Introduction
“Science has thus found how to make doubt into a tool of conventional knowledge. And, rightly used, that tool has its place. But as a psychological state that defines our existence and that is developed into a view of the universe, doubt is a form of affliction, something to be understood and transcended. In the course of real spiritual practice, doubt is encountered in its purity. It is not regarded to have philosophical content. It is regarded to be simply a sign of the contraction of being” (1) Adi Da Samraj
As a modern man born in the 20Th century, my primary mood is doubt, not faith, my first response to anything of an even slightly spiritual nature is disbelief, more as an underlying and characteristic feeling response than a conscious, thinking one.
Along with my peers I have inherited an ingrained world view that is generally uninspected and unnoticed, accepted as natural, rather than one acquired culturally. That view is non-faith or the tacit denial of God, Truth, Love and Happiness as our primary state and primary knowledge.
This apparently inherited mood of doubt was not the case in my early childhood, thus I say my faith was lost and was previous to doubt, the mood of faith seems unreal and ephemeral compared to this deeply conditioned doubt response that clearly came from cultural and educational sources.
Part 1: Doubt and Faith
Doubt used in this context is mostly seen as the opposite of faith, faith is generally defined as belief in religious or spiritual doctrine or deity, doubt is a sense of denial in relation to doctrine or belief in a doctrine, Adi Da treats doubt as primarily an emotional state or mood (2) (a form of self-contraction) at the root of all doubt.
Anyone who takes the trouble to “feel” doubt, may notice it is has a characteristic emotional component, no matter what the particular subject of the doubt. To doubt is felt as a negative state of self . In contrast to this, one can use objective analysis or discriminative reflection without the addition of doubt (as a negative psycho-physical state), that is, the analytical discriminative faculty need not carry the emotive component that is the mood of doubt.
To me the constant arising of doubt is not something to be concerned about, it does not mean what it appears to, because I see it (when this insight is active) as a condition of myself, rather than a reflection of what is true or external to me.
It is also notable that the conflict between doubt and faith is overwhelming in Western theology, not an overriding consideration in Hindu thought, but perhaps more considered in some schools of Buddhism.
Since doubt is easily known, the use of the term faith needs clarification :
Faith used here, is a natural heart felt openness, that seems to be strong in childhood and quickly recedes as our education in conventional doctrines and world concepts overwhelms it. It is a state of mind and emotion, it naturally presumes a happy, joyous source to all things. Not merely the belief in doctrine but a disposition that assumes eternal life via feeling rather than thought. It stands in opposition to the mood of doubt but shares the demonstrable quality of being also a state of self, but felt as a positivity, joy and connection to all life and its inherent mystery.
To clarify further then, faith in Adi Da’s specific idiom (as I understand it), means not a particular set of beliefs or a response to specific dogma or concepts but an opening of the being, that would then allow conceptualization to follow. It is not belief in a particular God concept, or a particular religion, but is previous to any particular concept, God or religious idea, rather it is rooted in the visceral source of faith as response prior to conceptualizations
I am not suggesting that a return to the mere naivety of childhood is the desired outcome but rather the manifesting of faith in a fully adult manner, with the full capacity to use discriminative insight. Adi Da postulates that God, Truth or Divine Reality is obvious(3), not the usual modern point of view that starts with the apparent (at least as a feeling sense) absence of anything remotely Divine in nature.
Doubt and faith in religious traditions
Consider the Christian (Catholic) concept of doubt :
“The faith demanded by the Christian Revelation stands on a different footing from the belief claimed by any other religion. Since it rests on divine authority, it implies an obligation to believe on the part of all to whom it is proposed; and faith being an act of the will as well as of the intellect, its refusal involves not merely intellectual error, but also some degree of moral perversity. It follows that doubt in regard to the Christian religion is equivalent to its total rejection, the ground of its acceptance being necessarily in every case the authority on which it is proposed, and not, as with philosophical or scientific doctrines, its intrinsic demonstrability in detail. Thus, whereas a philosophical or scientific opinion may be held provisionally and subject to an unresolved doubt, no such position can be held towards the doctrines of Christianity; their authority must be either accepted or rejected. The unconditional, interior assent which the Church demands to the Divine authority of revelation is incompatible with any doubt as to its validity. Gregory XVI. ” (4)
The Demon of Doubt
Clearly then to doubt Christian doctrine, is a conscious choice and always a sinful one, whether practicing Christians actually hold this view consciously is unlikely, but something of it may be be present.
