repeatedly asking yourself the question: “who am I?”
e. Becoming better at visualization
Did I get this right?
When you practice concentration, there should be nothing in your awareness but the object of concentration. You should only do this for a few minutes, for three or four minutes, at the beginning of each meditation session. If you do this you’ll strengthen the intellect, you’ll clear the mind. In order to enter into samadhi, in order to see truth, to see that which is real, it’s necessary to be able to stop all thought completely. While you can meditate for many, many years and have some thought in the mind, to really enter into samadhi, into the deeper stratum of existence, you must be able to control thought perfectly, without any sense of controlling thought. It is only in samadhi that you’ll begin to get an inkling of who you are, and finally, it is only in absorption in nirvana that this perfect truth will become clear.
more info: Samadhi quest link
Can the ultimate truths of life be understood by us?
a. Yes
b. No
c. Only with three glasses of red wine
Did I get this right?
Everything has always been in one form or another. All of existence exists. Always has, always will — but it takes different forms. There is an overriding unity to existence that cannot be known or understood if you’re in the world of perception. In other words, the highest truths of life cannot be understood as long as you are alive either in this world, or in any other world or in a passage between because the truths are so big that the mind can’t get them. In order to understand the truths of the universe — truths meaning not how the universe works per se but just to have a complete knowledge of all, to be that — it’s necessary to step outside our human mind form or any mind form whatsoever because any mind form whatsoever is a form. And form cannot perceive the absolute formless existence. We have to become it.
You have to become that infinite formless creation, which is life, to know it. It can’t be known in an intellectual sense. That’s enlightenment, that step outside. In order to do that, we have to, in a sense, reject or leave behind everything we’ve been, which is perception, a perceiver — I as an individual who was born, who lived, who died, who’s reborn. That’s enlightenment, to do that.
Of the following teachers which one showed us the real truth?
a. Jesus
b. Buddha
c. Yogananda
d. Rama
e. Ramana Maharshi
f. All of the above
Did I get this right?
All of the great teachers have come into the world to reestablish what we call the dharma, the truth, the true way. An enlightened teacher may come once in a generation or maybe not for thousands of years. He or she will show us the way again to truth, to light, to immortal consciousness. These teachers are higher beings who take incarnation into this world to help their brothers and sisters, their friends, their fellow beings. Then after their death, the way will be forgotten again. What they said will be corrupted or simply not understood. That’s because when a liberated teacher is among us, what they teach us are not just a series of words that can be written down in books that others can understand – although sure, that’s part of it – but it’s to be in their physical presence and meditate with them and get a glimpse of the essence of their being. That is what they show.
There are no books or words that can describe that, although videotape is a possibility in the modern age, perhaps, but still, the level of meditation when you’re with them is what stops your thoughts, what brings you into eternal consciousness and awareness. So the way is lost, ritual replaces it. People begin to worship statutes. They worship all kinds of things. They make up rules and prohibitions until another enlightened teacher rolls down on the planet and says, “OK, let’s forget all this ritual, let’s go back to the essence, to the truth.”
Each teacher will say exactly the same thing. The teachers, of course, always speak on the level of the audience. It depends on the culture they’ve incarnated into. They might be able to say much more, but they’re bound by the language of the time. They’re speaking so the people with them will understand.
Why is it worth to seek the truth?
a. So we become more knowledgeable and knowledge itself is its own reward
b. The closer we are to understand truth, the less we suffer
c. It’s our moral obligation as human beings to seek the truth
d. Truth is worthy of being sought for its own sake
Did I get this right?
Some people ask sometimes, “Well, why should I be in such a hurry to attain enlightenment? What’s the difference? Why not take a hundred thousand lifetimes since I have all the time in the world anyway. Why do it in twenty lifetimes?” There is no right or wrong in this matter. You have to just select what you feel is best. The obvious advantage to having fewer lifetimes, from the point of the perceiver, is that as you advance more quickly you suffer less. Some people are under the illusion that, “Well, if I go through all my lifetimes really quickly, then I’ll just stop living. In other words, after I finish the cycle of lifetimes and I attain liberation, then I’ll be destroyed. I’ll be absorbed in nirvana and I won’t be anymore and I don’t want that to happen. I like life and I like living so why not stretch out the incarnations as long as I can?” It’s not like that. At the time of liberation you don’t cease to be. You don’t even necessarily stop reincarnating. If you want to reincarnate you can reincarnate as long as you can and come back and aid others, or if you just want to be absorbed in eternity that can occur anyway. You have a choice, in other words, if you want choice.
Rather, the advantage is that as you even approach enlightenment, you live in a state of bliss instead of pain and suffering as most human beings do, and also, the more advanced you are, the more you can do for others. The primary motivation is either to get away from pain and suffering and frustration – and compared to the bliss of eternity even the so-called happiest moments that most people ever experience are suffering – to go beyond suffering to joy and bliss and light and/or to be motivated by the fact that there are other people in the world who suffer. If it will take you eight years to become a teacher and instead you could do it in four, if you become a teacher in four years, if you can learn the same amount, then you can get out in the field sooner and help people instead of just logging an additional four years to learn the same things.