If truth is truth and falsehood is falsehood, yet doubt and uncertainty still remain, then know immediately that the matter concerns a conflict of interests. In my view, this is one of the greatest questions that can be examined, because many of the divisions and conflicts humanity has experienced begin, at their core, with conflicting interests.
It is not in the interest of a group to follow the truth if the truth threatens its interests, nor is it in a person's interest to acknowledge what they would lose by embracing the truth, even if they know inwardly that it is true. If we return to the early history of any conflict, we will often find a struggle over interests: the interest of one group against that of another, one person's interest against another's, worldly interest against the interest of the hereafter, and the interest of the ego against the interest of the other. This is where conflict begins: with the collision between the ego's interest and the other's interest, between the interests of one group and another, and between the interests of this world and those of the hereafter.
Therefore, what may prevent a person from embracing the truth is not always ignorance of it. It may be that embracing the truth threatens their interests. A person may feed on an illusion and find benefit, comfort, or protection for their position in allowing that illusion to continue. Thus, embracing the truth becomes, from their perspective, something resembling hunger and loss.
This conflict becomes even clearer in a person who has begun to touch the truth. There is always a decision that a person is on the verge of making but cannot make because there is a conflict of interests. Almost everyone has something that stands between them and the truth, something they cannot give up—especially when they see everyone else chasing their own interests. A hidden question then begins to emerge within: Why should I give up my interest while everyone else clings to theirs?
Here we reach a fundamental question: placing the collective interest above the partial interest, or placing essential gain above apparent loss, requires great faith and certainty. A person cannot put the interest of the whole above the interest of the part unless they are convinced that the greater interest is truly higher, and that their partial loss may in reality be an essential gain.
A person may do something wrong while knowing perfectly well that it is wrong. Their knowledge of the wrong does not move them to stop. Why? Because, from their partial and superficial perspective, what is right is not in their interest. What is right may prevent them from having something, restrict them, or cause them to lose something. Therefore, wrongdoing appears more beneficial in the short term. Yet they do not see that this apparent interest may conceal an inner corruption, and that their apparent loss may actually be a genuine gain.
The problem, then, is not always the absence of knowledge, but the dominance of apparent interest over inward truth.
The Test of Appearance and Essence
Here another, more complicated test appears: believing in something without finding any outward sign that visibly reinforces your belief in it.
It is not easy for a person to believe without appearances, or to remain firm in a conviction when nothing around them seems to support it. Especially when appearances, with all their splendor, point in the opposite direction. Every indication may suggest that what lies before you is happiness, luck, and success, while inwardly, through your own insight, you know that it is misfortune and loss.
Only someone who is perceptive and genuinely concerned with truth can see this difference.
A person concerned with truth may see in reality the opposite of what appears outwardly. You may have a worldly interest that seems wonderful—a relationship, a job, a particular situation, or anything else that appears beneficial and good—while inwardly knowing that it is wrong. Here you face a genuine test: Can you believe what you know within yourself, or will you believe what appearances tell you?
It is like an investigator confronted with a crime, where all expectations and outward indications point toward a particular person, yet the investigator follows their insight until finally reaching the real culprit. Had they followed appearances and expectations alone, they would never have found them.
The same is true of a person's relationship with truth. You may live in a world where everything appears to be moving in one direction, while inwardly you are certain that the correct direction is the opposite. The question then becomes: Can you endure?
Can your conviction endure?
Can your sincerity endure?
Can your essence withstand all these opposing appearances?
The true test is not believing when appearances support you, but believing when all appearances stand against you.
Am I Complicating the Issue, or Is the Issue Truly Complicated?
Sometimes I felt that I was the one complicating the issue, and that the issue itself was not complicated. Why? Because I could hardly find anyone who rejected the wrong that I rejected, recognized as wrong the error that I saw as wrong, or cared about the matter with the same intensity that I did.
Another person might have been in my position and not even considered abandoning that error, nor considered recognizing or rejecting it. But I could not stomach it.
Here a strange feeling emerges: I fear where no one else fears. I fear something in which others see no reason for fear, while everyone else may feel perfectly at ease with what troubles me.
It takes great faith and trust to tell myself: perhaps I am not the one complicating the issue; perhaps the issue truly is complicated.
A person trying to follow the truth may find themselves like someone trying to remember in a world where everything points toward forgetting, a world that constantly pushes toward relaxation, fading, and dissolution. And here a question keeps echoing within me:
Why do you burden yourself with the effort of remembering?
Why do I impose this effort upon myself while the whole world seems to be moving toward forgetting?
