No genuine, no sincere searcher after truth can ever be found among the blind believers in the "Divine Word," let the latter be claimed to come from Allah, Brahma, or Jehovah, or their respective Kuran, Purana and Bible. For, "Faith is not reason's labour, but repose." He who believes his own religion on faith, will regard that of every other man as a lie, and hate it on that same faith. Moreover, unless it fetters reason and entirely blinds our perceptions of anything outside our own particular faith, the latter is no faith at all, but a temporary belief, the delusion we labour under, at some particular time of life.
—U.L.T. Pamphlet No. 1, p. 2
What is faith? Faith, trust, belief and devotion are all taken to be synonymous terms. In Sanskrit it is called Shraddha. All creatures inherently possess this quality—as seen, for example, in the implicit trust of the young one in its parent. The whole of natural world rests on faith and trust, though man often betrays it in every relation. Faith is that power in all of us, using which many marvellous results have been obtained.
Where does this quality of faith spring from? "The faith of each one...proceeds from the sattva quality; the embodied soul being gifted with faith" (Gita, XVII). The sattva quality inheres in the imperishable, inmost being, the spiritual Self of every man; hence man has deep within him, latently, the perfection and powers of the Spirit.
Faith is the creative power in man which, in ordinary life, he exercises unconsciously, sometimes producing extraordinary phenomena which are regarded as "miraculous." For instance, the woman with a bloody issue is said in the Gospels to have been cured of her ailment when she touched the garment worn by Jesus, upon which he is said to have turned round and told her that it was her faith that had made her well. In all ages and climes, even today, we find extraordinary phenomena produced by faith. "There is a weird and formidable potency in human will and imagination, whether exercised consciously or unconsciously. Faith is a quality endowed with most potent creative power" (The Theosophical Glossary). Adepts exercise the power consciously and intelligently with a premeditated end in view, while we unconsciously and blindly, mistakenly attribute results, if extraordinary, to some god or saint in whom we may have faith.
Faith is the power of the "Spirit in the body, the Great Lord." It is the ideas and beliefs that we hold which give direction to the life-force we are continuously expending throughout our lives, and our desires and motives give it the moral quality or character. If they are inconsistent with truth and reality, which, therefore, cannot but be disruptive of the harmony of life, we invariably produce results that are harmful to ourselves and to the world at large.
Hence, Sri Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita, "The faith of mortals is of three kinds, and is born from their own disposition [svabhava]; it is of the quality of truth—sattva, action—rajas, and indifference—tamas....Each man is of the same nature as that ideal on which his faith is fixed." We mould and shape our character in the image of the ideas and ideals on which our faith is fixed. The character of each person, as much as that of a nation, therefore, is his or her acquired nature or svabhava, and not the result of accident or chance, nor determined by our "genes," as is generally believed by those who have fixed their faith on the dicta of modern science. It is obvious then that each one of us is responsible for the good and evil conditions surrounding us individually and collectively. Hence the importance of examining the basis of our beliefs and ideas in the light of an understanding of a truer knowledge of life and its purpose can never be overemphasized. This is the basis of all true reform. Therefore, faith in itself cannot save us unless it is founded on the right knowledge of what is true and real.
Faith is blind when something is believed in without knowledge and accepted on the authority of an individual or Church or any establishment. There is another kind of faith that is based on knowledge and reason. Both these kinds of faith produce physical, mental and moral results of far-reaching consequences widely different from each other—one tending to darkness and retrogression and the other to enlightenment and true progress. Organized religions, though in their origin based on knowledge of the great truths of life, have, in the course of centuries, mostly become crystallized into sets of beliefs and dogmas, resting on dead-letter interpretation, enforced by priestly authority, and blindly accepted and followed by the masses. The idea of God, for instance, has fallen from the grand philosophical conception of ubiquitous Absolute Deity and Law into anthropomorphic God of the churches and temples, who is to be feared and propitiated for obtaining personal favours or salvation or to save oneself from misfortunes. It can be easily shown that belief in such a personal god is a logical impossibility, that the moral effect of belief in such an outside god kills self-reliance in the believer, accentuates his selfishness and makes him morally irresponsible. Man thus strays far from truth, viz., by the very law of his being man has to progress by self-induced and self-devised ways and means; to learn the lessons of life implicit in the good and evil experiences that come to him as effects produced by his own actions (Karma); through reliance on the power of his Higher Self.
One of the beliefs spread by the Christian Church is that one is pardoned of all one's sins if one declares, even at the last moment of his sinful life, his belief in the dogma that the "Saviour" shed his blood on the cross to vicariously expiate the sins of mankind. In India, a no less pernicious belief is current among the Hindus—as a result of misunderstanding of original truths—that one can wash away one's sins by taking a holy dip in the Ganges or by making offerings to gods in the temples. The illogical, not to speak of unjust, basis of such beliefs is plainly evident, as the universe is governed by Law, which is Absolute Justice.
Modern science, no less than religion, is subject to false faith, strange as the statement may seem. For instance, official science denies a priori any vital principle and mind independent of material forms, declaring that both are merely temporary effects produced by molecular action, and that evolution is a blind, random process which has neither design nor intelligent purpose, much less any moral basis. Such arbitrary conclusions are made, based on only one aspect of Nature, which falls within the range of physical senses, and are passed on as the whole truth, in the face of a mass of undeniable evidence to the contrary, as admitted by the intuitive and keenest minds among the great scientists themselves. Yet the public is taught to accept, unquestioningly, such arbitrary conclusions as final truths. This has bred the materialism of the day with all its negative effects, as Theosophy shows that materialism is "an anti-philosophical negation of pure spirit...a disbelief in all but material things," which directly breeds "materialism in conduct and action—brutality, hypocrisy, and, above all, selfishness" (Five Messages, p. 6). The materialism of the times is the outgrowth of false faiths.
Encompassing spirit, soul and matter, the ancient science of life regards Nature as one complete whole, the universe an embodied consciousness. Thus bridging the gulf between mind and matter it finds no gaps or missing links, and no unsolvable riddles or problems of life. Faith resting on such all-inclusive knowledge is referred to in the Bhagavad-Gita as the faith that is of the nature of Truth—sattva.
The Wisdom-Religion, now called Theosophy, is thus the accumulated wisdom of countless ages of evolution of beings, "the aggregate of the knowledge and wisdom that underlie the Universe—the homogeneity of eternal GOOD" (The Key to Theosophy, p. 56). The great body of Wisdom-Science has been, and is, continuously tested and verified by high Initiates and their disciples. It is more rigorous in its methods than those of modern science. How was this done?
Their spiritual visions, real explorations by, and through, physical and spiritual senses untrammelled by blind flesh, were systematically checked and compared one with the other, and their nature sifted. All that was not corroborated by unanimous and collective experience was rejected, while that only was recorded as established truth which, in various ages, under different climes, and throughout an untold series of incessant observations, was found to agree and receive constantly further corroboration. The methods used by our scholars and students of the psycho-spiritual sciences do not differ from those of students of the natural and physical sciences...Only our fields of research are on two different planes, and our instruments are made by no human hands, for which reason perchance they are only the more reliable. (The Key to Theosophy, p. 85)
Though it is beyond the capacity of a neophyte to test this knowledge, he can comprehend intellectually the whole philosophy of it as given by the Great Ones from time to time, and ascertain for himself the reasonableness, logical coherence, applicability and universality of its basic propositions. Besides, he has the first-hand testimony of absolutely trustworthy witnesses to Truth—the great body of living Sages—which serves as the touchstone, as it were, to ascertain the validity of any proposition presented to him and to test all experiences. He knows it to be the great universal solvent that dissolves and cleanses all religions and creeds of the dross of the ages, and makes them all merge back to that universal eternal fount of wisdom from which they originally sprang. He has supreme faith in this wisdom of the ages, that he himself can personally verify by first-hand experience, by fulfilling requisite conditions laid down for such knowing.
Faith is the perception of Manas (the fifth principle), while knowledge, in the true sense of the term, is the capacity of the Intellect, i.e., it is spiritual perception. In short, the higher individuality of man, composed of his higher Manas, the sixth and seventh principles [Buddhi and Atma], should work as a unity, and then only can it obtain "divine wisdom," for divine things can be sensed only by divine faculties. (H.P.B. Series, No. 27, p. 11)
Do not judge in anger, for though the anger passes the judgment remains.
—W. Q. Judge