They overlook the possibility that the transcendent truth may only be able to express itself through the illusions it generates.

—A statement can be true only relative to some understanding of it.

Perhaps our limited vantage as humans meant that all we could hope for were metaphors of our own making, that we would continually grasp at the shadow of absolute truths without any hope of attainment.

Anaïs Nin is famously quoted as saying, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” That is, the truth is not as objective as we would like to believe. The truth is culturally mediated and socially negotiated and constructed based on our communal view of reality—our beliefs.

Perceptual truth depends on a metaphysical abstraction: a hypothetical external world independent of consciousness. All three culturally sanctioned concepts of truth thus rest on intellectual projections. The very foundations of truth are inherently subjective.