Truth is Relative Because There is Too Much Truth, and That's a Good Thing

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” You are Horatio. I am Horatio. We all are Horatio!

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” You are Horatio. I am Horatio. We all are Horatio! 

There are more ways of being in the world, experiences to be had, and ideas to be considered than you or I could ever dream of learning about in a hundred lifetimes. A thousand lifetimes! In fact, every lifetime you experienced would simply add another life’s worth of experiences to the infinite totality of all experiences in the universe. 

In fact, that infinite number of possibilities awaits you if you take the “reality-posits” of other cultures and individuals seriously! 

There is Too Much Truth

Jeffrey Kripal, a scholar of comparative religion, following the anthropologist and cultural psychologist Richard A. Shweder takes the "reality-posits" of other cultures seriously.¹ Both ask their readers to take these other realities seriously, as seriously as they take their own reality. And, as Kripal notes, in this way the expressions and institutionalization of religious diversities are not "a zero-sum game on a chessboard, with this or that identity converting or dominating the other (they win, we lose; we win, they lose) but as the privileged path to more and more insight, more and more value, truth, and being." More of the real.

Kripal at one point asked Shweder whether or not he really believed that the Buddhists of ancient India or medieval China, or any other group had or have access to realities that they, in modern-day Chicago, did not. Shweder, without hesitation answered "Yes, I do."

This answer is what opens the floodgates of new experiences, new viewpoints, and new modes of being. Instead of the contagious skepticism of the staunch materialist who thinks there is a scientific answer to everything, and while they might be right, where is the fun in that? Once you understand that there are multiple ways of being in the world or interacting with our reality, it's as if an entire new world becomes unlocked.

Why? Because you've granted the possibility of more truth being out there! Kripal describes the comparative study of religion as being about the "stunning realization that the real is plastic or malleable, that we, as individuals and communities, actualize what is potential in that real, and that different people actualize different truths and values, even different realities, to know and experience as "true" Truth is relative, then, not because there is no truth but because there is too much truth."

If, instead of taking the boring route of assuming that there is only THE truth, the one truth, and nothing but the truth, you acknowledge that there are many truths, many realities, many ways of being, then comes the overwhelming insight that there is too much truth! There are infinite realities to be explored, infinite perspectives to be understood, and infinite ways to play with the malleability of your reality. You as an individual and you as a community get to bring the truth you desire into being. And you can either take an active role in that, and shape what you want to see happen, or you can passively adopt whatever truth those in your community have deemed as the one true reality.

For one thing, this is an incredibly validating view. Your experiences are real. What you think is real. What you believe is real. You are real.

It also means that each and every religious experience is real. Every witness of Jesus Christ. Every theophany. Every hierophany. Every call of The Morrigan. Every glimpse of Odin the Wanderer. Every experience of Nirvana. All are truth.

And while this may be hard to grapple with, as Sadalsuud says, "Around here we take our phenomenology seriously." Around here we take our and everyone else’s experiences seriously. We don't doubt them, and while they may be scrutinized, they are not so easily dismissed as mere phantasms to be hand-waved away: "I must've hallucinated something." No, these experiences are real, and as Kripal would argue, central to becoming Superhuman—more than human. More than a mere fleshbag wholly determined by some arbitrary laws conjured up by modern day sorcerers who would wither from being called such. In reality, that's what they are. They define our consensus reality and tell us what is and is not possible. We’ve slowly consigned our experience of what is possible to the physicalists, the materialists, and the capitalists who would deny the reality of your own experiences. Fuck em. I choose my reality, just as they choose theirs. But in doing so I don't define others' reality. Their reality is just as "real" and meaningful as my own.

In fact, real progress can only be made when we accept that everything is real and everything is true. There is nothing to be gained from maligning other people's experiences. Well, maybe some illusion of safety, comfort, and control. But there is much more to be lost by saying that only a very narrow range of experiences, a very narrow range of consciousness is real or worthy of serious consideration.

Real progress isn't made in the dismantling of experience, but in the creation and exploration of it. Sure, sometimes dismantling a problematic outlook or personal worldview might be a necessary step in furthering your goals and making them a reality, but that is nothing more than the gardening of one's reality. 

The Parable of the Dream Home and Garden

Imagine buying a house on a piece of land, sight unseen. All you had were some pictures, but they were enough to make it seem like a dream come true. However, when you arrive with your family, you see a different reality: the house is dysfunctional, with worn-off paint, ajar front door, and an overgrown yard. You can't believe this is the same house from the images. You realize that the pictures were doctored and hardly resemble the new home you've just bought. You were hoping to step into a well-cultivated garden. 