From the Christian viewpoint (at least as expressed above very dogmatically), someone like myself who confesses doubt as a primary sensation, must be forced to suppress this and instead apply a mental discipline to believe prescribed concepts, this is often the common view of what faith is, or what a man or woman “of faith” would demonstrate. By applying a counter effort to suppress all that is doubt, or doubting of religious doctrine, I show or express my faith. Which makes faith thus defined always at war with doubt.
Another example of the faith/doubt dynamic is expressed here, in a more expansive manner by Sri Aurobindo (5)
“There is one kind of faith demanded as indispensable by the integral Yoga and that may be described as faith in God and the Shakti, faith in the presence and power of the Divine in us and the world, a faith that all in the world is the working of one divine Shakti, that all the steps of the Yoga, its strivings and sufferings and failures as well as its successes and satisfactions and victories are utilities and necessities of her workings and that by a firm and strong dependence on and a total self-surrender to the Divine and to his Shakti in us we can attain to oneness and freedom and victory and perfection”
“The enemy of faith is doubt, and yet doubt too is an utility and necessity, because man in his ignorance and in his progressive labour towards knowledge needs to be visited by doubt, otherwise he would remain obstinate in an ignorant belief and limited knowledge and unable to escape from his errors. This utility and necessity of doubt does not altogether disappear when we enter on the path of Yoga. The integral Yoga aims at a knowledge not merely of some fundamental principle, but a knowing, a gnosis which will apply itself to and cover all life and the world action, and in this search for knowledge we enter on the way and are accompanied for many miles upon it by the mind’s unregenerated activities before these are purified and transformed by a greater light: we carry with us a number of intellectual beliefs and ideas which are by no means all of them correct and perfect and a host of new ideas and suggestions meet us afterwards demanding our credence which it would be fatal to seize on and always cling to in the shape in which they come without regard to their possible error, limitation or imperfection.”
Sogyal Rinpoche a Tibetan Lama of the Nyingma tradition writing on doubt (6) :
“Our minds, however, are riddled with confusion and doubt. I sometimes think that doubt is an even greater block to human evolution than is desire or attachment. Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence. We have become so falsely “sophisticated” and neurotic that we take doubt itself for truth, and the doubt that is nothing more than ego’s desperate attempt to defend itself from wisdom is deified as the goal and fruit of true knowledge. This form of mean-spirited doubt is the shabby emperor of samsara, served by a flock of “experts” who teach us not the open-souled and generous doubt that Buddha assured us was necessary for testing and proving the worth of the teachings, but a destructive form of doubt that leaves us nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, and nothing to live by.”
“Doubts demand from us a real skillfulness in dealing with them, and I notice how few people have any idea how to pursue doubts or to use them. It seems ironic that in a civilization that so worships the power of deflation and doubt, hardly anyone has the courage to deflate the claims of doubt itself-to do as one Hindu master said: ‘turn the dogs of doubt on doubt itself, to unmask cynicism, and to uncover what fear, despair, hopelessness, and tired conditioning it springs from’. Then doubt would no longer be an obstacle, but a door to realization, and whenever doubt appeared in the mind, a seeker would welcome it as a means of going deeper into the truth.”
notes
(1) The Transmission of Doubt pp 149- (Da Free John) Adi Da Samraj
(2) ” You are always “capable” of doubt, because doubt is a condition of yourself. It is a form of contraction” Adi Da Samraj – God and Doubt.
(3)Adi Da Samraj – God and Doubt
(4) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05141a.htm
(5)Yoga of Self-Perfection by Sri Aurobindo Chapter XVIII Faith and Shakti
(6) Quoted from viewonbuddhism.org
