The Question of Doubt and Faith

MANOJ DAS
Professor of English, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Pondicherry

To proceed to determine the nature of doubt is as perilous as step into that pond of the old fable, on the bank of which were many footprints, only none inthe return direction. In chapter after chapter of the history of his psychological development, man recorded the return of the same spirit of doubt though under charging masquerades. If at a certain stage doubt has found its eruption in the form of razor-edged arguments, at another stage has been expressed in words of bitter worldly disillusionment. In our own time, there is the glory of doubt sung by the learned logician; the absence of doubt resulting in exemplary frustrations in all spheres of life, such as service, business and, above all politics; in every step of an average life, for instance, in purchasing a kilogram of sugar, the need to doubt as to whether or not the same were pure atoms of glass; amid such awful darkness of doubt dwells the modern man.

In this sense of the term, that there is no freedom from doubt in the current course of civilization, is doubtless, though unwelcome, a fact. But in this essay it is intended to deal with doubt in one its aspects rather the cardinal one. Vigilance can liquidate many of the doubts referred to in the earlier paragraph. But the doubt which shadows man’s inner urge towards higher truths, checks the spontaneous moves of his inner being towards a surrender to the Supreme so that the former can be moulded to His image, is indeed dangerous. If one designs to undo such doubt by means of arguments, then he will unfortunately echo only the experience of Abhimanyu, encircled, while struggling desperately, by further and further vicious strategies of doubts. Rescue may come to him, only he has been steeped in the spirit, which these words of Sri Aurobindo carry: “If the spirit of doubt could be overcome by meeting it with arguments, there might be something in the demand for its removal by satisfaction through logic. But the spirit of doubt doubts for its own sake, for the sake of doubt; it simply uses the mind as its instrument for its particular dharma, and this not the least when that mind thinks it is seeking sincerely for a solution ofits honest and irrepressible doubts. Mental positions always differ, moreover, and it is well known that people can argue forever without one convincing the other.”

Being such, doubt can not be done away with by arguments and dialectics. Man can switch over from one belief to another, can become a believer from a non-believer, by virtue of arguments. But doubt refuses to depend either for its emergence or for its disappearance on the basis ofargument, though constantly it pretends to be nothing but logic, a comrade of rationale. (It may be proper to stress here that though doubt and disbelief are often mentioned as kins, according to many there does not practically exist any mental state as that of disbelief. If one does not believe in God, he believes in some form or other of nihilism or materialism.)

In order to be further explicit about the character of the doubt in question, we can divide doubt in general into the negative and the positive doubts. The first category of doubts tend to keep man static in his position. It never misses to impede any chance for progress in his consciousness. The moment man strives to grow beyond the narrow compass of his ignorance, the negative doubt assumes its otherwise suppressed ghastliness and works out obstructions. As on one front it shrinks from recognising anything new, simultaneously on the other front it looks forward to promptly interpret every event in the world in terms of the miserable meagreness of its ideas,–like the boy in that little story often attributed to Prof. Einstein. (Tired ofhis delivery before a large gathering, the Professor once managed to slip unnoticed into a roadside restaurant. As the boy approached him with the menu, Einstein discovered that he had forgotten to carry his specs. Hence he requested the boy to read out the menu to him. The boy with a sympathetic smile, confessed: “Sir, I am as illiterate as you are.”)

If this category of doubt doubts obstinately the possibility of knowledge of the very surface-mind, the second category of doubt, the positive doubt as we have termed the same, doubts the sufficiency of the knowledge the little mind possesses at a given time. The positive doubt refuses to believe that the wealth collected in the mind’s treasury is all that could be secured or the way in which the collection was made was the one and the only way. This category of doubt has its source in the heart of faith. The entire history of civilisation is only the history of victories of doubts of this sort. Had not the grandsire of the Old Stone Age doubted the unchangeability of his position, the status quo humanity would have continued to maintain is imaginable. Such doubt is in reality the flickering pre-vision of the promise of Evolution inherent in the consciousness of a certain moment. It cannot therefore remain content with the incomplete present. So what appears in such cases as doubt, is nothing but a passive assertion of faith and reliance in the future.

Hence, we see that something blooming out of the fountain of faith may even seem as doubt from a certain angle. When we have clearly realised this, a screen is rolled off our eyes, is revealed a wide world of endless activities, yet mysteriously coordinating everything in a network of forces emanating from a single source of faith. The life commences with faith and not with doubt. The right the child asserts the moment his tiny person is revealed to the world, is an expression of his unquestioning faith. The continuous sadhanahe carries on against several odds in his little life to stand upon his own legs, is the symbol of faith in action. From an instance as this to the mighty phenomena behind the grand movement of the universe; all do rest in the lap of an unfathomable faith. And the role of doubt on such a ground of faith is justly compared to that of a few patches of cloud floating against the sun.

