Sunday, July 21, 2013

(July 21,2013) Spiritual Message for the Day – The Importance of Faith

 The Importance of Faith
Divine Life Society Publication: The Path to Freedom: Mastering the Art of Total Perception by Swami Krishnananda

When seeking the guidance of a Guru or a Master, a very important instruction to the spiritual aspirant is that we should have adequate faith in our own self. There should be no doubt in regard to the very objective we are seeking.

Our problems and difficulties of daily life seem to be enough argument against the existence of God. The usual question everywhere in the world is, “If pain can be, how can God be?” as these two are contradictory in nature.

The viveka and vairagya shakti of a student, which perhaps appear to rise in the initial stages on account of the fructification of the meritorious deeds performed in previous life, get stifled at some point in time. Anyone can be in a state of doubt at some time. Pains come in an intensified form, almost to the point of death; such sufferings are not impossible in this world. When they come upon a person, it is then that the mind begins to doubt the existence of meaning in life.

The student should not approach a Guru or Master with this attitude: God may be, or God may not be; I may be successful or I may not be successful; the achievement may be of value or not be of value at all. With these debatable attitudes, the student should not approach the master. Faith, shraddha, is regarded as a very important quality or qualification of a seeking student. The student has to convince himself of the meaning of his aspiration. Our aspiration should not be a meaningless pursuit.

All faith can be shaken by the winds of suffering when suffering comes in a form which cannot be tolerated by the frailties of the body. It is faith which can stand us in good stead, which can follow us even to our doom. If the turmoils of life can shake our faith, then it would mean that the faith has not been born of conviction.

The faith which comes to us early in life, due to having been born under certain circumstances – for example, in a religious family, a good society, etc. From our childhood, it is quite possible that we, children of such parents, are taught to believe in the existence of a Supreme Sovereign of all creation, and due to this instruction that has been given to us since childhood, we develop a kind of faith in the existence of a kind of Supernatural Being. This faith has not come to us due to conviction, understanding, analysis, observation or study.

If logic is the way of thinking, if logic is the law of thought, then every object of thought has to be subjected to the modes of logic. The existence of God no more becomes an article of faith but is summoned to the court of reason and analysed threadbare, and proofs are called for; and if no proofs come forth, the existence of God is dismissed from the universe of thinking.

In this effort to analyse the nature of God, the mind forgets that this peculiar nature called God, which is not capable of an analysis along the lines of logic because while we may accept God as a kind of object, and may even call Him the Supreme Object, He is not an object of the mind.

It is on account of this difficulty involved in the thought of God that proofs have failed to establish His existence.  We are prone to put a ‘why’ before anything that is presented before us. Why should it be like this? Why should God create the world? Why did God create a meaningless, painful, chaotic, material world? And why should there be this distinction of high and low, gross and subtle, in a world of equality created by God? These are some of the ‘whys’ that occur to our minds, questions which cannot be easily answered because who is to answer them? Before whom are we posing these queries? We cannot put these questions to other human beings because they too think like us.

The world does not contain only pain and suffering, ugliness and defects, poverty and sickness, death, transformation and change. The world has two sides, the positive and the negative. When we look at the negative side of things, we begin to weep, and when we see the positive side, we begin to laugh.

We may take the standpoint of the common man that everything is subject to destruction. This is a world of transformation – change. One question is: Can there be a God in a world which is in perpetual change? This is one of the doubts that may occur in the minds of people: If everything is impermanent, can there be permanence anywhere? The question itself is pregnant with the answer: Because everything is impermanent, something has to be permanent.

All expressions of thought carry with them two sides – the positive and the negative. While the world with all its deficiencies and shortcomings may be said to be the negative side of experience, God is its positive side.

If God cannot be, the world also cannot be. If we accept the existence of the world, we have to accept the existence of God because we cannot accept one side and cancel the other side. Our aspirations are enough proof for the existence of a permanent value in life. The two sides of our longings are -  as many things as possible and for as long a time as possible. Quantitatively and qualitatively, we seek perfection. But these subtle hints behind our longings get smothered by the ravaging, clamouring voice of the senses.

This is the reason why the sadhana-chatustaya, particularly in its aspect as satsampat, wants us to cultivate the qualities of kshama, dhama and uparati. The mind should be calm in order that we may be conscious of the existence of a meaning in life first and foremost, and in this subdued attitude realise that there is a permanent value which we seek in the world. It is said that we should develop a faith which will not be shaken by the logic of the world. It is with this faith that we have to approach a preceptor.

Conviction is the first thing – a faith born of conviction. A faith born of conviction is unshakeable. Faith is supposed to be fourfold.

1.       Faith in the existence of God, who is the supreme objective of our seeking.  
2.       Faith in Guru. Just as we should not test the existence of God with our logic, we should not test the competency of the Guru. Once we have taken him as our Master, he is our Master forever.
3.       Faith in the words of the scripture. The need for faith in the scripture arises on account of our logical reason being incompetent to ascertain the nature of Reality. It is not logic, intellect, argumentation or reason that can be an aid in the ascertainment of Truth; only revelation, insight, and intuition can comprehend the nature of Reality. God is the seen, as well as the seer.
4.       Faith in one’s own purified conscience is a form of faith. A dirty mind cannot reveal the voice of conscience, so it is useless to say, “I act according to my conscience.” The conscience speaks in everyone. When the voice of the conscience passes through the prism of our desires, it gets deflected into various rays of cravings for things of the world. We cannot know what our conscience speaks.  

We have to be purified by the practice of viveka, vairagya, kshama, dhama, uparati, titiksha  which are certain stages of training of the mind for the reception of the knowledge of the Spirit from the Guru. Shraddha, faith,  is the primary motive force behind concentration of mind, the ideal which the student of yoga seeks in the end.

Continue to read:
The Path to Freedom: Mastering the Art of Total Perception by Swami Krishnananda

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