TRUST BEYOND PROOF
You may have forgotten this, but Christ also said, “There are many sheep, but not all of them belong to my flock”. There shall be many doubters; let them doubt, for their doubts, too, will lead them. Start with doubt. Who starts with doubt? I love doubters; an honest doubter must be an earnest seeker. Doubting should not be engendered by curiosity. Doubt should arise from a genuine, sincere search. When you seek sincerely, you will overcome your doubts.
Scriptures teach various things because they have to appeal to different temperaments. There are multiple temperaments in the world. Some people are born of doubt. Many things in life cannot be proven. I would ask this young man, “Are you sure your father is your father?” You only think that because your mother has told you so. Many things in life cannot be proven; many things in life are taken on trust. The most excellent business deals are done over lunch; the contracts are signed later. The relationship between husband and wife is one of trust. They can cheat each other, and perhaps some of them could be so clever that, for years, it would not be known to either party. But there is trust, there is faith, and faith is what the whole of Christianity is based upon. You talk of God – prove God to me. You speak of reincarnation, prove that to me. There are a lot of things in life that are known by inference.
BEYOND THE MIND THERE IS NO SATANS AND NO GODS
The finite mind is not capable of comprehending the infinite. The finite mind can only infer certain things. Specific laws of logic are applied, and in their application, we would think, “This could be so.” But that is not the criterion; the criterion is what one experiences. So many Satans indeed come in the name of the Lord, so many of them do, and if the Satan deludes you, it is not the fault of the Satan, it is your fault! Yes. WHY do you get deluded by Satan? You get so deluded by an evil power because you have an evil tendency in you. Because of the evil tendency in you, you can only see the evil in others and think, “I am being deluded.”
Forget the mind, if the tendencies in you are good and pure, your heart will feel that “Here are words uttered that will stand through ages and ages to come.” So, the criteria are your heart and your feelings; the mind will help. Yes, use the mind. I always say it is the most cunning animal. It is the mind that invents the Satans and the Gods. They are all inventions of the mind. The entire universe is nothing but mind. All problems in life are nothing but the mind.
How we tutor that mind, how we learn through meditational practices, how we can overcome the mind, how we can go beyond the mind, and there truth is found, and yet when truth is found, it cannot be explained. And when you reach that level beyond the mind, all your Satans and your Gods, they all disappear. They have no existence; their existence lies in the mind. So that which is written through the mind must be of the mind.
THE MIND CAN BE REFINED TO ITS HIGHEST SATTVIC LEVEL
The purpose of our Meditation Foundation is to experience truth. We do not want to know about truth – for that you go to a university because Universities only tell you ABOUT a thing, not what a thing is. In our Meditation Foundation, we learn to experience what truth IS, and that truth is forever eternal. That truth is so powerful when known and experienced that no Satanic power could ever touch it or come near it. They cannot because when the light is switched on, darkness disappears. Darkness becomes non-existent, darkness becomes an illusion, and the mind has these illusory faculties. The mind is capable of experiencing illusions – that is the stumbling block to the truth. If any man wants to find Divinity through the mind, he cannot.
The mind can be refined to its highest Sattvic level. The mind is also governed by the 3 Gunas, which constitute Nature, the entirety of the universe. I have spoken about the Gunas before. You have the Tamas, inertia, laziness, darkness; you have the Rajas, which is the activating force, the passionate force; you have the Sattva, which is light, light, light, light.
Although the mind is a stumbling block to the progress of Man’s evolution, the same mind can be trained so that the Sattvic forces, the force of light, can dominate one’s life. The 3 Gunas will forever be there; they are indestructible, as Truth, or Divinity, is indestructible. These forces will always be there, but we have to allow Sattva to dominate, not Tamas. By allowing Sattva to dominate, the mind becomes increasingly refined. Sattva is more subtle; it reaches the highest subtlety of relativity. While Tamas, on the other hand, is at its grossest level. So, we allow Sattva to dominate so that the mind experiences the finest relative quality of existence. When we reach the finest relativity, then we go beyond it and experience truth.
FROM DOUBT TO FAITH
So, we use the mind as an instrument to overcome itself, and then the power of darkness, the power of Tamas, call it Satan, call it what you will, disappears. There is an old saying – “it takes a thief to catch a thief.” It takes a Satan to recognise a Satan. Yes, that is true, very true. So, when we go through our meditational practices and reach the refinement, the Sattvic level of our minds, we are in tune, and we go beyond all the doubts.
It is easy to say, “do not doubt, do not doubt, believe, believe, believe”, it is easy to say it, but we are talking of practical methods – how to overcome doubts. The human personality, the mind, the heart, can never remain a vacuum. So, when you remove doubts through this process, it has to be filled with something, and it gets filled with faith – faith and trust are the same – the pillar on which this entire society is based. We gave examples before on how we take on faith in everything in life, and when words of wisdom are spoken, they are not only understood by the mind, but they are felt by the heart, and that is the verification of truth – how does my heart feel? How do I experience these words that I hear?
Now hearing is not enough. After listening, Shravan – that is the word in Sanskrit – after Shravan comes Manan, which means “After hearing, contemplate on the words you have heard”, and after contemplating, experience those words.
FROM DOUBT TO FAITH
Truth is unutterable, but the truth we speak of is only a fraction, but a fraction is needed to guide us along the path to experience the totality, the completeness, of truth. So that will always remain a personal experience, and experiencing truth is synonymous with realising truth. When you experience truth and realise truth, you realise yourself; when you recognize yourself, you realise Divinity; and a realised man that is totally in communion with Divinity, sees no Satan. For once, he experiences the omnipresence of Divinity (omnipresent means being present everywhere), where is the place for Satan? They remain on the cinema screen.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1978 – 01