Yet, the negative doubt or doubt in its usual sense is no less than like shackles, and must be rejected at once as far as any progress in spiritual life is concerned. There might be quite interesting scope in social life to display the fireworks of arguments and somersaults of polemics; but a spiritual aspirant has to be sure from the start that the experiences of Truth are under no obligation to come down to him via the prescribed steps of logic and intellect. Not only for spiritual, but for no kind of higher truth are applicable the laws of mental formulation. The truth of a certain phenomenon which occurs in the mind of philosophers of science, may be explained with laws framed accordingly in due time; but first and foremost, it may simply “come” to him. And is the realm of science not dominated by so many initiating ideas declared as hypotheses?

Pyrrlionism, agnosticism and similar theories which pronounce the impossibility of obtaining a true knowledge of things, depend on the physical and mental senses as the sole means of experience. But spiritual truth can find entrance without treading the usual tracks. That is why it is impossible to measure the spiritual truth in the barometer of ordinary senses and laws of the mind. Sri Aurobindo has given his uncompromising verdict on this in these words: “I would ask one simple question of those who would make the intellectual mind the standard and judge of spiritual experience. Is the Divine something less than mind or is it something greater? Is mental consciousness with its groping inquiry, endless arguments, unquenchable doubt, stiff and unplastic logic something superior or even equal to the Divine Consciousness or is it something inferior in its action and status? If it is greater, then there is no reason to seek after the Divine. If it is equal, then spiritual experience is quite superfluous. But if it is inferior, how can it challenge, judge, make the divine stand as an accused or a witness before its tribunal, summon it to appear as a candidate for admission before a Board of Examiners or pin it like an insect under its examining microscope?”

A spontaneous conviction blooms in the seeker in the very first step on the way of Aspiration; that is, arguments are nothing but the dissembling and venomous spies of “doubt”. They begin with an energetic ado in the mind only to demoralise it with their toxicology, with a view to gain complete control over it after a while. The mind must be on its guard to ascertain that in him the arguments and doubts have never been promoted to the position of “end”, from their not always indispensable position of humble “means”. After all, the purpose of any observation is to secure conviction for the inner seer of our being. The inner seer must posses the rein of the faculty of arguments and doubts, to stimulate it only when the necessity is felt by him alone. But when he prefers to suspend its action and expresses a conviction because he “sees” the truth therein, if then the dim-sighted mind drags him to the altar of doubt’s guillotine, spontaneous flowering of consciousness can not but get a mortal check. A little liberal exercise of common sense reveals to us a number of noble marvels which we have accepted without doubt. In the course of our life we may profusely encounter well-measured smiles and melodious vocabulary, but we do not doubt for a moment that of the millions of women in the world it is our mother who loves us most. The instinctive knowledge which makes us accept these facts without doubt that the champak flower is more beauteous than a crab or the fragrance of the lotus invokes a maternal tenderness around us, is there in abundance at the disposal of the inner seer within us and hence it does not take long for him to appreciate the Experience. Moreover, the Experience may be overwhelming. Sri Aurobindo assures thus: “When the Peace of God descends on you, when the Divine Presence is there within you, when the Ananda rushes on you like a sea, when you are driven like a leaf before the wind by the breath of the Divine Force, when Love flowers out from you on all creation, when Divine Knowledge floods you with a Light which illumines and transforms in a moment all that was before dark, sorrowful and obscure, when all that is becomes part of the One Reality, when the Reality is all around you, you feel at once by the spiritual contact, by the inner vision, by the illumined and seeing thought, by the vital sensation and even by the very physical sense, everywhere you see, hear, touch only the Divine. Then you can much less doubt it or deny it than you can deny or doubt daylight or air or the sun in heavan–for of these physical things you cannot be sure that they are what your senses represent them to be; but in the concrete experience of the Divine, doubt is impossible.

“Some things have to be believed to be seen” holds best in matters of spiritual experience. Nevertheless this holds good even in the day-to-day life of a “man of the world” and undoubtedly the noblest demonstrations of the spirit are in accordance with this maxim, although he may not be conscious of it.

Our age is an age of interrogation, and that not in a quite noble sense of the term. Life is not sunny; clouds of bitter doubt loom large over it. This is the reality of the surface of thing, for the time being. But a broad view of the entire course civilisation has taken shows that on the whole the finest achievements of civilisation rest on faith. Two powerful camps of the present time, science and politics, show, more and more, symptoms of being “faithward”–in spite of overwhelming outward evidences to the contrary. Expressed in a form of positive doubt, these words of Albert Einstein constitute the finest prelude to faith: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe: is as good as dead…his eyes are closed….To know that what is impenetrable tous really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms–this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness. In this sense and in this only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.” The trend becomes clear enough when the missile-expert Wernher Von Braun speaks out thus: “I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness, and so we are immortal.”

Trends of politics today undoubtedly bear the stamp of the victory of faith. With the growth of the conceptions of liberty and democracy faith becomes a fundamental necessity in the sphere of practical transaction, because “despotism may govern without faith but liberty cannot.”

As the stamp of faith will become more and more distinct on the surface of our life, as it is full of storms and struggles, the victory of our inner life over the former will become more and more evident. And finally, it is the complete victory of the inner over the outer that will justify our existence, in spite of the present condition of life, on this earth.