Pursuing Truth: where do we find truth in a ‘post-truth’ era?

In this post-truth era, where personal beliefs and opinions masquerade as facts, where do we go to find truth? Rumi, the Sufi poet says: “The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and looked at it and thought they had the truth”. Philosophers have always reflected on truth, and have come up with many different theories about it. One simple definition of truth is ‘the conformity of thoughts to things’, which suggests that ideas and things need to match-up for something to be true. Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, did not have his own definition of truth, but encouraged his followers to look deep within, and question what they believed, in order to discover the mysterious, universal and timeless nature of truth itself. Many traditions associate truth with light, illumination, wisdom, and enlightenment. As Nisargadatta Maharaj puts it: “Truth is the primary, unborn, the ancient source of all that is…. Open the shutters of the mind and let it be flooded with light.”