I was chatting with a good friend who is creating a database that will store safety information for all chemicals. We got to talking about how this was an important issue because the FDA, the agency that would regularly monitor such things, can no longer be relied upon to oversee consumer health. Corporate interests have found their way on to the FDA boards resulting in consumer health regulations that are bent to allow these corporations to sell us whatever they wish regardless of the implications to human health.

And example this can be found by reading the top executive list of Monsanto employees. Monsanto is corporation that is responsible for much of the toxins and poisons that are sprayed on the food that we eat. Why would they do that? Simple profit. A glimpse of Monsanto’s top execs will prove shocking. Their crew switches back and forth between Monsanto and the FDA. They are virtually one in the same. And so the consumer, or my friend Bill, has good reason to create a new system of coding, one which represents different values and which gives consumers another glimpse into the health risks of various chemicals. In a way he is moving truth, putting it into a new location and saying “now it is here!” This got my yogic brain thinking about truth and where it lies. Our entire reality is constructed of systems of information that have been developed by people over many generations since the beginning of time. From base information that we have come to rely on such as the periodic table of elements, the calendar, and language itself to newer systems that seem to change endlessly such as the food pyramid. Most recently the religious fundamentalist government of the US has put reality itself is up for debate (intelligent design vs evolution). Since humanity can not return to a time when when no such systems existed, a time when life was pure instinct, the best that we can hope to do is to recognize that everything has been built by the hands and minds of man. As such it is dangerous to deem anything to be ’solid truth’ as such truths exist upon the limits of wo/man and wo/mans senses and abilities at a given moment. Truth as it has evolved today is a simple license in the hands of those who hold power. In a book by the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi, transcribed by Titus Burckhardt, titled Mystical Astrology Arabi writes of the time when man first moved from a geocentric to a heliocentric view of the universe. This was brought about by the discovery that the earth moved around the sun. This scientific discovery tossed out previous idea systems that were built upon man as the center of the universe. And again truth shifted to a new residence. But did we loose something in that shift? Surely we can all agree that the sun is the center of the solar system. But the previous view was based upon more than matter. It held the notion that man is the actual source from which reality generates. This likens the yogic view that reality is not coming at you but coming from you. The way in which this philosophy describes wo/mans relationship to manifestation has little to do with the location of the sun or its relationship to the solar system. It addresses an entirely different question about wo/mans relationship to reality. Centuries later modern scientists have pointed to an interdependent relationship between matter, how it materializes and man. The heliocentric discovery that describes gross reality is accurate, it does describe the way the planets move, but it does not reach into the nature of reality or look at the relationship between man and all of existence. In the quest for truth, and certainly in the quest for power, truth bounces from hand to hand and culture to cutlure. Sometimes new discovery bumps an entire thought form out of existence leaving humanity with a flatter and less dynamic view. Other times the development of ideas expands wo/mans ability to see to a wider view of the nature of reality. How does one find truth in the midst of a changing playing field? And how are we to see through the limits of our abilities, those of generations past, and beyond known and unknown deceit that surely follows truth around like a hungry dog? A starting place might be to let go of the need for fixed and stationary truth. Truth does not stick around long enough for such thinking. If you follow the ideas of modern mystic, the late Terrence McKenna, novelty is speeding up at an uncatchable rate. His theory anticipates a radical shift in reality in the year 2012. And this shift occurs because the universe will not be able to maintain the speed at which ‘novely’ is accellerating. Perhaps truth is best seen as contextual, as living for only a snapshot in time, impervious to being captured by systems that claim it forever. It is often difficult to let go and release into what appears to be chaos. Loose my fixed ideas of truth? What will I rely on? How about a cliche? Jump and the net will appear. The best offering I have for you is a suggestion that you view all claims of truths with wide eyes and an open heart. This is the way of the yogi. To consult a non-yogi who surely had some ideas about truth (or what truth is not), here is a bit of wisdom from Walt Whitman… “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”