Approaches to the Inner Life
Lanza del Vasto
1962

On Truth

So let’s turn first to the head, in other words to the truth.
What is truth?
The truth, says the intelligent man, is the greatest sum of exact notions about the greatest possible number of things.
The truth, says the materialist, is what things are, apart from any intervention or arrangement of our intelligence.
The truth, says the scientist, is the conformity of our formulas, systems and measures with the laws of nature as experience teaches us.
The truth, says the idealist, is the coherence of our thoughts and their conformity with the law of thought, because all “things” present themselves to our thought as images, that is to say thoughts, and any postponement to an “outside” is absurd and illusory.
The truth, says the believer, is God, and God alone knows God.
The truth, says the totalitarian democrat, is the opinion of the greatest number; and the real policy is to ensure that the greatest number opines for what is appropriate.
The truth, says the sophist, is what is vividly demonstrated, and I can demonstrate with the same brilliance the pros and cons, which demonstrates that the truth is the brilliance of my intelligence.
The truth, says the sceptic, is that no one knows the truth.

“What is the truth?” Pilate asks Jesus, and Jesus, the accused, does not answer. He does not answer Pilate because we do not throw pearls in front of pigs, because we cannot teach anything to a man who thinks he is a beautiful spirit and asks smugly: “The truth? Peuh! What does this mean?”
Jesus responds to Pilate with silence, and this silence means that the truth is not a sound of the mouth.
That it is no formula, no doctrine, no system, no science.
To true seekers of truth, to his humble disciples, Jesus had answered outright: “The truth is me” (“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” - John, 14, 6), and, further, explaining himself: “You will know that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in You” (John, 14, 20). And again: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John, 17, 21).
And Buddha teaches: “The Self (Atma) is the master and the lamp of the Self.”
In a word: the truth is to be one and united as the Heavenly Father is one and the Son united to the Father.

Again: what is truth?
The truth is the Outside as the Inside¹.
For if we believe that the truth is a sum of notions, the result of a calculation, a verbal or mental combination of some kind, we will not understand anything to words such as “Know the truth and it will deliver you” (John, 8, 32) or such as “truth and non-violence are one” (Gandhi).
But the truth is to be, and to be is to be one, united, attuned and that the outside expresses the inside.
What is the truth of knowledge?
It is the perception, through the external form of what is standing below: of the substance, of what is inside.
What is the truth of expression?
This is sincerity.

What is the “truth of forms”²? The splendor of the true³?
That is beauty.
What is the truth of deeds?
This is justice.
What is the truth of consciousness?
That is inner unification and self-knowledge.
What is the truth of love?
It is the recognition of the self in others.
What is the truth of religion?
It is the union with the only One, at the Ground of oneself.

