"You’ve mentioned ‘The Living Truth’ a lot, so it must be extremely important to you. Is your last victim, the one you set free [Shasta], the living truth? What did she do to make you set her free and give up your freedom?" – A.C. of Nevada

Your questions seem to dance around the central theme of this blog, so I will answer them here as directly and concisely as I can. Keep in mind thought that no words, especially no concise words, will ever fully express the answer to the question, “What is ‘The Living Truth’?”

I have said, in the past, and especially during the time shortly after my arrest, that Shasta was indeed a living metaphor of what I later came to refer to as The living Truth. But, to answer your question directly, no, Shasta is not herself the living truth. She is (was) just a child.

The Living Truth is a term I use to describe the ultimate source of all that we experience. When I refer to my “encounter” with the living truth (in Shasta’s presence in the Montana wilderness on a dilapidated logging road where I had fully intended to kill her) I am simply referring to the sudden and unexpected epiphany I had; that my life, and Shasta’s life, were one and the same thing.

I have since discovered that this exact same kind of epiphany recurs throughout human literature, especially religious writings (or writings that otherwise later become revered as “Holy” by those who don’t quite understand what is actually being written about). In fact, the word “epiphany” itself can be traced back to various religious experiences of this type (such as the baptism of Jesus) before it became used in its modern secular form.

After my epiphany, and my subsequent arrest, I asked for a Christian Bible, and read the entire New Testament. It seemed very clear to me that Jesus was not just a man/god. He was a precise mythical representation of the self-same living truth that I “realized” was in all things. It dawned on me as I read the Bible that whether or not such a man actually walked the earth two-thousand years ago was completely irrelevant to the message of the Gospel he preached!

I then read other religious writings and found this “Living Truth” in nearly all of them, Zen Buddhists call it Buddha Mind, for example. But, most of the mainstream religious of the world have badly clouded the simple reality upon which all religions are founded. I call this simple reality the Living Truth. I discovered that there is much, less obscured writings about the Living nature of all experience, in the more obscure non-religious, or pseudo-religious writings of masters, such as Sri Aurobindo, scientists, like Carl Jung, and philosophers, from Socrates to Sartre. I’ve discovered as many different descriptions of the same one thing, the same One Living Truth or the same “One God”, as there are people who have experienced It as I have (i.e. directly). They all struggle to use words to describe that defies human language, because, as the Bible tells us, it speaks to us in the language of reality itself (i.e. when it speaks, reality is formed by its words). And thus Jesus, the man, was “the Word of God”, and thus so am I (and you, and Shasta, etc.), which is exactly what the Bible says.

So, what did Shasta do to make me give up my freedom? She showed me, as only a child, or true saint can, the only real power there is in this world: the power of love and forgiveness; the power of the Living Truth! She opened the door for me to True Freedom; and if I ever finish getting over all the fears I’ve accumulated in my life that prevent me from actually walking through that door then maybe I’ll finally stop staring through it in awe of what I can see, and actually step through it to become like she was (I believe she was only able to open it for me because she was already on the other side).

Again, words can’t describe what I can “see” through that “door” any more than they can truly describe a sunset. What I’m saying here will only have real meaning and significance to someone who has “seen” the same thing. But, that’s why I write about it as much as I do. Because I believe others will someday read my words, as I have read the words of others, and realize that they’re not the only ones seeing the Living nature of all things, a.k.a. the Face of God, and recognizing it for what it is, this thing I like to call The Living Truth.