facts vs. truth

divine coincidence or not, i find that all of my quests for greater clarity are (one way or another) addressed with surprising promptness. various trains of thought that seek greater depth find it one way or another, and every finding appears to add an iota of light within. as for the subject of this post, i've been meaning to record the quote below for a while, but had been unable to (re)locate it thus far. with all the reading i've been doing, it has (perhaps understandably) become a challenge to keep track of where which thought process was born. today i decided to re-read sadhana, and there it was - on the second page i read (though perhaps it would've been more exciting had it been the first page :)). here it is:

Facts are many, but the truth is one. The animal intelligence knows facts, the human mind has power to apprehend truth. The apple falls from the tree, the rain descends upon the earth--you can go on burdening your memory with such facts and never come to an end. But once you get hold of the law of gravitation you can dispense with the necessity of collecting facts ad infinitum. You have got at one truth which governs numberless facts. This discovery of truth is pure joy to man--it is a liberation of his mind. For, a mere fact is like a blind lane, it leads only to itself--it has no beyond. But a truth opens up a whole horizon, it leads us to the infinite. That is the reason why, when a man like Darwin discovers some simple general truth about Biology, it does not stop there, but like a lamp shedding its light far beyond the object for which it was lighted, it illumines the whole region of human life and thought, transcending its original purpose. Thus we find that truth, while investing all facts, is not a mere aggregate of facts--it surpasses them on all sides and points to the infinite reality.

a powerful expression, yes? it speaks to the repetition of posts that i wrote about yesterday. it also speaks to a thought process i had on my walk earlier today - how can life, in all its intricacies, be simplified? can it even? a friend had once said to me, "it is incredibly hard to keep life simple". at that point, i had disagreed with him, for i used to think that the people for whom life was simple simply did not choose to plunge into the reality of it, and the people who did could not possibly keep it simple anymore. at this point, i disagree with my own views then. true that there are many complexities to consider should one make an effort to comprehend 'life'. but perhaps these are the 'facts' that tie themselves together as we progress in our quest for 'truth'? perhaps life must get more complicated before it gets simple? indeed, it is incredibly hard to keep it simple. and yet, it is the only way....