Truth or trueness

1. I use the word Truth in the following way: the quality or state of being accurate in alignment or adjustment - used in the phrase, in true or out of true.
2. The Upanishads on trueness:

   "He who has vijnana, buddhi, or Reason for his charioteer,
   And a (disciplined) manas as the reins -
   He verily attains the end of the journey:
   That supreme state of Vishnu (Brahman)."
   Katha Upanishad I,iii,9. (Ranganatananda Translation)

3. Here is a passage on the nature of Truth that Jacob Needleman quotes from Plato's Republic. Needleman believes it is the essence of Plato:

   "But in reality justice (as Plato deals with it in Book IV of the Republic) is not concerned with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and the true concern of man; for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of the others - he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, in unison with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles within him, which may be compared to the higher, the lower and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals - when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some other affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good actions, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it, ignorance."
   From Plato's Republic, 444d-3, adapted from the Jowett translation by Needleman. This passage was profoundly and beautifully introduced in Needleman's book: The Heart of Philosophy(Knopf, NY, 1982)pp131-132.

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