Beware of obstacles. Overcome them with faith. Intellect (not intelligence) is a great obstacle. Transcend intellect. Intellect creates dissipation, initiates doubts and discouragement, while faith heals, soothes, strengthens and illuminates. It materializes divine experience during meditation. Whatever might be the intellectual futility of faith, believe me, it is faith alone which is capable of emptying the mind of all inherited and cultivated thoughts and its modifications. When the mind is rendered blank of all thoughts in the highest range of meditation (even the thought of the object of meditation) then something natural, something inner (neither inherited nor cultivated), something spontaneous, something impossible of sense expression arises. So, you understand that wisdom finally is quite independent of the object of meditation, I mean uninfuenced by the name and form you meditate upon.
Life is really a means for divine vision. Who knows what we shall be in the future. Every evening is a calling bell of our Lord. Blessed are those who answer that call.
Faith is the basis of sadhana. Let not faith waver. Laziness is the greatest of all enemies. Faith in God can overcome any amount of laziness. Laziness is a clear indication that the sadhaka lacks in faith.
Logically and thoughtfully God can't be denied at all. Those who deny his existence are illogical, thoughtless and therefore obstinate. Every man of somewhat deep reasoning faces great difficulties in denying God. That is to say, he can't help believing in Him. Expressed denial of God, amidst friends, need not be taken as a sincere and faithful attempt, for every man fails, while thinking deeply, to disbelieve His existence. So initiate thought culture.
A sincere and faithful atheist is a most insincere and faithless student of thought and logic. Beware of such a fellow in your daily dealings. A sincere atheist is psychologically understood to be a person wholly charged with conflicting thoughts, decisions and behaviours.
Disbelievers too are our friends, no doubt, but we want to awaken their suppressed and dormant belief for their own good and welfare.
Atheism is an abnormal state of suppression, hence opposed to natural laws; while belief is a sublimate expression of latent ignorance and abnormalities; hence it is in accordance with the natural laws. An atheist struggles amidst indecisive thoughts of various shades; while a believer moves with decisions, confidence, faith, certainties and hope.
A believer is never confronted with a question or problems which he can't explain. In other words, a believer has a solution for every blessed or dammed problem, while a disbeliever has to face many odd questions to which he can't find a satisfying answer. That is to say, an atheist finds many doors of revelation and explanations closed to his reasoning. A believer easily replies to the question within; while a disbeliever struggles to weave them or rather makes the replies.
In practice everybody believes in God; no exception to this dharma. It is only in theory that one denies or accepts His existence in the shade of his own conceptions.
If one were to disbelieve in Him in practice, there would have arisen horrible doubts, uncertainties, mysteries and frustrations in life.
The simple fact that one is very certain about a definite line and law of behaviour or events in plants, men, women, animals, planets and in other things that he sees and deals with, proves that he 'really' believes in an orderly 'Law' and its 'Controller' and 'Creator' as well. It is based upon his belief in 'some system' that he works for an unseen result, hopes for a 'particular' culmination of events and is sure that a particular action would be surely resulting this way or that way.
It is devoid of such belief that one admits frustration and ideas of uncertainties in his mind. Devoid of such a belief one entertains ideas of negative nature, of death and failure, of disease and suppression. Lacking in such a faith and belief one loses confidence and willpower and mental equilibrium.
So, let us correct our personalities by entertaining or strengthening the belief-faith.
Printed in YOGA, Vol. 10, No. 6 (June/July 1972)