Rings True, So Is True

Introduction

A common saying among spiritual people is that if something rings true, or feels right on a deep level, it is true. There is no doubt that our intuition sometimes works on a deeper level than our intellect. So, sometimes our rational mind cannot know something to be true because it does not have enough information to make that decision. Meanwhile, our intuition can tell something is true because it rings true. For personal life decisions and quick sizing up of other people or situations, there is often a lot to be said for the importance of something feeling true.

Feelings & Discernment

Sometimes our feelings are sensitive to what is true, but other times our feelings are the result of wishful thinking, prejudice, or merely conditioning. The most obvious illustration of this point was how the Germans felt before World War II about the Jews. It rung true to so many Germans that the Jews were the cause of their problems. The Nazis did not make up this feeling or manipulate the Germans into it; the Nazis were only able to take power because of this feeling. Similarly, it rung true to so many Americans that Obama was a secret Muslim. Neither one of these things are true, but they surely felt true or rung true to millions of people.

Our feelings should not be trusted if they tell us it is true that Obama is a secret Muslim because that is an area that our rational mind looking at historical facts is best suited to make a decision. A similar thing happens with other historical facts: no matter how much it rings true to Eckhart Tolle that millions of witches were killed in the 1500–1600s because they were women that does not make it true. (Refer to the essay on the Eckhart Tolle page.) Scholars say only about sixty thousand people were killed in this time period, and fully a quarter of them were men.[i] No matter how much it rings true to Ken Wilber that the Catholics were against people looking into Galileo’s telescope, that does not make it true. (Refer to the essay on the Ken Wilber page.) I am not bringing this up to harp on some points that these two teachers got wrong. Rather, I am interested in the deeper reason that they got these points wrong: these ideas appealed to both these teachers, they rung true to them, and so they believed them without reflection or research. It rings true to Tolle that women are so persecuted throughout history because it fits into a larger theory he has about male domination and the overuse of the rational mind. It rings true to Wilber that the Catholic Church is so much against science instead of seeing that it was a couple professors at the universities who were against looking into Galileo’s telescope.[ii] Wilber does this because he himself too much trusts professors making theories about history and modernity.

Conclusion

The real problem is not these two teachers; it is that few people in the spiritual community respect facts and rational judging of historical facts enough to make the teachers be careful enough with their facts. Instead many people in the spiritual community overemphasize trusting their feelings and do not care about facts, which means that the teachers can make all kinds of inaccurate statements as though they are facts because they ring true to the teachers and their audiences.

It is perfectly reasonable to trust our feelings in certain areas of our life to tell us if something is true. However, it is a long-term disaster to trust them in areas where we should be using our rational mind.

Copyrighted 2009

FOOTNOTES

[i] The phenomenon of male witches is so important and intriguing in overthrowing the radical feminist interpretation of the witchcraft persecutions that two books have been written on the topic: Lara Apps and Andrew Gow, Male Witches in early modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) and Rolf Schulte, Man as Witch: Male Witches in Central Europe, trans. Linda Froome-Doring (Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

[ii] Edward Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 17-22. Note: In the first section of the book, Muir makes a very good case that the professor who would not look through Galileo’s telescope, Cremonini, was much more of a target of the Catholic Inquisition than Galileo. Muir says that from our perspective the main culture war was between Galileo and the Catholic Church, but from the perspective of the early seventeenth century, the Galileo case was just a sideshow to the much larger cultural battle between the Church and atheistic professors. Muir even says that one of the main causes of Galileo’s persecution was that he was a friend and associate of Cremonini.