Unconditional Truth

First off Conditional Truth. This seems like a contradiction. Truth surely is true under all circumstances, it is universal and there are no counter examples. A law of physics is called a law because it is always true. Even the law of the country is so called because no one is beyond it.

But consider a trivial example. If it was sunny at lunchtime on Monday then it can't have been cloudy. It is true it was sunny, and false that is was cloudy. Yet we know nothing about Tuesday. This truth is conditional as it depends upon it being lunchtime and Monday. Without it being lunchtime and Monday the truth is undefined. So it is with facts. Other facts are less dependent however. The speed of light is a constant regardless your frame of reference. Unlike other speed measurements which depend upon your own velocity, the speed of light is always the same. That is very unconditional it seems. Yet it is about light. It doesn't tell us the velocity of the planet Earth.

An unconditional truth then is a marvel. It can't be about anything and must be true for everything, in all times and places and regardless in fact any conditions. It is just true.

An important thing to note is that a conditional truth must be learned. Mankind certainly did not know that the speed of light was constant until Maxwell's laws of electrodynamics were examined. Up until then it was not a fact, it had to be discovered. Now it may be argued that while we did not know this fact, it must have been true all the same. And indeed this can be argued, but it must be noted that while it was true before Maxwell, it was not evident. To become evident required considerable work and learning. Indeed the evidence of the truth was itself conditional.

By contrast an unconditional truth is immediately evident. Because it depends upon nothing there is nothing to learn, and nothing to hold back discovery. Except one thing: unconditional truth is held back by learning and the search for conditional truths.

Conditional existence is most obviously characterised by change. We go from a state of ignorance to  a state of learning. We go from failure to success. We go from hungry to full. Every moment of conditional existence is determined by conditions changing and new truths emerging.

So what of this truth of conditional existence that everything is always changing? It is unlike normal truths which are about things like light, because it is about everything. You name it, it is at this moment changing. Even your own mind is changing as it reads this, or thinks of something that isn't at this moment changing. Memories are emerging, and also thoughts all in a state of change. Even that truth that everything is in a state of change, has been discovered and is conditional.

So where is the unconditional? The point of the unconditional is that it acts as the stage on which all the conditional things play out. We arrive at it not by looking for hidden truths, or playing around with what we have discovered or learned, but rather let go of all this achievement and growth and return to the minds of children. Unconditional Truth is always evident, even to the minds of children. It is egoless and unpossessive. It belongs to no-one and everyone can grasp it. It is not easily grasped however because we are dazzled by the world of changing things, of what will come tomorrow and what has gone today. Yet by accepting this world of changing things and seeing its flow from one thing to the next, of how we uncover things, forget things, learn things, like things, dislike things and so on and so on by seeing all this conditional world we are gradually approaching the unconditional which holds all of this carefully in its lap.