Faith
The pursuit of truth can only begin when one starts to question every belief that one ever held dear. If a certain belief passes the test of evidence, deduction, and logic, it should be kept. If it doesn’t the belief should not only be discarded, but the thinker must also then question why he was led to believe the erroneous information in the first place.
As much as the above quote may seem like an affront to faith, it is not. In fact, it is an important and recurring theme in the spiritual traditions of many indigenous cultures. However, it is an affront to all religions. So, if you are religious, then read no further. If you’re open to spiritual expressions, exploration, inquiry, and meditation – in the same great tradition as that of the yogis and rishis… then welcome! please read on.
“We might say, to use an image, that as we go forward on the road of knowledge we have got to let ourselves be guided by the invisible hand of metaphysics reaching out to us from the mist, but that we must always be on our guard lest its soft seductive pull should draw us from the road into an abyss. Or, to look at it another way: among the advancing hosts of the forces of knowledge, metaphysics is the vanguard, establishing the forward outposts in an unknown hostile territory; we cannot do without such outposts, but we all know that they are exposed to the most extreme danger.”
“Whenever a prophet got into the superconscious state by heightening his emotional nature, he brought away from it not only some truths, but some fanaticism also, some superstition which injured the world as much as the greatness of the teaching helped. To get any reason out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly, by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition. We must take up the study of the superconscious state just as any other science. On reason we must have to lay our foundation, we must follow reason as far as it leads, and when reason fails reason itself will show us the way to the highest plane.”
Faith is not exclusive to religion; it plays a part even in modern science. For example, when one follows a hunch and or takes giant leaps of imagination.
After all wasn’t it Einstein who said that imagination is more important than intellect? The greatest discoveries in modern science (in particular in physics) have been produced by such temporary leaps of faith into the unknown and back. There are many scientists that delved in that higher state – such as Riemann and Ramanujan, and Western artists as well such as Blake, Beethoven, Escher, Dali,…
Unfortunately, western science did not take up the study of that higher state (and the means of reaching it) as a science. In contrast, a large proportion of scientific literature in Hinduism is dedicated solely to that one topic.