Yes, what is the Truth? It is the transparency of the form.
There is one thing that, since the dawn of human thought, has always struck men with amazement, that woke them up from their wakefulness and their belief in reality: that every night they sleep and almost every night they dream. And that after dreaming they wake up… Ah! it was just a dream! And while I was dreaming, I was sure that I was there, with people, with things, with objects sometimes more real than any real object, which had a more vivid relief, which had a density of existence… like those things that we see shining just before the storm. And then, it was nothing, it was pulled from the depths of myself, it was buried, it’s gone: nothing remains of it; soon not even the memory remains. But the things that I see, this tree that is there, which I say is there, these people who are here, is it certain that they exist? How does it show that they are beings? Because finally, nothing looks more like a true image than a false one. Put them next to each other and you’ll see!
The whole problem with the truth is to know the difference between the false image and the true image. And if I have defined the truth to you in three words: “Outside as Inside”, let’s say right away that the false image is the one that has no inside, that has nothing in it or that does not have the inside that I attributed to it. Your portrait on a piece of paper, oh! it’s so similar, it’s striking! it looks like its going to talk! But I turn it over and I see that behind it is paper, while if I turn you over, I do not see paper (at least I hope so).
The difference between the true image and the false image is that there is something in it, something behind it. And this something that is inside and behind supports the image, makes it persist, makes it exist also for others, makes it subsist while I sleep or pay attention to something else. Only, all realities, plants and beasts, thoughts or pebbles, stars or men, all present themselves and only as images. And we hardly notice that the being, the concrete, the substantial, is something that we never see.
The materia, have you seen her, you, the materia? Yes, the naked matter, stripped of any form and figure? Tell me a little about what she is, how she is, what she looks like. Have you seen her? - Hey, I think I’ve seen her!… She is not like your nebulous ideas, she is not like your utopias, your theories, your systems… The materia is little there… She is heavy, she’s compact, she’s hard, she’s firm, she fits together, she fits in the hand… she’s real!
So let’s set aside the system makers, the clouded utopians, the ethereal idealists… Let’s address ourselves to people who only believe in matter, who, believing as hard as iron, have set out to study it. Some took microscopes, others telescopes, they calculated, observed, searched, stripped this form of all its forms like an onion: they removed a peel, and then another, and then again, and then again, and then they looked more closely, then below, then above, then across, and this heavy matter, impenetrable, inert, concrete, solid, compact, smooth, irrefutable – they found it all hollow, made of particles that move in a vacuum in dizzying rapidity.
They seized a particle of it, they looked in it, they found another small particle spinning in it; it was like a fly in a cathedral; and then, in this cathedral that was the fly, they saw a fly spinning. Finally, falling from fly to cathedral and from cathedral to fly, they passed to the other side, into the void!
It would be quite wrong to believe that the discovery is new. The wise have always known that matter is something that closely resembles nothingness. The Upanishads denounced the illusion with a sharp clarity; Buddha teaches: “There is nothing that is any thing.” Plato looks at things like shadows projected on a dented cave wall, and the question is how to know where the light comes from and what is the object whose shadow is projected, because it is not at all where we see it.
The dreamer believes in what he sees while he is dreaming, but finally he wakes up and realizes that there was nothing. But the man who thinks he is awake, how will he know that he has been dreaming all his life?
Let’s not wait for this until the day we die. Let’s try to wake up all alive! To cross the scenery and go to touch the true one with your finger.
I have this bush there in front of me… No, no, it’s a word that I put there, I have green colour, I have gray colour, a drawing that looks quite similar to that of a good painter. How do I know what’s behind, what’s underneath, what’s inside… It is in vain that I try to remove the bark, that I strip the appearances one after the other. I will come to other appearances, which will be no less apparent than the first - and then I will come to see nothing at all. But that’s not the truth.
And I told you correctly: the cause of appearance cannot be found inside its effect. When you see a shadow projected against a wall, you should not try to lift the shadow to see what is behind; what you will find behind is the wall.
In this object, in this bush, it will be necessary to find the substance projected in this form. Where is it located?
Here! We are talking about object, and objective truth. And what does object mean? Thrown against or projected. The words say it. The words we use know things that we don’t. If we want to think well, let’s interrogate the words.
Now let’s go in search of the substance, of the inside… And it will not be only out of philosophical curiosity, but out of moral duty. For the first of the objects whose reality I must demonstrate to myself is the face of my neighbor. Does my neighbor exist, or am I alone in the world? Am I struggling with shadows? If you are mere shadows, I owe you nothing, I have no duty towards shadows. I don’t have to give my love to mere appearances. As much as it is important for me to know that the outside world is a shadow, it is forbidden for me to believe that my human brother is one.
When I see my friend laughing, I am sure he is cheerful, when my wife cries, I tender her. But where do I feel this cheerfulness? And this joy, where do I see it? And this sadness, where do I grasp it?
In him, in her, deep inside?
No. Where?
In me.
Here!… Here’s the key.
Here is the key to open the door of awakening, to get out of the room of shadows!

