Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all points to direct face to face verification somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash basis whatever. You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade each other’s truth. But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure.
William James wrote those thoughts in his 1906 lecture, Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth. We all develop a very complicated belief structure. We creatively interlock our truths and seal them with thoughts, influences and associations. Our creative consciousness builds a reality from the non-being that anchors the beliefs of many Eastern Religions.
Trying to describe non-being is like trying to catch the wind that shakes the consciousness of nature. Perhaps non-being is a state, not of nothingness, but a state of possibilities and probabilities, which are known and anticipated, but are blocked from physical expression.
Non-being, then, is a state of agony where creative and existence are known, but the ways to produce them are not known. Our creativity and truth are drawn from the agony experienced by the consciousness that first felt the impetus of change, development, survival and creativity. A portion of that impetus is within us, and our free will uses it to create our own form of non-being.
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