Faith is usually associated with religion, but as a quality of the human consciousness faith is inherent in every man, in every woman, and each one actually lives according to his faith.
In Chapter XVII of the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna states that the faith of every individual is in accordance with his nature. Man is of the nature of his faith: what his faith is that verily, he is.
Krishna then goes on to classify men into three distinct classes on the basis of their faith, which may be of one or another of the three gunas or qualities, namely, tamas, rajas and sattva. There are those whose faith is of the dark quality of tamas, ignorance, heedlessness and passivity; there are those whose faith is of the rajoguna, the middle quality of rajas, desire, the love of gain and restless activity; and there are those whose faith is of the pure quality of sattva, wisdom, lucidity and peacefulness.
Applying that ancient psychological key to modern civilization, it is at once obvious that a large majority of human beings evince today the faith born of rajas, restless activity and inordinate desire and ambition. While many still stagnate in a condition pertaining to tamas, to lethargy and ignorance, only the few have sattvic or true spiritual faith.
In the sphere of religion itself the same classification holds good. But we must also distinguish between lip profession and actual belief. The matter is a complicated one, for sometimes we think we believe this or that while in reality we do not! This is illustrated in the oft-repeated story of the clergyman who asked the captain of the ship when a violent storm broke out what security measures he had undertaken. The captain answered: "We have done all we could and now we can only trust in God"; whereupon the clergyman exclaimed, "Is it as bad as all that?"
But to return: religious faith may be of the dark quality of tamas, denoting blind belief and ignorant superstition; or it may be of the nature of rajas, the middle quality, when religion degenerates into mere commercial transaction, a bargaining, a means of attaining the object of one's desires; or of the sattva quality, when faith is true spiritual faith, that is, enlightened faith, that faith born of the Spirit, bringing wisdom and understanding, charity and love.
Such faith, Sraddha, is not the acceptance of a dogmatic belief, but a striving towards an ideal. Dr. Radhakrishnan has described it thus:
Faith is the pressure of the Spirit on humanity, the force that urges humanity towards what is better, not only in the order of knowledge but in the whole order of spiritual life. Faith, as the inward sense of truth, points to the object over which fuller light is shed later.
And it is such faith that Gandhiji lived by and of which he tells us:
Faith can only grow from within; it cannot be acquired vicariously. Nothing great in this world was ever accomplished without a living faith.
Yes, indeed, such faith can only grow from within, for it is of the heart and lies latent at the core of the inner man. "At the very base of your nature you will find faith, hope and love."
Turning now to the world today, we find that its chief characteristic mark is its scientific climate. With the aid of scientific apparatuses man has made remarkable discoveries in the world of matter and of energy. The borders of our knowledge of the world outside us have extended far, far out, and enabled us to probe into the smallest of the small—the microscopic and submicroscopic world of particles, as also to reach the largest of the large—the macroscopic world of stellar space.
We stand awed at the immensity of our world and tremble before the tremendous power of the forces at our command. We feel humbled and yet, do we not sense that the key of our future destiny lies in our own hands? If we can awaken to a full recognition of our moral responsibility, we shall know what is lacking in our faith and discover how to cultivate the living faith we need, that faith which can "remove mountains," that faith by which man walks, for as the Apostle Paul affirmed: "We walk by faith, not by sight." Indeed, those who insist on walking by sight alone soon must cease to walk at all and come to a standstill! Even men of science are beginning to recognize that they cannot walk by "sight" alone.
Now we must ask—what has been the effect of all this stupendous advance of scientific knowledge upon religion? How has science influenced religious faith? On the credit side, science has liberalized the human mind and freed it from much superstition and blind belief. This has been a great step in the progress of humanity. We need free and liberal minds, men and women capable of thinking for themselves, eager to question and to seek. But where science has erred is an overlooking that the world of matter is not the whole, but only a part, and that body and mind are not the total man. The world of Spirit must also be acknowledged, explored and understood. If orthodoxy and dogmatism in the name of religion extinguish the intellect, materialism and scepticism in the name of science paralise the intuitive faculty. Science has also been intolerant in its insistence that the only reality is the material world of phenomena. And the errors of both science and religion have divided them.
