" Faith..............."

Faith........

The Prophet says, 'Every soul when born is a faithful follower, it is afterwards that he turns to the contrary.' This really means that every soul is born on earth with a simple faith, and it is only afterwards that he doubts. If it were not so, we should never have been able to learn the language we speak. Was it not learned by faith, from infancy? When the mother says, 'This is a tree', the child says 'tree'; when she says, 'This is water' the child calls it 'water'. And there are many things which the parents speak of apart from ordinary every day matters, and the child believes them, as they want him to believe. Whether the names given to the things are right or wrong, the child takes them as his guardians wish him to take them, for that is his natural tendency.


In the beginning every soul has faith. Then how is it that man loses this quality which nature has bestowed on him? He loses it by the knowledge of names and forms. As he grows he covers up his faith with the knowledge of names and forms, calling that 'learning'. At every step in his progress towards knowledge he compares things and considers some things better than others, saying of one thing, 'This is true', of another, 'This is false', 'That is what I can believe and rely upon' and 'This is what I cannot believe and rely upon'. The one thing he calls true, the other false; but in reality neither is true or false. It is only at the beginning of knowledge that man passes through this stage. Later, when a person has raised himself above ordinary knowledge, he arrives at a stage when he is able to say, 'All that I have called true is not true, and all I have called false is not false.' He finds that whatever difference there is, is only a difference of comparison. This point of view is difficult and vague, and everybody does not perceive it.

The course of human life involves so many disappointments, so many failures, so many heartaches, that no one can avoid doubting.

When a man has been deceived by one person, he distrusts ten people; when he has found one person unreliable, he may perhaps consider a hundred others to be so too. After failing in one thing he suspects he will fail in a thousand things. So many things take away that natural and powerful quality which was at first present, that faith which is the secret of the whole creation, the secret of all success that can ever be attained in life. This faith is broken by life's discouraging experiences. When confidence in others is lost, then confidence in self is lost also; and the more it is lost, the more failures one meets. A doubting person considers himself to be wise and one of simple faith to be a fool. Whoever he sees he suspects; whatever he hears he questions whether it is right or wrong. He will doubt even his friend in business, waiting for the time to come when he can trust him. But that time never comes. His very doubts create doubts in the mind of the suspected person; and often the doubts come true as the effect of the doubter's thought; or at least it creates an illusion which for the moment shows the picture of his doubts.


We can experience the same thing with dogs. If we have the least fear of a dog barking or biting, He will bark and come up to us and bite us. If there is no fear in us, the dog will not come towards us. The fear which makes us suspect that that a dog will bite is enough to give the dog the desire to bite, because we are looking for it to do so.