Verification, Proof and Belief

smcculley
Mar 24, 2024
2 min read

Verification, Proof and Belief

From our friend, Charles R.

Don’t accept or reject anything you read in this, or any of our posts. Rather, verify what you read. For example, if we have not verified that the expression of negative emotions are a weakness, and that they are in us and not outside of us, then this concept has zero value and will remain, at best, theoretical. Until we verify this, we’ll always harbor the attitude that its other people and external events that cause us to be negative. It’s not a question of morality. Unless we verify this and all the other ideas that have been written about, the system will remain, as mentioned, theoretical, or simply vanish into imagination. Verification is one of the foundations of the bridge to higher centers.

How to verify? It means working in good faith with what’s presented. Do any of the ideas, theories, concepts bring us closer to introducing and prolonging the third state? Self-remembering is the touchstone by which we ascertain the fidelity of our efforts.

Caravaggio’s painting shows us our relationship to verification. Because Thomas has demonstrated his ability to receive the teaching of Jesus, he is admitted into the circle of disciples. However, when told of yet another mystery related to his teacher and his precepts, Thomas forgets his verifications and demands proof. Jesus forgives Thomas his doubts, and goes on to say that anyone who disallows doubts into their previously verified efforts, is ‘blessed’.

What can this mean? Before we rush to judgment, it is useful to remember that, like Thomas, because we lack a permanent principle of consciousness, our being fluctuates. The ‘blessing’ that Jesus speaks of is the the more experience we gain in remembering ourselves, not expressing negative emotions, transforming suffering, and so on, the less we will be inclined to believe the subversive doubts the lower self tries to insert into our efforts. This is conscious belief; that is, the steward’s memory of one’s verifications that bridges the interval in self-remembering.

Following are a few lines from Walt Whitman, who experienced his own doubts and verifications, and was able to express them in poignant and beautiful verses.

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,

Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,

That maybe reliance and hope are but speculations after all,

That maybe identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only.

Maybe, seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed

but seem) as from my present point of view, and might

prove (as of course they would) nought of what they

appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points

of view.

To me these and the like of these are curiously answer’d

When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and

reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,