For long decades now, a wide gulf has separated religious faith from scientific knowledge. If man is simply a living machine, what then becomes of his soul, his freedom, his moral responsibility, his eternal hope? No, science does not give us the full picture and a materialistic philosophy must in the end fail to satisfy man's aspirations, for it ministers to only a part of him. That is why many today are faced by an inner sense of emptiness and of futility. They do not know what causes it, and so they try to make up for it or to escape it by an excess of outward activity, by a never-ending search for pleasure and new sensations, by a multiplication of good deeds. They are out to do, to do, while what they need is to turn within and learn the value of introspection.
The realm of the Spirit cannot be neglected with impunity and the door to its knowledge lies within each one. It is that inner door that spiritual faith can open, it is that inner door that sectarian and separative creeds have, alas, failed to open, for none can find it who denies the Brotherhood of Man. The faith that we need today is that faith which transcends the boundaries of all creeds and unifies all true religious concepts. That universal faith alone will bring us spiritual reassurance and enable us to find the way to peace and concord.
The wonderful thing that is happening in the world today is that men of science are finding that inward faith, as are also men of religion who have abandoned dogmas that cannot stand up against the findings of science and its spirit of seeking truth. Some of our foremost scientists bear witness to the Spirit and are, in fact, real mystics. As Professor Einstein has stated:
The most beautiful and most profound emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead....The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest mainspring of scientific research.
When a scientific genius makes such an affirmation we may hope for a rapprochement between science and religion, two different disciplines not antagonistic to each other, but mutually complementary. Both are highways to the Truth, and it is the Truth we all seek.
For all those who seek sincerely and unselfishly, the future is full of promise. Revelations in the way of spiritual intimations are still possible, are yet to come to men and women of goodwill and of open minds. Revelations do not belong exclusively to the religious discipline. All great poets and true creative artists whose hearts were pure have also received "revelations" through the centuries, and recorded them in forms of beauty. And so it has also been in the realm of science. Many scientists have had flashes of intuitive perception that have brought "revelations" in the form of the right answer to a question, the solution to a problem, and thus paved the way to greater and more significant discoveries.
When all is said and done, it is such touch with the Divine that gives man's activities their highest value. Through such an experience man transcends himself, his soul communes with the Over-soul or God, and participates in the Abiding and Eternal Reality. This mystic experience has always been the same, despite differences of culture and although recorded in different images. Yet it is always that which brings vision and gives peace and awakens the spirit of compassionate service.
May men of science and men of religion join in a common and living faith and work together to provide a fundamental philosophy, a universal religion, out of which the fruits of both mind and spirit may grow! "I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion," wrote Emerson. May all such men of one religion, the religion of Truth and of Brotherhood, unite to help lift mankind from ignorance to wisdom, from the darkness of dogmatic intolerance to the light of Truth universal, from the narrowness of a life of selfishness to the richness of a life of service!
We are so prone to condemn others and let our own faults go by that sincere disciples are taught, as a discipline, to cultivate their moral sense by inspecting their own faults, and let others do the same for themselves, but when the occasion demands condemnation, that it shall be of the wrong act....All sages and occult practitioners declare that among the necessary facts to be known is that fact that each time a man indulges in condemnation of another he is himself prevented by his own act from seeing his own faults, and that sooner or later his faults increase. If a sincere student thinks this be true he will hesitate about others and occupy himself with self-examination and self-conquest. This will take all of his time. Furthermore I strongly doubt if anyone was ever improved by the fault-finding of his acquaintances. It is natural discipline that makes the improvement, and that only. Indeed, I have observed in much experience with those who constantly criticize others that nothing results in 99 cases out of 100 but a smirking self-satisfaction in the breast of the critic, and anger or contempt in the heart of the victim of the fault-finding.—W. Q. Judge