The Difference I Cannot Erase
There is another idea connected to all of this: whenever I have sat before almost anything, I have felt that I am not that thing.
I am me, and that is that.
I am different from that thing.
No matter how much I tried to erase the boundaries between myself and anything else, I found between myself and everything else endless boundaries and countless differences.
I tried to regard myself as unexceptional. I tried to merge, dissolve, forget, and throw myself into the heart of the crowd, into the very core of the volcano. Yet I found that I could not melt away.
Even with other people, I could not erase the boundaries. Not because I did not want to; quite the opposite, I tried. But I found that the more I tried to simplify myself for another person, the more I was required to explain myself endlessly.
I had to explain everything: how I think, how I feel, how I see, and why I say what I say. As though I were required to simplify myself through an endless process of explanation.
Some people may find it easy to say, “I am you, you are me, and I am us.” But I cannot say that, because I would be lying if I did—and I cannot lie.
I am not you.
I am me.
And between us are endless differences.
Each of us has their own memories, way, style, breath, thoughts, and feelings. My style is different, my way is different, and even the way I see things is different.
That is why I cannot erase the boundaries, because these boundaries are not merely superficial boundaries; they are essential boundaries.
The difference between moving forward and moving backward is not merely superficial. You cannot say they are the same simply because they are both movements in opposite directions. To a rational person, they differ in principle and foundation.
This is how I see myself in this world: they want one thing, while I want another. My difference from them is not incidental, something I can simply ignore; it is a difference of principle and essence.
An incidental difference can be overlooked, but an essential difference cannot be deceived away.
The Creator, the Human Being, and the Meaning of Distinction
From here I return to the idea I raised earlier concerning the importance of the human being.
Why does the Creator regard the human being as important?
Because the human being himself came to regard himself and the Creator as important, emerged from heedlessness, and began to carve out his own path—the unique and distinctive path that belongs to him.
Creation is diverse in its essence, and the Creator is unique and distinctive. Therefore, difference and distinction are not flaws in creation; they are part of the nature of existence.
I tried many times to throw myself into fusion, integration, and dissolution. I sincerely tried to become merely a particle in nothingness, to forget the boundaries, to dissolve into the whole. But I could not.
Forgetting could not make me forget.
Nor could heedlessness carry me, just as I could not carry heedlessness.
We were not made for each other.
I could not ignore my complexity, nor could I ignore the differences between myself and everything else, nor could I forget my solitude in this world.
I explored paths from near and far—the paths I had walked and those I had seen from a distance without taking them—and eventually arrived at the thought that there is one word whose meaning, in the precise sense in which I intend it, I doubt anyone can fully understand except the Creator.
Words That Do Not Mean to Me What They Mean to Others
Sometimes I use a term that people know, and they assume that I mean the definition they have known before.
But I may mean something entirely different.
When I speak of “assumption,” for example, the listener may think I am referring to the term in the conventional sense, while I mean something else.
Therefore, knowing the words does not necessarily mean knowing what is meant by them.
You may think you know me because you have heard my words, but in reality, you may not know me.
What I say here is not built upon the same premises from which others construct their words. There is a particular structure, a particular judgment of things, and a particular way of connecting them.
This is what makes dissolution impossible for me.
Someone capable of dissolving may be able to open their boundaries because, fundamentally, they do not see themselves as having fixed boundaries or a closed identity. But I cannot transcend my identity or leap outside my difference.
Identity and Constancy
I used to watch people speak of openness, dissolution, and fusion—of flowing, flooding, and the volcano in which everything melts.
But I could not melt away.
I preserved my boundaries and my identity.
I tried, I weakened, and I attempted to break, melt, dissolve, and disappear. Yet at the heart of every process of dissolution, I found myself becoming more steadfast.
As though I were something fixed that could not be moved, an identity that would not accept alteration or replacement.
Even when people speak about change, I do not understand it in the same way.
Yes, I changed in appearance, body, and voice, and many incidental things changed, but I did not change in my essence.
Incidental change can be overlooked, but a change that touches the essence cannot.
Every time I tried to deny my differences or regard them as something I could surrender, I found them much deeper than that, buried in the very core of my being.
I found myself entirely different, not merely partially different.
From childhood, through adolescence and into youth, I noticed things in ways I did not see others noticing them.
I was often astonished that someone would fail to notice what I noticed, or would not give it the attention that I gave it.
Sometimes, after certain events, I would remain silent and think for a long time:
How can I explain to this person that I care, but that I care in an extremely complicated way?
How can I explain something that they may not be able to comprehend in the way that I comprehend it?
