17.06.07
On Faith
N. Asokan
In this age of
scientific materialism faith has come under a lot of attack from the scientific
and the rationalistic community as something unfit for human functioning. This
onslaught has been there for the past few centuries ever since scientists like
Copernicus and Galileo shattered superstitious beliefs about an earth-centered
solar system.
Faith plays an
immense role in spiritual matters. Its role there is as great as the role of
experimental inquiry in the physical sciences. The spiritual aspirant believes
in proceeding on the path of Spiritual quest on the strength of his faith in
the guiding power of divine grace as much as the scientist proceeds with his
experiments on the basis of his faith in the data that he gathers through his
experiments. Actually both are operating on the basis of faith with only the
fields being very different. It is not only spirituality that demands the
exercise of faith. A good deal of even our daily life and our daily functioning
is based on faith and trust only. If
these were removed even day-to-day normal life will come to a grinding stand
still.
Faith is
necessary for even normal functioning because not all of our life is within our
zone of competence. When it comes to those areas of our life that are not
within our zone of competence and familiarity we have no choice except to deal
with others on the basis of trust and faith. If we believe only ourselves then
we have to cook our own food, do our own work and travel to other places only
by self-driving and do our shopping by ourselves only. But the fact that we do eat food cooked by
others in restaurants, hire others as employees to do our office work, travel
by bus and train and plane driven by others and send employees to shops to do
purchase for us shows that we do trust others when it is necessary. If a man
cannot trust that food cooked by others in a restaurant is safe to eat, then he
cannot leave his hometown and go anywhere else. If he cannot trust a bus driver
or airline pilot that they will safely take him to his destination he cannot
travel much unless he owns a car and knows driving. If he cannot trust a doctor or lawyer that
they will do a good job, he cannot take medical treatment when he falls ill and
neither can he fight a case in the courts if some suit is slapped on him. The
fact that millions of people deposit their savings in banks shows that they
believe that their savings will be safe in the bank and that it can be
retrieved anytime they want. Even in
marriage, so many young Indian men and women agree to marry the person their
parents have chosen only because they believe that their
parents have chosen the correct person for them and that their spouse will
fulfill their expectation of a happy married life.
Money has become
a very essential element in our social functioning today. Without money our
modern economy will simply collapse. If we take a few moments and reflect on
the nature of money we will be amazed to find that so much of the power of
money comes simply from the trust we have in one another. Paper money is simply
printed paper that the government has declared through a fiat to be legal
tender. At least gold and silver can be said to be having some inherent value
because they are precious metals and as such can be easily ascribed with some value.
But it is not very easy to endow paper money with value unless we respect the
government’s authority and unless there is a widespread agreement among members
of the society to treat paper money as symbols of economic value. We take money
from others only because we believe that somebody else will receive this money
and give us what we want. If this belief is not there then we won’t sell our
goods or service to anybody and take money from them since we have lost our
belief that somebody is going to take this money and give us what we want.
Even our
day-to-day physical functioning is based on a good deal of faith invested in
the functioning of our physical organs. When we eat we do so based on the faith
that our digestive system will digest that food properly. When we do strenuous
work or engage in strenuous sports we do so based on the faith that our heart
and lungs will rise to the occasion and give us the required energy. When a
woman conceives she does so as she believes that her body will cooperate and
help her deliver the baby safely. The role that faith plays in these areas
becomes apparent when we see asthmatics refusing to engage in strenuous
activities and we see women who have had miscarriages becoming anxious about
their second pregnancy coming to term successfully. Vegetarians visiting
foreign countries where non-vegetarian food is the norm lose their faith that
their stomach will adapt to unfamiliar food and we see them taking enormous
pains to prepare food that will be agreeable to their palate and stomach.
When we thus see
how much faith is necessary even for ordinary social and physical functioning,
it become needless to stress the role that faith will play in creative work
even if it is of a scientific kind. All creative work will involve entering
unknown areas and exploring unknown grounds. Inventors cannot be sure of when
they can succeed in coming up with their inventions. This is more true of
explorers who are not even sure of finding what they are looking for and much less
sure of coming back home to tell their story of discovery and explorations. Those
who went on polar expeditions and mountain climbing and jungle explorations
were men prepared for encountering many unknown dangers and those types of
undertakings are not possible without an immense faith that against all odds
success will be secured finally. Faith is even more necessary in military
encounters where the adversary may be much better equipped than the home side.
One only needs to remember the battle of
Idealistic
pioneering work demands a persistence that can come only when that work is
backed up by an immense faith in the ideal and means employed. When the Mahatma
declared that he will win independence for the country through non-violence and
civil disobedience few believed at the outset in the power of non-violence or satyagraha for evicting the
British from
When the ideal
is spiritual the level of faith demanded is much greater. When the Mother met
Sri Aurobindo in 1914, she entered in her diary that even if thousands of men
were plunged in the densest ignorance Sri Aurobindo’s
presence on earth was enough to ensure that a day will come when darkness would
be changed into light and the divine’s reign would be established. She had such
a faith in him that she could feel he alone was enough to bring about the
supramental transformation even if the whole rest of
the world was oblivious of the next step in the earth’s evolution.
