If five people meet together to seek for truth, they must
begin by cutting themselves free from all their own special conditions and
renouncing all preconceived ideas. In order to find truth we must give up our
prejudices, our own small trivial notions; an open receptive mind is essential.
If our chalice is full of self, there is no room in it for the water of life.
The fact that we imagine ourselves to be right and everybody else wrong is the
greatest of all obstacles in the path towards unity, and unity is necessary if
we would reach truth, for truth is one.
Therefore it is imperative that we should renounce our own
particular prejudices and superstitions if we earnestly desire to seek the
truth. Unless we make a distinction in our minds between dogma, superstition
and prejudice on the one hand, and truth on the other, we cannot succeed. When
we are in earnest in our search for anything we look for it everywhere. This
principle we must carry out in our search for truth.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a
talk; ‘Paris Talks: Addresses given by 'Abdu'l-Bahá in Paris in 1911-1912’)