People Do Not See Differences as I See Them
Over time, I understood something else: people do not always notice differences, details, order, systems, mechanisms, methods, and styles in the way I had assumed they did.
I used to think that people saw every word, every difference, and every detail.
But I began to discover that this was not the case.
When I speak, someone may think that my words resemble another person's words, or that I am discussing the same subject that someone else discussed.
But I did not necessarily say the same thing.
I do not mix things together. Every word has its place for me, every sentence follows the one before it, and every idea proceeds from a particular principle.
That is why, when my ideas are compared with the ideas of others, I feel that something fundamental has been lost.
Because what I am creating here proceeds from a singular principle and from a different way of constructing and judging things.
The Human Being and the Creator: Degrees of Understanding
In this context, I think about the relationship between the human being and the Creator.
Not everyone is capable of comprehending the Creator to the same degree, because people themselves are not all capable of comprehending the differences that exist between themselves and others.
If a human being cannot see the difference between themselves and another person, how can they comprehend the difference between creation and the Creator?
People sometimes mix things together and fail to see subtle distinctions.
Someone may think that the diversity among human beings is evidence that they do not come from one Creator, whereas I see the opposite entirely: the diversity of creation may be evidence that the Creator is profoundly different from His creation, unique and without equal.
If the Creator resembled creation in His essence, there would not be that fundamental distinction between Creator and created being.
A person may resemble the Creator in some particular aspect, such as a quality or a name, but this does not mean that the Creator resembles the human being; for the human being derives their qualities and names from the Creator, while the Creator derives nothing from creation.
Creation cannot be the source of the Creator.
Here, the difference between the two becomes fundamental and essential.
The Solitude That Never Broke
I lived for a long time feeling that my solitude had never been breached.
Nothing entered it capable of abolishing it.
Since I was born, there has been a sense of solitude.
Not because I always chose solitude, but because my coordinates are different.
I do not dwell where everyone else dwells.
As though my dwelling exists where nothing dwells.
When people leave their dwellings, they become unsettled, then return to mixture and mingling because they find comfort in similarity, in the absence of distinction, and in the absence of difference.
As for me, when I cannot see difference, I become unsettled.
When I see things mixed together, I cannot rest.
I cannot sleep until the noise is separated, until things are distinguished, and until everything returns to its proper place.
Only then can I find rest.
From this I realized that people do not always see the differences that I see, nor do they see the difference between me and another person, or between my style and someone else's.
If they truly saw the difference, they would see that this human being built himself apart from everything else, with unique stones and a distinctive architecture, deriving this uniqueness only from the Creator.
The Creator, as I see it, is the source of value and distinction in what is singular and unique; the Creator is the One who distinguishes.
My Relationship with the Creator: Love, Awe, and a Rejection That Is Not Rejection
From all these ideas, I arrive at what is perhaps the most complicated point for me: my relationship with the Creator.
I see Him from multiple angles, and I cannot reduce this relationship to a single meaning.
I love Him, and I fear Him, even though there are not many things I fear.
Awe takes hold of me, and I am filled with helplessness before His greatness, while at the same time I feel that I am not far from Him.
I stopped speaking to Him long ago, yet deep down I know that I never truly stopped.
I tried to reject Him many times, and I prayed that I would not succeed.
I wished to forget Him. I forgot many things, but I found myself remembering only that there is a profoundly complex relationship from which I cannot separate myself.
The relationship is strong, immense, and enduring; it cannot simply disappear.
No matter how deep the reproach, at the heart of it I still find myself loving.
As though this original love changes the entire equation.
If a relationship is founded upon love and justice, it does not collapse easily.
I may say that I want to reject creation, and I may try to reject it, and I may wish that things were not so, yet at the heart of it I find myself facing a relationship that I cannot deny.
I am in pain, and I know that the pain continues as long as I remain in this state, but I cannot bring myself to sever the relationship.
I do not fear the Creator in an ordinary sense. Rather, I fear because I know that I am different, and that I do not resemble another person to the point that I must necessarily be treated exactly as they are.
For this reason, the Creator is, for me, both loved and feared at the same time.
This balance is extraordinarily delicate.
Few people can walk upon it.
The matter is not merely fear of something specific; it is a deeper meaning: if a person wishes to fear, they should first know what they fear, otherwise fear has no meaning.
That is why this relationship appears strange on the surface: fear without fear, reproach without reproach, and rejection without rejection.
And despite all of this, the relationship remains, because what lies deeper than fear, reproach, and rejection is the foundation that nothing has been able to erase.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment