John 18:38 · World English Bible
John 18:38 Meaning Pilate Said to Him
Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” When he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no basis for a charge against him.
What does John 18:38 mean?
Pilate is reason questioning truth, the judging mind that asks what truth is and then walks out before the answer, unable to sit with it. Truth stands silent in front of him as the awakened imagination, which knows that a state held within is more certain than any fact reported outside.
From the Manifestation reading below.
John 18:38 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
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Pilate is reason questioning truth, the judging mind that asks what truth is and then walks out before the answer, unable to sit with it. Truth stands silent in front of him as the awakened imagination, which knows that a state held within is more certain than any fact reported outside. Reason cannot weigh this on its scales, so it turns away.
Yet even reason, honestly examining the creative power, finds no fault in it. There is nothing false in the awareness that its own assuming shapes its world. Pilate's verdict is the mind admitting that imagination has done no wrong, however strange its claim sounds. What a person assumes and feels to be so is not a lie to be corrected but the working of the only power he has. Reason questions it and leaves, and still cannot convict it.
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Live John 18:38 today
- When your mind demands proof that something good is on its way, let the question stand unanswered for the day. You do not owe your own skepticism a receipt.
- If a friend asks how you can possibly be hopeful about this, do not build a case. Say you are, and leave it there without needing them to agree.
- Under pressure, when the voice in your head starts cross-examining you, let it ask and keep walking. It can run its whole trial and it still cannot hand down a sentence.
What have I stopped believing simply because I could not explain it to myself?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen · Koan Practice
A koan is built to defeat the analyzing mind, not to be solved by it. The student who keeps demanding a reasonable answer walks away empty, while the one who stays with the question past reason finds it opens.
Tao Te Ching 1
The Tao that can be put into words is already not the Tao. Something can be completely true and still refuse to fit on the scales we brought to measure it.
Hinduism · Kena Upanishad
The text says whoever claims to understand it does not, and whoever admits they cannot grasp it is nearer. The mind that insists on a verdict is the mind that misses it.
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