What is Faith?
“Faith is like a bird which feels the light and sings
while the dawn is yet dark.” (Rabindranath Tagore)
Faith has been defined as: “A belief in something which
one does not know so that one may come to know what one believes in.” Faith is
often misunderstood to be a blind belief which kills one’s initiative,
progress, and growth. True faith is not so; it is a positive quality that
revives and vitalizes one’s endeavors in life. It is a vital factor in all
great undertakings.
Why is faith necessary for one’s spiritual quest of
Truth?
Because we are on the journey of ‘unknown’. The supreme
Reality, ‘known’ to the Person of Realization, is ‘unknown’ to us. An ‘unknown’
factor can be communicated to another only in terms of what is ‘known’. In
other words, a thing ‘unknown’ cannot be understood if it is described in terms
of other unknown factors. Knowledge has to proceed from the known to the
unknown. But the difficulty experienced by the Masters in communicating the
nature of the Reality is that all the factors known to human beings—whom relate
to the terrestrial world—are not directly helpful to describe or explain this
unknown Reality.
Consequently, their descriptions and explanations,
being circumscribed by the student’s own limited knowledge, cannot define the
ultimate Reality for the student. Hence, they had to make use of the students’
faith to complete the spiritual pursuit so that they could realize the Truth.
There is a philosophical saying: “One can walk
consciously only a part of the way towards the goal and then must leap in the
dark to one’s success.” Perhaps this is the origin of the phrase ‘leap of
faith’. Faith, therefore, becomes an inevitable and integral part of one’s
spiritual quest for the Truth.
The strength of faith of a seeker rests on his or her
confidence in the Truth of the repeated unanimous declarations of all realized
sages and saints that there exists for every person’s personal experience a
transcendental Reality beyond the scope and purview of the material equipments.
The seeker has also to believe the Masters’ assurance that every one possesses
the capacity to strive for and reach this Truth. Faith, therefore, may be
considered to be a blend of trust, confidence, and conviction born out of an
intellectual quest rather than an emotional acceptance.
Meditation must proceed with true faith in the
existence of an ultimate Reality. In the absence of such faith that is
reinforced with understanding, there can be neither sincere application nor an
honest seeking of the Truth. However, if the foundation of faith is strong and
firm, meditation takes deeper roots and the meditator reaps the golden harvest
of Self-Realization—which is the culmination of human evolution and all human
endeavors.
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