III — Doubt

Why is it easier to disbelieve than to believe?

Why is it easier to disbelieve than to believe? It is easier to disbelieve than to believe because disbelief is an act of descent, whereas belief is an act of ascent. Descending is easier than ascending.

It is easier to disbelieve than to believe because disbelief is an act of breaking, and belief is an act of building. Building is more difficult than breaking.

It is easier to disbelieve than to believe because disbelief is an act of our self-centred mind, whereas belief is an act of our self-giving heart.

Disbelief begins its journey in the doubting mind and ends in the destructive vital. Belief begins its journey in the illumining soul and continues to march in the vast kingdom of the aspiring heart.

A man of disbelief, with his eyes firmly closed, tells us what others are, what the world is and what he himself can do for the entire world if he wants to. A man of belief, with his heart’s door wide open, tells us what God has done for him, what God is doing for him and what God will do for him.

Disbelief has a perfection of its own. Disbelief finds its perfection in the cyclone of separation. Belief has a perfection of its own. Belief finds its perfection in the music of universal oneness.

Disbelief tells the world, “Be careful, be careful. If not, I shall devour you.” Belief tells the world, “Come in, come in please. I have been eagerly waiting for you.”

Disbelief hates the world. Why? It feels that the world is never of it and can never be for it. A man of disbelief always feels that this world does not belong to him and that he can never lord it over the world. This is precisely why a man of disbelief dares to hate the world.

A man of belief loves the world. Why? He believes that this world of ours is verily the aspiring Body of God, the glowing Dream of God and the fulfilling Reality of God.

In the spiritual life, if one cherishes disbelief, one is simply lengthening the distance to the ultimate Goal. But if a seeker has abundant belief in his spiritual life, in his own quest for the ultimate Truth, then undoubtedly he is shortening the distance. Finally, if his inner being is surcharged with boundless faith, then he feels that the Goal itself, the Goal of the Beyond, is running towards him, and not that he is trying to reach the Goal.

There comes a time when a man of disbelief, being totally frustrated, wants to kill the world around him out of exasperation. But to his wide surprise he sees that the wild ignorance of the world has already stabbed him. With his proud knowledge he wanted to kill the world; but before he could kill the world, the world, his own wild ignorance, has killed him.

A man of belief wants to love the world. To his wide surprise he sees that his entire existence is in the very heart of the world. The world has already placed a throne in the inmost recesses of its heart for the man of belief to sit upon.

In our spiritual life, disbelief is nothing short of a crime. When we disbelieve, we pour slow poison into our system; we kill our possibility and potentiality and wallow consciously and deliberately in the pleasures of ignorance.

Why do we disbelieve? We disbelieve because we are afraid of oneness, afraid of the vast. We feel that when we enter into the vast, we lose our identity, we lose our individuality, we lose our very existence. But we forget the undeniable truth that when we enter into the vastness, it is nothing short of the enlargement of our divinised consciousness.

For an ordinary person, an unaspiring human being, it is extremely difficult not to disbelieve. An aspiring person, an aspiring seeker, knows that there is something within that is pushing him forward to the Light, to the Reality, for his is the life of conscious awareness. An unaspiring person feels that something from without is pulling him backwards, pulling him to something unknown, to something that will bind him.

When we consciously disbelieve someone, we do not realise the fact that the inner magnet within us pulls the undivine qualities of that particular person into us. What happens when a person has achieved something but we do not believe it? The person and his achievement remain the same whether we believe it or not. But the person also has imperfections, limited capacity, impurity; and our disbelief is a magnet that pulls only his imperfections. If we have belief and if we offer our belief, then we have to feel that we have a magnet that draws the good qualities, the divine qualities, the illumining qualities of the other person.

When we disbelieve God, when we disbelieve the Reality, God remains the same. But what happens is that ignorance, the teeming vast, gets the opportunity to envelop us more powerfully and more completely. And when we believe in God, God’s Compassion gets the utmost opportunity to work in and through us most powerfully.

The deeper we enter into the spiritual life, the more we become aware of the capacity of disbelief and belief. Disbelief is nothing short of destruction. Belief is nothing short of a new creation. Each time we believe in something, we see the face of a new creation within and without us. And when we go one step ahead, when our inner faith looms large, then we see in us a perfected man and a liberated soul.