But the trees, the sky, the earth, the waters, the clouds are like the face of my neighbor and I have to ask: who is behind? Who’s underneath? Who’s in it?
And ask me what path leads beyond, within, to the land of the Real.
A path, you now know that there is one, only one for you, which is: you!
Because you are the only thing in the world that you can know from both inside and outside at the same time. Everything else is only noticeable to you from the outside.
In the smooth, strange and closed facade of the vast nature, you are the only breach and the only breakthrough.
You are the only way open to the inside of everything else.
In yourself alone you can grasp and follow the passage from intention to act, from meaning to sign, from meaning to verb, this link from within to without which is called truth.
All the images that unfold to the four horizons, their reverse side, their lining is in me! Otherwise, I would not be able to know them, or even to see them: “My eye would not see the sun, if it were not of the same essence as the sun,” proclaims an Egyptian hierogryph.
It is by their reverse and their lining that I comprehend things: that I com-prehend, prehend them, cum (latin “with”), with me; I prehend or take them inside of me and from within; and making them enter into me, I enter into them.

Translator: Lanza explains “comprehension” here in form of a play with french words, which makes it hard to translate: “C’est par leur revers et leur doublure que je comprends les choses: que je les com-prends, les prends, cum, avec, avec moi”. As an alternative to comprehension of latin origin we could as well provide a similar explanation with the word “understanding”. In that we “under-stand” things, we go to stand under them, we make ourselves the basis of them, becoming myself the basis of what I know and know all the more, the more I stand under.

So: all knowledge of something else begins with self-knowledge and never goes deeper than this knowledge.
If I had never experienced cheerfulness or mourning, the laughter or the tears of others would be inexplicable grimaces to me.
Of course, it does not depend on me that nature and the qualities, the resources and the feelings of all beings have an echo in my being as the sea sounds at the bottom of the conch. Let us listen to our soul and we will know that it is given.
Given by Whom, it would be worth the pain to know it!
But to the one who does not know how to listen, given in vain.
He who knows nothing about himself can know nothing about anyone or anything.

And now let’s turn the proposal upside down: “What if I knew everything about myself…” Dare we to finish the dreaded sentence?
Let’s dare!
“… then I would know everything about everything”.
Let’s dare, because it’s not us who are talking. This sound is the Upanishads who speak, it is the Bible that speaks, it is the whole tradition of wisdom that speaks, and of all the wisdoms. It is the inscription on the cave of Delphi that speaks: Gnôthi sèauton: know thyself. Because, knowing yourself, you know everything.
“O God,” says St. Augustine, “if I knew myself, I would know You”: Noverim me, noverim Te. You, the last and supreme truth. You, the reason, the clarity, the light of everything.

It is necessary to say that self-knowledge has no direct relationship with introspection or psychic analysis, whether novelistic or medical.
Self-knowledge is a spiritual discipline, a millennial tradition with universal and immutable methods.
As any man with a self and a Spirit blowing wherever it wants, it can be found everywhere, although it is rare everywhere. It is in accordance with its nature that it is influenced only in minmal ways by country, climate, race, time and even by religion.
Whatever one may say, there is nothing particularly Hindu about it, although Hindus have always given themselves to it with particular intensity.
In Latin Christianity it is the prerogative of all the great mystics and, in particular, of the deep and sure Carmelite tradition.
It is customary to say that one cannot venture out on these paths without the guidance of a master, and sometimes even that one does not have the right to do so. This is the rule indeed. But the rule is broken by illustrious exceptions. And even in the case of one whom a good teacher has instructed – it is from himself and from God that he learns the essence.
It is customary to warn against the danger of training, and in fact it easily happens that we go haywire by disorderly, excessive and discontinuous practices, that we fall into discouragement if we do not see ourselves transported to the seventh heaven, or that we fall into illusion or presumption, or even into terror, as soon as we feel overcome by the slightest “phenomenon”.
But too often we forget to point out the danger of not doing any training, the terrible danger of remaining as we are.