Faith acquires
paramount importance in the spiritual field because the field is invisible and
to that extent therefore unfamiliar. The physical world of concrete forms,
tangible entities and familiar faces is somewhat reassuring. But there is
nothing concrete or tangible in the subtle spiritual planes and therefore one
needs a good deal of faith to even believe in the truth of spiritual principles
and powers. Spiritually faith is defined as the reflection of the knowledge of
the soul at the mental level. The soul may know something to be true. But there
is no way for the soul to transmit that knowledge to the mind since mind is in
ignorance. So the mind is simply told to believe in the unknown truth or power
and proceed on the basis that faith will deliver the results.
The spiritual
field comprises of serious spiritual seekers who aim for transformation as well
as ordinary people who are simply seeking the power of spiritual grace to get
relief from pressing problems and to get their prayers for prosperity, good
health and other good things fulfilled. Whether it be
a serious sadhak aiming to discover his psychic being
or a pious householder voicing a prayer for prosperity, both need a strong
faith each at his level to accomplish what they want. The sadhak
needs the faith to overcome doubts about his ability to surrender his ego while
the devotee seeking prosperity needs the faith to believe that grace can deliver
that prosperity in spite of the adverse situation prevailing in his life.
Spirituality
demands perfection in all its aspects. Spiritual values like gratitude,
humility, truthfulness, aspiration, self-giving, surrender and consecration all
need to be total in order to be fully effective. Faith is no exception to this.
Once a devotee takes a stand that he is relying on Mother’s grace to get his
problem solved or prayer fulfilled he must then not allow any doubt to weaken
that faith. Faith and doubt are direct contraries and to the extent the person
allows doubts to enter his mind to that extent he cancels his own faith. Let us
say a devotee has accumulated debts far in excess of his capacity to repay. Now
he prays to Mother to raise his income to a level needed to clear his debts.
Once he tells the Mother that he believes that Her Grace has the power to raise
his income he must stand by that faith and not allow his mind to raise
questions and doubts about how grace will find opportunities to raise his
income. His rational mind may tell him that the scope for raising his income is
limited. But he must not pay attention to those doubts and he must instead
concentrate on tuning himself to the action of grace by cultivating all those
habits and practices that are conducive to prosperity such as hard work,
cleanliness, up-to-date accounts and punctuality and self-giving etc.
Once a devotee
learns Mother’s principles with regard to work, money, relationships and
accomplishment etc, if he unhesitatingly follows them in his life, then it
means he has faith in those principles. If he says he has faith in what Mother
says, but hesitates to act in that recommended way when a real-life situation
arises, then his faith is not perfect and is only theoretical. Let us say a
devotee learns that exhausting one’s available financial resources and doing
the work in a sincere manner will attract more money for the expansion of the
work at the moment the money is exhausted. If he fully believes that he must
come forward to spend all his available money and start the work. There are
people who have done precisely this and seen for a fact that more money arrives
at the point of exhaustion so that the work can continue to expand. Instead of
acting in this manner if he insists that he can start the work only when all
the required money has become available to him, then his faith is only
superficial and there is no substance in it.
When a man says
that he is operating by faith, it means he believes in the higher logic of the
infinite. That higher logic is directly contrary to the logic of the
finite. What we call a miracle is only
the intervention of the logic of the Infinite in the physical plane and the
setting aside of the logic of the finite so that the power of the infinite can
manifest. So it will be useful for those who operate by faith to know some of
the essential ways in which the Infinite differs from the finite. When they
learn these rules and follow them, their actions may look foolish and
ridiculous to those around them. But they should not be discouraged by that and
continue with doing what they know is the higher truth.
The logic of the
Finite |
The logic of the
Infinite |
1. Growth is possible only by
taking |
1. Greater growth comes only by
giving |
2. money supply increases by saving |
2. Money supply increases by
spending |
3. The outer circumstance is more important
than the inner factors. The Outer decides the Inner. |
3. The Inner dominates the
Outer. The Outer circumstances are only a direct mirror of the Inner condition.
