The Mysteries of the Mind: How Do We Know What Is True?

The other day, I was certain my appointment with someone was at 2 p.m. I had even scheduled the rest of my day around it, made another appointment for afterward, and enjoyed a leisurely lunch.

Only to discover that the appointment was actually at 1 p.m.

I was so shocked! For a moment, my whole world was turned upside down. In the end, it was all okay. I was still able to do the appointment, and the client was happy.

It got me thinking, though, about how soooo certain we can be about things in our lives—whether it is the time of an appointment, what happened in the past, or what we believe will happen in the future.

We can feel completely certain that something is true.

The Snake and the Rope

Yogic philosophy has a story about this. It comes from Vedānta, one of the philosophical traditions of yoga.

You walk into a dimly lit room and see a snake in the corner. Your heart races. You freeze. You are scared.

Then someone turns on the light, and you discover that it is only a piece of rope.

The snake was never there, but the fear you felt was very real.

So, when it comes to our own minds, what turns on the light? And how do we know whether something is actually true?

What Turns on the Light?

In this analogy, we don’t recognize the truth until someone—or we ourselves—turns on the light.

But when it comes to our minds, what is that light?

The light is our own inner knowledge and our willingness to question our preconceived ideas and thoughts. Yogis call this jñāna, or wisdom.

Within yogic philosophy, there are three ways of arriving at reliable knowledge:

1. Pratyakṣa—direct perception

We know something through our own senses or direct experience. We see a fire, feel its heat, or observe something happening.

However, yogic philosophy also reminds us that our perception can be distorted—just as we can see a rope and believe it is a snake.

2. Anumāna—inference

We may not see something directly, but we recognize reliable evidence of it.

The traditional example is seeing smoke rising from a distant hill. Although we cannot see the fire itself, we infer that there is a fire because we see the smoke.

3. Āgama—reliable testimony

We receive knowledge from a trustworthy source—someone with direct knowledge and no intention of misleading us.

This might be a reliable teacher, an expert, or a sacred text. It does not mean believing someone simply because we like or trust them. They must also have reliable knowledge of that particular subject.

A simple way to remember the three is:

I experienced it.
I inferred it from the evidence.
I learned it from a reliable source.

These three means of arriving at reliable knowledge are described in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra 1.7. The following sūtra explores viparyaya, or mistaken perception—when we believe something that is not based on the true nature of what we are seeing.

And if we take this teaching back to my calendar story—always check your calendar as the reliable source! :D

If you feel called to give yourself some space to simply be, receive, and contemplate, check out my events page on connect with me over the next month—in addition to my office.

PS! Picture taken Saturday night, when we had an absolutely gorgeous sunset in East Sandwich. Look at that sky???