The Truth That Cannot Be Told

The opening line of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching is this: The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao.

Master Lao Tzu knew that truth cannot be captured in words, so he opened his only book with this cautionary message. Be alert. I’m going to convey some teachings to you, but don’t become attached to the teachings and don’t be fooled. Anything that can be spoken is not the truth. The real truth rests in the wordless, in silence.

Lao Tzu spent ninety years in silence. He refused to speak or write. Instead, he simply lived among his students, sitting with them, “being” with them and transmitting his wisdom through direct experience. His basic tenet was that truth cannot be taught. Language cannot convey real knowledge because words and thoughts are limited constructs -- partial, fragmented and finite. The infinite cannot be expressed in terms of the finite.

The Great Masters throughout history shared this understanding -- no matter how many words you use, words can never approximate the truth. Yet, in an age when we continue to fight over whose religious doctrine is superior, we seem to have conveniently overlooked this teaching.

The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao.

Jesus was asked the question, “What is the truth?” He declined to answer. He let his silence speak instead. Truth is timeless. Truth is beyond all description. It cannot be conveyed. The moment you attempt to convey truth in words, it is no longer true – the very saying corrupts it.

In Hinduism, Siva does not speak because he is free of all concepts. Human ignorance is the result of word-bound ideas. The finite nature of thoughts and words keeps us from realizing the splendor of Siva-consciousness inherent within us. When the mind stops, thinking stops, words stop, only then can we experience true intelligence and freedom.

The Buddha described this experience as emptiness or nirvana. Nirvana is void, nothingness. Truth is content-free. It is realized when the mind dies, the ego dies, and there is no experience whatsoever. How can you experience something that doesn’t exist? There will be no “you” – the duality of experiencer and experience disappears. The only thing present is absence. While the use of paradox may bring us closer to understanding, still the words are inadequate.

“Maximum communication takes place when I am silent with you,” says Dattatreya Siva Baba. “Silence knows everything. It is whole. When I use words, I must come to a lower level and communicate a lower knowledge. Speaking introduces ignorance. Silence is omniscient.”

He adds, “Why do you go on ‘blah-blahing’ for the Huffington Post? The truth cannot be told.”

Why can’t the truth be told? Why can’t it be expressed?

First, because true knowledge can only be discovered in silence. Nothing that can be reached only in silence, in wordlessness, can then be brought with fidelity into words. You reach truth through emptiness, no-mind. If as a necessary condition the mind must drop to access truth, then the mind cannot be a vehicle for its conveyance. As Osho writes, “Mind cannot understand truth, mind cannot realize truth, so how can mind express it?”

Second, truth is an experience, not a concept. You could describe the exquisite beauty of a Beathoven concerto to a deaf person, yet your description could not substitute for the experience. The same with truth. The deaf man could become a master in music theory, learning composition and the science of sound, but the music would still allude him. In your finest description, you can convey something about music, but not music itself. Music cannot be communicated. Similarly, truth cannot be communicated…only known through experience in silence.

So, then, what is the purpose of our great religious texts and writings? The Koran, Bible, Torah, Upanishads. We have long held them as truth but now see that, while they may say something about truth, they cannot communicate truth itself.

The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao.

Scriptures and teachings are a beacon, a guiding light, calling us into silence. Alone in the dark cave of our ignorance, the teachings are the first spark of light that illumines our way, igniting a desire to know. Osho also wrote, “Truth cannot be said, but in the effort of saying it, a desire can arise in the listener to know that which cannot be expressed.”

You are hungry to know. Face it -- you are not ecstatic and fulfilled. You are ravenous with hunger. When you long for the experience of truth, words cannot satisfy. So you have denied your hunger, suppressed it for fear it might consume you. But the great masters know, in their attempt to share something about the truth, they activate your appetite to experience it directly. They give you a taste. Something is moved inside of you. The inquiry is started.

Your own hunger leads you into the silence, beckons you into your Self.

When you are ready, you dissolve into the silence of no-mind…the direct experience of the truth that cannot be told.