Yes, you might say, but how can we focus on the effort to get to know ourselves without turning away from the world and closing in on ourselves? And if we turn away from the world, how will we dive into it?
There is, in fact, a whole game of closures, openings and reversals that we must explain here.
But first, let’s ask ourselves what the simple word In means.
In what?
In every thing and in everything. The Inside is like a dimension of the Real in its entirety. The Inside is the inside of the Outside. One is therefore correlative to the other, equivalent, if not coextensive: an obverse and a reverse.
Between one and the other, there is less opposition than correspondence, and the passage is made by transfer.
The degrees of interiority form an infinite series. What is internal in relation to this is external in relation to that.
Let’s consider the external face, the external world (we are more naturally inclined to it).
Let’s try to define the character of the outside world.
I would say that the character of the external world is that each part of this external world is external to all the others. Is that clear?
I see someone shaking his head with an air of doubt.
He’s right, it’s not clear, because it’s not entirely true. The outside world is not external enough to meet this definition. Its exteriority is relative and impure. Purely, absolutely external is only Space.
Space is a wonderful object to contemplate and easy to get to know. It is a totally empty object, empty of matter, empty of life and empty of being. It can be populated with planes, lines, figures, but all these objects with exact edges are empty. They are made of points. And what is a point? A thing without quality or quantity. And when you take away from a thing the quantity and the quality, what remains? Nothing. The point equals one in relation to everything else, but in itself it is equal to zero.
Good! The geometric space, which envelops everything, is all made up of these points. Which gives: zero multiplied by zero to infinity. Got it?
This geometric space that is thrown over everything like a net, everything is assimilated to it, in a certain way. Everything is bathed in it and assimilated to it on the surfaces. I say “on the surfaces”, because nothing is absolutely external.
In all beings, even if it is a grain of sand, there is the surface, the appearance, the image, the outside, and there is, inside, a core, a substance, something underneath – just what it is.
To very different degrees there are things that come closer to space. What assimilates best to space? Well, the Matter in question, of which we do not know if it is full or empty. Insofar as it is empty, it assimilates perfectly to space. And to the extent that it is full, it is assimilated to the geometric point. And, to this extent, it can be calculated and explained by the means of external intelligence.
So let’s see that being has two faces: this is where we hold our thread: the inside and the outside from which we started.
Recognizing that our knowledge of the outside is never complete, does not exhaust the subject, does not exhaust the being and does not even touch it, should not leave us inert and passive, but arouse in us a demand: that of discovering the way to reach the being, to enter into it, into the inner world because the Inside is also a world as a whole. The reverse side of the other. How to define it? By reversing the definition of the other.
We have said that the external world is the one in which everything is external to everything else. Let’s then say: the inner world is the world in which each thing is internal to each other. Things are involved in each other in the inner world. And it happens that the container is contained in the content. No? I’ll explain myself: I understand my friend, that means, I take him in me. And my friend understands me, that is, he takes me into him. If I take him in me, I am his container. And if he then takes me inside him, it means his container is contained in him.
You see how, in the inner world, all the parts penetrate each other more the more we descend into it. At the bottom of the inner world there are no more parts, there is unity alone.
We have posed the Self as “part” (human and external way of speaking), part of the inner world. This is the part of the inner world that we can grasp. But the inner world is all connected with itself. So if we seize a part of it, we seize it entirely.
So if you enter a part, a piece, a spark, a drop, an atom of the inner world, you enter the whole inner world. And if you have the happiness and the grace to enter into your self which is a spark, a drop, an atom, a tiny piece of the inner world, you enter into the whole inner world. “Noverim me, noverim Te…” What had to be demonstrated.

¹ Translator: See also this sentence by Ivan Aguéli on the doctrine of Ibn Arabi: “The ‘Supreme Identity’ (Wahdatul-wujûd = the identity of Existence) is based on the perfect accord between the external and the internal.”
² Livre des morts (égyptien).
³ Plotin.