| |
with truth. If he says that truth is eternal and maintains that it cannot be new, you will not find him to be inconsistent. Another person, on the other hand, may hold that truth is always new.
Gurdjieff, if asked, would say that religion is eternal and ancient; Krishnamurti, if asked, would say that it is absolutely new, that it can never be old. But both of them are consistent.
The question that you ask me could not be asked either to Gurdjieff or Krishnamurti. Their answers would only be half-truths. Half-truths can always be consistent, but a total truth is always inconsistent because in a total truth the opposite is also included.
One person may say that light and only light is the truth. He will then ignore darkness and look upon it as false. But just by calling darkness false, the existence of darkness is not denied. He can be consistent because he denies darkness and does not bother about its existence. His philosophy can be clear, straight and consistent like mathematics. In his philosophy there will be no riddles. However, someone else who says that there is darkness and only darkness everywhere, that light is only an illusion, can also be consistent.
Difficulty arises with a person who says that there is darkness and there is light also. The person who accepts the existence of both accepts the fact that darkness and light are only two extremes of the same thing. If darkness and light are two different things, then by the increase of light darkness should not be reduced, and by the decrease of light darkness should not increase. But it is a fact that by the increase or decrease of light, darkness can be decreased or increased. The meaning is clear: that light is somewhere a part of darkness and vice versa. Both are two ends of one thing.
Therefore, when I try to tell the whole truth, the difficulty is that I seem inconsistent. I am telling at the same time two things that seem contradictory. I say that truth is eternal and it is wrong to call it new; at the same time I also say that truth is always new and there is no sense in calling it old. When I say both of these things together, I am attempting to catch the whole
|
|
|