I always loved to teach, even from a very young age. Once when I was in 4th grade, I became enamored with the encyclopedia’s description of what an atom is made of. At one point I sprung to my feet and paced around the room making believe that I was giving a talk to my class on what makes up an atom and what each part does.

I was really excited about the talk and it made a hit in my 4th-grade class, and the teacher (a Nun) was so impressed with it that she had me give the same talk to the 8th-grade. Imagine little boy me pontificating about atomic physics to an 8th grade class!

One thing that I’ve always adhered to when giving talks is never to use notes. Because as soon as you look at a note, you’ve broken your connection with your audience.

Back to translation, though I didn’t understand it yet, I could see that it had immense potential. So my goal was first to master it, and then to teach it to as many people as I could.

One part of Translation is something called mentalization. Mentalization is to remember that everything you’re looking at is happening entirely within mind, and insofar as you’re perceiving it, it’s going on within your mind; and that there is nothing outside or external to mind.

The mystery about mind vs matter is solved. All the complex phenomena going on inside an atom is all vortex of thought in mind, in consciousness. So you look around you and realize everything you’re seeing is mental.

That’s not hard do. And later on, when I was driving around the country from once city to the next that’s all I’d be doing, imagining that the road and trees and were made of nothing but mind, consciousness, dream stuff.

That turned out to be an important part of understanding the Basic Syllogism. Because Truth in the Basic Syllogism can’t be this or that fact, it’s not a bunch of scientific facts, it’s not about stuff or things or people or bodies. So it must have had to do only with mind or consciousness.

But coming to understand what the Basic Syllogism does, just took hard work, the hard work of thinking it through a billion times.

Ultimately you realize that Truth is that which is so because it can’t be any other way. To say that Truth might be that which is not so is, of course, nonsense. So all that Truth could possibly be is, quite simply, that which is so.

The biggest hurdle I had to overcome is the acceptance of the fact that the major premise of the Basic Syllogism did not mean anything other than the fact that you could be absolutely certain that it was absolutely true. It took me a few years to realize that. Then the rest of the syllogism flows like water:

Truth is that which is so (Now we’re certain it can’t be any other way.)

That which is not Truth is not so (Well of course!)

And then you’re led to one and only one conclusion:

TRUTH IS ALL THERE IS!