Learn Why the Pursuit of the Truth Is a Menacing Maze to the Unprepared Minds!

The pursuit of the truth, with all its hallucinating forms, is in fact puzzling the humanity for millenniums. Philosophers, Scientists, Astrologists, Archeologists, Thinkers have invested their entire lives in the quest of the truth, and gave the generations large number of writings, a rich and diverse heritage of their philosophies, sciences, ideologies and beliefs based on the great book of nature, meditations, analogical reasoning, hands-on experience, astrology and many other resources and findings such as archeology, manuscripts, or knowledge transmitted through legends, mythology, and occult science.

However, knowledge cannot be owned which makes it measurable. It is either large, acceptable, small or little. Like when we say about a historian: “he has big knowledge in history but very little in biology”. Reading an entire encyclopedia makes the reader a book-learning with a great deal of knowledge that most likely does not cover thoroughly the truth of things.

Knowledge is the blossom of the soul and the path to the truth, an absolute relationship. But this path is riddled with dangers and it needs a lot of courage and prudence to embrace the truth.

In order to explain why going in quest of the truth is riddled with danger, I’ll borrow the legend of Oedipus, a mythical king of Thebes, who accidentally killed his father and unknowingly married his mother, as prophesied by the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi.

As mentioned in fragments by Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Euripides, Oedipus was born in the 5th century BA to Laius and Jocasta, king and queen of Thebes once called Kadmea after its founder Kadmus, son of Agenor king of Tyre, and who is believed to be the man who introduced the writing to Greece, the Phoenician’s alphabet, during his search for his sister Europa. When Jocasta bore Him, she left her child to die nearby a mountainside to thwart the fulfillment of the prophecy. He was eventually found by shepherds and then adopted and raised by Polybus and Merope, King and queen of Corinth, as their own.

Oedipus, young and strong, during his journey to Thebes, reached a crossroad at the same time of king Laius. Fighting over who has the right to pass first, Oedipus killed king Laius, his real father. He continued his journey and encountered a Sphinx, a horrifying creature with the head and breast of a woman and a body of lioness, blocking the path into and out of Thebes kingdom. The Sphinx would stop all travelers and ask them a riddle, if they answer correctly, they pass safely, if not, they would be killed and eaten. The riddle was: “What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?”. The “man”, Oedipus said. Answering correctly the riddle, the Sphinx let him pass through. In other stories, the Sphinx killed himself of rage.

In Thebes, it had been announced that anyone who can save the kingdom from the Sphinx would marry queen Jocasta. That’s how Oedipus, unknowingly, married his real mother.

Beyond doubt, a good knowledge destroys the obstacles, flattens the paths and rewards the one who has it. Answering correctly the riddle killed the Sphinx and rewarded Oedipus to reign over Thebes. Everything seems to be real.

Many years later, concerned about some rumors, he went to the Oracle at Delphi in order to dissipate them. Instead, the truth came up to light and destroyed everything Oedipus built! He knew the disturbing truth about who his real parents were. Incapable to deal with the new evidence, which quaked his world and blasted his beliefs and his family, he blinded himself.

This new knowledge, this new evidence, the truth, overwhelmed his mind and failed his capacity to understand. It blinded his judgement and kept him from embracing the truth. These discoveries demolished and overturned his old beliefs, what once was truth became inharmonious with the new facts.

In all legends and mythologies, the message goes undercover, even in kids’ stories. Knowledge and truth seekers must dig between words and beneath phrases to uncover the hidden.

The question that poses itself is: “Is truth an illusion?”. We cannot separate knowledge of truth. They have a strong and tight relationship. The knowledge is the truth’s modifier. The more you know, the most likely your beliefs would change. It’s an eternal journey to the unknown just like the Ouroboros, a serpent or dragon chasing untiringly its own tail, that symbolizes the eternal search for the truth by the humanity.

Conquering the knowledge requires readiness for what the unknown hides. Looking directly at the sun without protection can leave you partially or totally blind!