That Which Cannot Be Proved

 

I have recently been witness to an ongoing debate in one of the communities regarding religion and spirituality. The philosophical debating between the members became quite animated at times, as religious threads are apt to do. It was in this particular thread that a philosophical conundrum was introduced that produced a flurry of discussion. When I first viewed the words, "That which cannot be proved must be True", I was whisked back to days of olde when I was but a University student; frantically trying to prove myself to yet one more "babe" transpiring to the ultimate degree of double major in psych and philosophy.

 

"Ah, those were the days", I mused, "When philosophy was reduced to nightly conversation over a double latte while pondering your next chess move to avoid the endangerment of your second knight - and your divine understanding of life was minimized to how well one performed after the double latte and the second six-pack..."

 

The conundrum presented is indeed a profound one. I would argue, however, that in of itself this statement, "That Which Cannot be Proved Must Be True", is a dangerous one to developing an understanding of the divine. When taken at face value, this statement envelopes one in the philosophical masturbation that so confuses anyone that they are able to intellectualize away the very being of the Deity. By allowing logic and scientific reasoning to overcome one's emotional realities, we are able to explain our very existence as being nothingness...

 

When Sean Connery made this statement in "In The Name Of The Rose", he was explaining to his young detective apprentice that things are simply not always as they seem, and not to be taken at face value. As we humans are wont to do, we have taken the profound implications of this idea and created a simplified statement which leads one to believe that we have the ability to explain anything away as long as we have the technology and tools. The reverse of this conundrum inevitably becomes our ultimate reality: "Anything which is False can be Proven".

 

This unfortunately becomes a rather demoralizing and nihilistic approach to life. We run the risk of spending our time on this earth attempting to disprove or prove everything we encounter in our life experience. Even the time we experience in the presence of our Deities must become an "opportunity" to utilize our deductive powers of reasoning and go so far as to disprove the very presence of the Divine. Ultimately, this line of logic leaves us cold, disbelieving; and even leads us to the final conjecture (as have so many existentialist philosophers have done before us) that "God is Dead". Given enough time, we can even explain away our own existence - leaving us with the life-deadening question: "Does our life have any meaning". We are left with a life that feels unfilled, a Divine presence that may be nonexistent, and relationships that are shallow and meaningless.

 

Philosophy is in fact a major part of any spirituality, for it is our questionings and our understandings that mold our own experience of the divine. While philosophy is a part of any religion, however, it is a tool - and only a tool in our spiritual gnosis. The Divine exists in spite of our reasoning. We may utilize every element of deductive reasoning and logical thought processes we wish...and still Spirit lives on. It has been here long before our presence, and it will continue to be long after we perish.

There is, however, a positive element to the conundrum, "That which cannot be proved must be True". This school of thought reminds us that the Divine cannot be rationalized. It cannot be explained, theorized or hypothesized. The essence of the Divine exists on faith alone, and no amount of philosophical training or technological advances can prove or disprove the existence of Spirit. The Divine is not something to be placed in a neat little box and labeled - it is an experience to be experienced. "Faith" is the tool that we are left with when it comes to matters of Spirituality. No tool or explanation exists to us that can adequately describe the sense of awe we feel when we experience the divine presence. The words that we place on these overwhelming emotions - the face that we place on the Deity - become but shallow representations of what we have experienced. The simplistic measures we have available to us serve only to diminish the essence of what we have come to understand. We are left only with Faith in our experience and the hope that others have experienced what we have ourselves so that they may sympathize with us at an emotional level. We are not truly asking for "proof" of our own experience -- only that what we have felt is "real" because others have felt it as well.

 

We are hungry to find others that have simply experienced the same emotions and realities that we have ourselves. We need validation of our experiences -- not proof, evidence or disproof. It is this validation that becomes the tool of understanding. Intellect and reasoning become barriers to our own spiritual quests and gnosis. By allowing ourselves to let go of logical training and psychological understandings, we free ourselves to find who and what the Divine is within us and around us.

The knowledge that we hold within our minds serves only to weaken us. It is the knowledge that is held within our very being - that knowledge that exists at our most cellular memories - that contains the awareness which will lead us into the presence of the Spirit.

 

I Am. You Are. It Is. This is Truth, as I Know It.

 
By P. Stephany
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Used with permission from the author. All rights reserved