Understanding Faith and Its Role in Spiritual Development

There is a long history of debate about what we believe and how we know what we know. Science and religion have historically taken opposite positions in this debate. Science takes the view that the mind must be able to ascertain objective facts, and draw conclusions based on them. This includes potentially developing hypotheses and testing them, discarding or modifying those that do not bear themselves out in the test. Science is therefore most comfortable with phenomena that are observable, or at least measurable, as to their existence, their result and their uses. They may not be able to ‘see’ electricity, but they can validate its effects, channel it and measure it. This approach limits, however, the ability of science to deal with deeper significance or ‘first causes’ or the purpose of our existence, as these quickly devolve into indistinct and somewhat contradictory assertions, which science has been unable to prove. It is thus, eventually left either in a state of agnosticism, or in an appeal to faith at some ultimate level.

Religion on the other hand has taken its stance in the field of what is called ‘faith’. Faith has been generally dismissed by science as not being subject to proof. This leaves a wide field for claims to be made, many of which can be demonstrated to simply be inaccurate. For instance, it was a doctrine of faith in the Western world for many centuries, that the sun revolved around the earth; when scientists began to assert facts and proofs that concluded that the earth actually was not the center of the universe, but itself rotated around the sun, they were ostracized, penalized, tortured and made to retract their facts to preserve what we now know was an entirely misplaced application of faith.

There is a role for faith, just as their is a role for the mind’s action in its search for truth through the mental powers. Once we recognise that the mind has its own limitations, and that knowledge is progressive, we can begin to accept that there are forms of knowledge which rely on senses, intuitions, and methods which are not based in the mental activity, and which thus rise up within us in such a way that we call it faith.

Faith, in its deepest sense, is not faith in a particular doctrine, teaching, book, teacher or modality; rather, it is the deepest sense of the soul identity espousing and expressing its innate deeper knowledge through its connection with the Divine and the divine reality. Once we understand that faith is not the same as dogma, and that we need not suppress, torture or be fearful of the mind’s approach to knowledge, we can find the harmonious interplay of both aspects of our being, whereby faith brings us to a knowledge that lies outside the mental range at present, and the mind works to consolidate and organise this knowledge as it becomes available to us. We take an article of faith and focus intensely on it until it reveals its deepest secrets to us. What starts out as ‘faith’ may indeed turn into ‘fact’ over time. This is particularly true when the soul awakens to the deeper realities of existence and begins to understand things that the mind cannot define with its narrow and limited capabilities.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “Faith is the soul’s witness to something not yet manifested, achieved or realised, but which yet the Knower within us, even in the absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving. This thing within us can last even when there is no fixed belief in the mind, even when the vital struggles and revolts and refuses. Who is there that practices the yoga and has not his periods, long periods of disappointment and failure and disbelief and darkness? But there is something that sustains him and even goes on in spite of himself, because it feels that what it followed after was yet true and it more than feels, it knows. The fundamental faith in yoga is this, inherent in the soul, that the Divine exists and the Divine is the one thing to be followed after — nothing else in life is worth having in comparison with that. So long as a man has that faith, he is marked for the spiritual life and I will say that, even if his nature is full of obstacles and crammed with denials and difficulties, and even if he has many years of struggle, he is marked out for success in the spiritual life.”

“It is this faith that you need to develop — a faith which is in accordance with reason and common sense — that if the Divine exists and has called you to the Path, (as is evident), then there must be a Divine Guidance behind and through and in spite of all difficulties you will arrive. Not to listen to the hostile voices that suggest failure or to the voices of impatient, vital haste that echo them, not to believe that because great difficulties are there, there can be no success or that because the Divine has not yet shown himself he will never show himself, but to take the position that everyone takes when he fixes his mind on a great and difficult goal, ‘I will go on till I succeed — all difficulties notwithstanding.’ To which the believe in the Divine adds, ‘The Divine exists, my following after the Divine cannot fail. I will go on through everything till I find him.’ “

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 128-129