Someone once asked, ‘What is your religion?’ and I replied, ‘All the paths that lead to the Light.’ At the time, I thought it was a simple answer, not realizing it spoke to something universal: that all paths to truth, in their own ways, lead us toward a common destination.”
Imagine two people describing the same mountain from different sides. To one, it’s steep, rocky, and shadowed. To the other, it’s gentle, green, and sunlit. Both insist their view is the “correct” one. And yet, both are right. This echoes an ancient warning from the Book of Genesis: “Let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other” (Genesis 11:7). The Tower of Babel wasn’t just about speech; it speaks to the separation of perception—how each of us sees the world uniquely and interprets Truth in our own language. Thus, we have many ‘towers’ reaching for understanding, all pointing to the same truth but never touching, never meeting.
In the Rig Veda, a similar idea appears: “Reality is one, though wise men speak of it variously” (Rig Veda 1.164.46). This ancient verse is a reminder that while Truth may be singular, our expressions are diverse. Reality, the “One,” wears many masks, each suited to the perspective of the seeker. Different languages, religions, and philosophies have grown out of this “confusion” but have been, paradoxically, speaking of the same reality all along.
Consider the Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant. It’s a tale that exists across many faiths, from Hinduism to Sufism and Buddhism. Each blind man touches a different part of the elephant and describes what he feels: the tusk feels like a spear, the leg like a tree, the tail like a rope, and the side like a wall. Their descriptions clash, each claiming to possess the ‘whole truth.’ But they’re each holding just a piece, and it’s only by stepping back—seeing beyond the immediate—that the true shape of the elephant, the whole Truth, can be known. It’s the ‘Elephant in the Room’ everyone feels yet interprets in their own way, whether as God, Truth, or Divine Reality.
Even modern science plays in this arena of perspective. As Nikola Tesla once said, “What one man calls God, another calls the Laws of Physics.” Where one sees a divine design, another sees patterns, particles, and energy fields. But who’s to say that these views are in opposition? Both the believer and the physicist are reaching for the same understanding, just using different tools to touch it.
This is why I call the sacred stories across cultures Veridicus Ficta, “Truthful Fictions.” These are not lies meant to deceive, but stories crafted to reveal deeper truths, using myth and metaphor to teach us lessons that are as timeless as they are true. Sacred texts work like the sample math problems teachers use to illustrate abstract ideas. Just as “2 + 2 = 4” is an example of addition but not itself a physical object, religious stories are symbols—ways of ‘adding up’ life’s mysteries into something we can understand.
These myths and parables give shape to the ungraspable and let us walk alongside the divine. They are symbols—like equations—that hold Truth, though they’re not themselves the Truth. They help us ‘see’ in the dark, translating abstract principles into language we can feel and understand.
So, rather than argue over whose truth is truest, what if we recognized that all these different descriptions, interpretations, and symbols are fragments of a greater whole? Perhaps each one of us is one of the blind men, and what we touch is only part of something magnificent, something we call God, Reality, the Light, or simply the Truth.
In the end, Veridicus Ficta invites us to remember Picasso’s words: “Art is a lie that tells the truth.” Treat these stories not as historical records, but as masterpieces of linguistic art meant to reveal timeless wisdom. Then, as each verse, symbol, and story unfolds, its meaning will slowly reveal itself—a path for each of us to follow, in our own language, toward the Light we all share.
