Let us try to understand what faith means.
The old Biblical statement says, “Faith can move mountains”. Now, to a rational
mind like mine, that is impossible. We know that mountains cannot move just
like that, unless the tectonic plates in the Earth moves and that can make
mountains move, but that too by a very small fractional distance only. So,
according to this rational thinking, we can probably define Faith as “Believing
in something that is impossible”. So, according to science, according to
reason, according to logic, Faith is something “Illogical, Irrational” and thus
Impossible.
Now, let us take the topic of faith from a
religious background. Take an extreme example of a patient in deathbed,
everyone has given up hope, the doctors have said it is just a matter of few
days, and so on. However, a loved one perhaps, let us say the mother of the
patient, she has faith in her God. She prays with extreme faith and devotion to
her God or Deity and a miracle happens and the patient has survived the crisis.
We have heard such things happening amongst our families and friends and of
course we have seen such things in many movies. This is at the religious level,
where a person has faith in an external entity called God and God sometimes
answers the prayer. Only sometimes because, there are many times in real-life
scenarios that such prayers go un-answered as well, even though the devotee has
prayed with lot of faith and devotion, God does not seem to answer the prayer
and whatever had to happen, end up happening.
When we get into the field of Spirituality,
a system like ours, the heart-based meditation of Sahaj Marg, Heartfulness
system of practice, here, things are somewhat different. In a spiritual system,
where the focus is in “connecting with the Self within”, and “going inwards
into one-self”, the element of faith also takes a turn inwards. So,
spirituality makes a very clear statement, “Have Faith in Yourself”. One
doesn’t need to have faith in any external entity other than himself or
herself. From such an inner faith, courage and confidence develops which become
unshakeable.
Now, let us try to connect the dots of
where this faith in the self originates. As we all know, Heartfulness
meditation is an experiential based system and also that Heartfulness is a
science in itself. Just like how science has its experiments to prove a theory,
the experiences from the Heartfulness meditation enables a practitioner to gain
“Inner Conviction”, that this particular meditation practice is working and is
helping me. However, once we cross the line of matter and reason, spirituality
moves way ahead and leaves behind the physical sciences and enters into the
“Meta-physical” world where “Feeling” overtakes “Thinking”. The feelings of the
heart start to play a role in the abhyasi’s life and this is where conviction
translates into “Belief”. From Belief, “Trust” in the Inner Master develops.
That is, at the seat of the heart is the inner being, which offers guidance
from within and the abhyasi begins to Trust these inner feelings and
“Intuition” more and more as it helps the abhyasi in his day-to-day life.
When “Trust” in the inner Master becomes
strengthened, it morphs into “Faith”. This is what the great Masters of
Spirituality like Babuji and Chariji call as “Real Faith”, to distinguish such
a faith from the traditional and religious connotations of faith. Such a faith
can indeed move mountains, like how Lord Krishna is supposed to have lifted
mountain Govardhana Giri or like how Babuji Maharaj says that he can spin the
universe like a top! Such a real faith develops courage and confidence in that
advanced practitioner that he can do anything, but only for the welfare of
humanity and not otherwise. Cheap tricks and miracles are no longer attractive or
enticing to such elevated beings. They become pure instruments of Nature,
working for the welfare of one and all.
So, we see how faith develops in journey of
Heartfulness meditation practice: starting from the practice itself, the
experiences leading to inner conviction, and this resulting in belief, then
trust and then faith. By the method of Heartfulness meditation, one gets into
contact with the inner self, the inner Master, and derives guidance from
within. So, after sufficient practice, faith in the inner self, and guidance
from within develops in the abhyasi which are really very advanced states of
being which enables that person to remain in super-conscious meditative states
and do Nature’s work according to the needs of humanity.