So the Inner decides the Outer. |
4. Our own point of view alone
should prevail |
4. The Other man’s point of
view takes precedence over ours. |
5. The past is very difficult
to correct. |
5. The past can be easily
neutralized and reversed by consecration of past events. |
6. The whole is bigger than the
part |
6. A part can be bigger than
the whole |
7. Growth is limited as
physical resources are limited |
7. Growth is unlimited as our
mental resources are unlimited. |
8. Space and time limitations
cannot be overcome |
8. Space and Time limitations
can be overcome when the Timeless plane intervenes. |
9. The ego should maximize its
hold on money, property, men and materials |
9. The ego should loosen its
hold everywhere and let the spirit have its impact on the physical |
10. The finite grows by active
assertion of its Will Power |
10. The Infinite grows more by
Silent exercise of its Will |
Those who learn these higher
principles of the Infinite Plane can live and function by these principles if
they can develop full faith in these principles. This would mean that a devotee
business man who believes in these higher truths should come forward to
increase the salaries of his staff as a means of improving their productivity
and thereby expanding his business. He must not go by the conventional wisdom
that calls for increasing efficiency by minimizing expenses everywhere
including wages and salaries which are seen as a burden. He must happily come
forward to reduce cost for customers as a way of expanding his sales and not
wait for chances to increase his prices as conventional wisdom would demand. He
must believe that his organizational values and human resources are much
superior assets than the support he gets from the market and the availability
of cheap raw materials etc. He must look at all business transactions from the
customer’s point of view and not thrust his point of view on others. Even if he
has suffered losses before coming to Mother, he must realize that after coming
to her he can easily reverse and recover from past losses by realizing his past
mistakes and dissolving their effects by past consecration of those events. He
must realize that even if his whole company is taken away from him, he is
bigger than his company and that he can form a new company that will grow
bigger than the old one. If it has taken
him 10 years to grow his old company to its present size, he must believe that
he can grow double that size in half that time by intensifying application of
values in the new company. If his employees want to leave his company and start
on their own or seek greener pastures, he must happily let them go and not
think of them as troublesome competitors. He must believe that instead of going
out to the market by active canvassing for orders, he must make the market come
to him by his inner thirst for expansion and progress.
All these applications of the
higher logic of the Infinite require tremendous faith in the truth of the Higher plane. For those who dare to have that faith the
rewards are great. Society traditionally has placed a lot of faith in money,
power, social status and social conformity and many other things that are part
of ordinary social living. He who wants to shift his faith to the higher divine
power must necessarily give up his faith in these lower values and rely on the
higher power alone for his functioning.
When a problem comes to him he must not think first about solving that
problem by using his money power or the power of his post or by using the influential
connections he has due to his higher social status. If he tries all that and
fails and then calls on the grace for help, that is not the sign of a perfect
faith. If he surrenders the problem at the very outset to the action of the
grace and lets grace guide his further steps, then we
can say that his faith is perfect. Let us say a rich and influential devotee is
forced to come to court by another who files a suit against him. If the devotee thinks immediately of hiring a
leading lawyer to argue his case based on his ability to pay him the hefty fees
that he will demand, then he is only relying on his money power. If he thinks
of summoning other influential people he knows to depose in his favor as
witnesses, then also he is relying only on his influential connections to win
the case. If he relies on title deeds
and documents that are in his possession, then also he is relying on his
resources only and not on the Divine Mother’s grace. If his first remembrance
when he hears of this court case against him is not his money, his influential
contacts or the documentary evidence in his favor, but only Mother and Her
grace, then we can say that his faith is perfect. There is a big difference
between relying on one’s money power, social contacts and documentary evidence
and using all these as simply means in the conduct of a court case while
placing our faith in something higher than these. If the faith is in the higher
power and the problem is surrendered to the action of the grace, the other
party who dragged the devotee to the court may reconsider the initiative to go
to court and come forward to compromise. Or the leading lawyer may not ask for
hefty fees and all the influential contacts of the devotee who are connected to
the case may happily volunteer to come as witnesses once they know that he is
in trouble and not wait for him to ask. The judge may dismiss the other party’s
suit as flimsy and unsustainable without the devotee having to show all the
documentary evidence in his possession. When the devotee’s faith in Mother’s is
total any of these outcomes is possible. It is also equally possible that when
the faith is missing, even all his money power, the legal acumen of his lawyer
and the influence of his social contacts may not be able to save him. Final
remedy may come to him only when he realizes that grace is the only thing that
can save him and that faith is the best resource he has to summon grace to his
rescue.
Many people take the limitations
of the physical plane to be final and have difficulty in even believing that
grace has the power to overcome those limitations and give us what we want. If
a patient hears from a doctor that he has developed cancer and that it has
spread too much in the body to be cured by medicines or surgery he takes the
doctor’s word to be final and gives up hope that his body can remedy itself. If
a person loses his money or valuables in a busy crowed area his common sense
tells him that what is lost is lost for good and that he cannot hope to recover
his purse or cell phone or ring that he left behind in a shop or in an auto or
fell on the road. Money and valuables left unattended will be immediately
stolen is traditional expectation and those who believe that take that to be
final. Missed opportunities rarely come back is another common belief. Hard
work extended over long periods of time is traditionally believed to be
essential for prosperity and if somebody tells that the duration can be
compressed and prosperity achieved in much shorter time, he is not taken
seriously.
But what is not realized is that
grace can act and reverse everything even at the last moment provided the
person fully believes in the power of the grace to act and remedy the
situation. An airline pilot in
So the final
conclusion is as follows:-
Faith delivers
The Higher Power
takes over our life
The minute our faith
is complete.
When the mind falls
silent, the vital withdraws its urges
And the body
surrenders
And the soul gets to
have its say
Life turns into a
marvel.