In this incantation I remark on my journey from one who will know, to one who does know. I recount a profound moment from 1995, when I first heard the declaration that I would know everything about everything. After years of exploring various spiritual and intellectual paths, I realized that none held the direct, instant truth I sought. Through my own awakening, I came to understand that truth is not something distant, requiring time or study, but is always present within me. The ultimate realization is simple: I am what I am when I close my eyes. In that stillness, I find the truth I have always sought, instantly and directly.
It was in 1995 and I was a teenager walking home from school. The furthest thing from my mind was spirituality, religion, or God. But I had the first premonition of, what would turn out to be, my lifelong journey to find the truth of my existence. A deep voice boomed in my head: “I will know everything about everything, everywhere, and every time, anywhere and always”. Though I ran home and carefully wrote it down, I would not know the true nature of that declaration until many years later. And only now, in this here moment, can I trace the evolution of that promise I heard in 1995 to its final pointed conclusion in 2024.
Before I actively began searching I would have assumed that I would know the truth when I died. When I began my journey to discover the nature of my being, I naturally projected a goal into the future at which point I would know “the truth”. I knew there was something I sought, and it was ahead of me somewhere. I assessed what I had to do to discover this truth, and when I would arrive there. I looked for options, of which there were many: religions, rituals, philosophies, sciences, belief systems, pleasure, and achievement.
The world offered so many paths to the supposed truth, but which one was the right one? I ended up deciding that none of the paths offered to me by the world were the right one. Why? How did I come to that conclusion? It was a matter of time and efficiency. Every path before me, whether ancient religion or modern science, required time. Time to study, and time to practice. And what’s more, all the priests and practitioners of the spiritual, religious, and secular paths claimed to know the truth, yet openly disagreed with one another.
It was clear to me that all of these paths required more time than I wanted to give, and would lead to the confusion and conflict I witnessed before me. I was impatient, and my impatience was borne of a deep conviction that the truth would not require years of studying religions or scientific texts. The truth was right in front of me. It felt like I was a dark room, waving my hand in front of my face. I couldn’t see my hand, but I could feel it and I knew it was there. I felt the same way about the truth: it is right there, right now. That conviction was deep inside of me as early as I can remember, but voiced in 1995 when I was walking home from school.
Though I briefly ventured into the scientific, religious, materialistic, nad spiritual pathways, I ultimately chose a different path. From an investment perspective, they all seemed to want my time, but could only deliver uncertain results. I wanted a guarantee, and most importantly, I believed I could know the truth myself without an intermediary. So I set out on my own and traveled across the world to, arguably, the birthplace of religion. Every direction I looked there were seekers with compelling philosophies, following exotic and ostentatious paths. But none of them appealed to me because I was looking for the direct path from me to Truth. From me to God.
In 2020, that same message I heard 25 years early came again, but this time within the context of an emerging ideological framework I was calling “descentism” at the time: I can know everything about everything instantly and directly. I was seeing my own omniscience; my own omnificence. If I was considering the truth of a matter, and I could not instantly and directly validate it my own self, I knew it was not the Truth at all. That made it easy for me to finally sweep away all the books and thoughts and systems and ideas of others because they failed the test: I could not instantly or directly know them. I had to study those books to know them. There is nothing between me and the truth, including time.
So when will I know the truth? It was only a few years back when I uttered the phrase, “I am God when I sleep”. That was the closest I had gotten at that time — I only had to pay attention when I sleep. Or whatever I truly am happens when I sleep. I accepted that ambiguity for many years, but found it increasingly difficult to square with my emerging conviction that time was not in fact real, and there is only this moment. That the sensation of change within my moment was the result of my illness, and I had to find the truth in that which was constant.
The latest incarnation is that the truth of what I am is when I close my eyes. When can I do that? Right now, any time. I can perform a demonstration at any time I want to by simply closing my eyes. That fits my conviction that I can know everything about everything instantly and directly. I do not have to read a book, or imagine a historical figure, or follow a particular set of rules. I only have to close my eyes and understand what I am experiencing. I only have to understand that I am what I am when I close my eyes. In the chart above I can now show how the “distance” in time from me and the Truth I have always sought is now closed. It is right here, waiting for me. I only have to close my eyes and understand what I see.
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