Truth Splits the World Open

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A couple of days ago, my niece shared with me a poignant extract from a poem that had inspired her. In the poem “Käthe Kollwitz” from her The Speed of Darkness collection, Muriel Rukeyser had said:

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”

There is a quiet power in that image — the world splitting open under the force of truth. I have often thought that truth, when spoken from the depth of one’s being, doesn’t just reveal; it rends the veils we have so carefully woven around ourselves. It lets in light, and for a brief, trembling moment, everything false falls away.

Illusion wraps around us in many layers.

What we call reality is, to begin with, māyā (illusion). Yet within that vast illusion, each person builds further illusions of their own: comforting fantasies, self-serving narratives, curated lives, beautiful lies to mask the disarray beneath. It is a hall of mirrors, reflections within reflections, and soon we begin to mistake the shimmering for substance. The collective noise of these overlapping illusions floods our senses and drowns the quiet truth that lies buried within.

But for the one nursing grief, that noise offers no solace. The world’s chatter cannot drown the ache that demands to be heard. Pain has a brutal clarity; it refuses to participate in illusion. So when someone, weary of pretense, dares to speak the truth — unadorned, unvarnished — it is a shock of relief. The world splits open, and for a while, we breathe.

Yet that moment passes. Even truth, once spoken, can harden into another story, another identity, another illusion. The only lasting relief lies in seeing through it all, in realising that everything we perceive, every drama and disguise, every joy and despair, unfolds within māyā.

This realisation is not an escape from life but a deep reconciliation with it. To know that all is illusion is not to reject the world, but to hold it lightly, to dance with it without becoming entangled. Those who learn to live with māyā as one might live with a dream, aware, awake, yet participating, find a quiet fulfilment.

Otherwise, we are tossed endlessly by the tumults of illusion in all its variegation — chasing shadows, grieving phantoms, mistaking reflection for truth. But once even one person tells the truth, and the world splits open, perhaps we begin to see: the light that pours through the crack was always there.