Despite the disappointment, the pictures give you a semblance of a reality you hope for. You start to make repairs and tend the garden. You take down random walls that divide the living room, fix the kitchen sink, and replace the boarded-up, shattered windows. The garden is a mess, overrun by bamboo and other invasive species that are choking out the native flowers, herbs, and trees which you love. You (somehow) reign in the bamboo and clear out the invasive species, cultivating space for the greenery you love. 

Gradually, you reveal the bones of your dream home. The bones are good and slowly you turn your vision into reality. However, it's not just a matter of tearing down walls, cleaning up dirt and grime, and cleansing the space. It was merely the essential beginning. Your new home, your new reality had to be carefully constructed. Your vision had to fill the emptiness left behind. 

This is not to say that the previous owners’ reality wasn’t also good. Perhaps they enjoyed closed spaces. They loved nothing more than walking through the forest of bamboo they had cultivated. It was their home. It was their reality. But it wasn’t yours. You had a different vision for yourself. 

This new reality, this new garden has to be carefully cultivated. You’ve got a neighbor who just loves to drop morning glory seeds wherever he strolls which might take root and choke out the precious orchids you’ve encouraged to grow. He might also occasionally let loose some of his colony of crickets he lovingly calls his Cricteek friends which for some reason love to devour your beloved blueberry plants. While he may love crickets, they aren’t necessarily a central feature of your reality. 

Tearing things down and critiquing them have their place, particularly when your reality is not one you want to currently be living in or is actively harming your health. In these cases a careful deconstruction is necessary in order for your ideal to be built up anew.

However, deconstruction and critique can make one feel invincible and be taken too far. Anything can be deconstructed. Therefore we can critique anything that doesn’t match the reality we might want for ourselves. It’s an easy trap to fall into. It’s also quite comforting. 

“Oh, she must’ve been hallucinating, she couldn’t possibly have seen God [because in my reality there is no God].”

“You couldn’t possibly have spoken to that tree. Trees can’t communicate! [because in my reality everything natural is ruled by the Devil and that’s too close to what the evil pagans use to say] or [there is no such thing as spirit, let alone plant spirits].” 

Or even “Mormonism can’t possibly be true! All the leaders are liars! [because the church imposed harmful cultural pressures on my developing mind and caused me great deals of pain, so it can’t possibly benefit you in any way].

We do a disservice to ourselves, our neighbors, and our reality when we assume that they have been duped into believing something (whether or not they actually have) and refuse to take their experiences as real and valid. 

That’s also the boring route. 

Instead of building up their own reality and engaging with the world around them, these skeptics seek to limit reality to what they are comfortable with. Skepticism is the easy way out. It’s easy to dismiss something you don't understand because then you don't have to work to understand it. You don't have to change your own experience of reality to accommodate the fact that life is infinitely weird. I’m not saying all skepticism is bad—there is a healthy amount. Skepticism becomes unhealthy when it suppresses curiosity. 

In fact, curiosity is the key to unlocking infinite layers of reality. “Tell me more.” Or perhaps the single most asked question by children, the epitome of their wonder, “Why?” 

Things get interesting when we start to take experiences seriously and begin to interrogate them and their implications for how we and others live and interact with the world. 

For example, what are these "machine elves" that people are meeting, learning from, and interacting with on DMT? What does that tell us about the universe as people experience it? About the experience of consciousness and ordinary waking reality? What other classes of beings exist and have I interacted with them unknowingly? What is their experience like? How do they view the world and what can I learn from them? 

What are UFOs? Why do abduction experiences so often take on a spiritual perspective? What are spiritual experiences and why do they have such a strong impact on many people’s lives? (I share Sasha Chapin’s questions as to why we don’t do more research into something that’s been changing lives for thousands of years.) What are ghosts? Why do some locations seem to facilitate interactions with otherworldly or otherwise deceased beings? What in the world does this mean for how we view death?

Now those are interesting things to explore. Things get interesting when we explore the margins of research, perception, and experience. Those are the things that push and expand our worldview and truly help us understand what it means to have the worldview of being human. Exploring these things is how we become Superhuman—something more than a mere fleshbag, skeptical of anything that doesn’t fit within our own skin (and sometimes skepticism even penetrates that!). In fact, Nietzsche argues that true objectivity is only achieved by being able to view things from every perspective: “There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our 'concept' of this thing, our 'objectivity' be.”²

Things get interesting when we take all these things seriously, when we explore the margins of our own and others’ experiences. And while acknowledging the plurality of reality is undoubtedly a difficult position to be in and is, in many ways, a destabilizing experience, it is also one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences. Life will never be boring again. Curiosity is the antidote to meaninglessness. 

1. Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities (The University of Chicago Press, 2022).

2. The Genealogy of Morals III:12