Why believe

Dinner with W and J today was quite enjoyable, and provided a suitable atmosphere, as usual, for some enlivening discussions. Amongst the things we talked about was one of W's recurring questions - phrased in different ways, but which essentially boils down to this - Why should one believe in a claim that is impossible, in theory, to verify scientifically? How can one bring oneself to accept something that one cannot prove with absolute certainty?

This question is a very pertinent one when it comes to spiritual claims made by teachers over the ages who claimed to be Prophets/Manifestations of God. Firstly, even the concept of God is unverifiable - often just by definition. Then there come questions of the human soul, its nature that is beyond this material world, and so by definition impossible to sense through our material scientific apparatus; claims about life after death; and so on. Why should we believe these claims?

I pondered this question while biking home - is there a clear answer to this, beyond just saying that it comes down to one's personal experiences? Hmm, maybe. As i mused over this, I created the following story which possibly illustrates one reason why an attitude that refuses to accept anything not verifiable in theory, might not always lead to truth. Along the course of the story, I indicate metaphors for spiritual entities/concepts in italics within parentheses. Obviously, like all analogies, it is intended to illustrate a specific point, and should not be carried too far by the reader.

Imagine a community of people that live on a desert island. Till as far back as their society existed, they have had no contact with any other human civilization in the world. Their community has evolved much the same as the rest of humanity except for one key difference - they have no eyes (spiritual sight). Their entire existence is based on sensing the world through 4 senses - touch, hearing, taste and smell.

One day a foreigner (Prophet/Manifestation) lands on their shores from some distant land. As he walks to the nearest town, he meets some people and is surprised to find they are all blind. As he walks on, he meets more and more people, and realizes that not only is every single person on this island blind, they have no concept of sight itself. Struck by how much they are missing, he gathers a group of people around him, and starts telling them about the sense of seeing. He tells them about the sun (God), which is source of all the light (The Holy Spirit/spiritual energy) in the world. This light enables us to see the world, and understand qualities of living entities such as color (the soul). In fact, though nobody there can see the sun, it is the source of all life on that island, and without it nothing would exist there.

But the people gathered around him have no idea what he is talking about. "What is this sun you speak of?", they ask. "We cannot hear it, nor can we feel it, nor taste it, nor smell it. Therefore it cannot exist. How can we believe that this entity you claim exists, which we cannot sense in any way, is actually the source of all life on this island? And what do you mean by color? Do you mean to say that we all have this quality called color, which we have no way to sense? I can feel my skin, feel its texture, smell it, taste it, hear the sound my finger makes when i rub against it - but you say it also has a color? I cannot believe any of this!" Saying so, they all decide the foreigner is mad and dangerous, and kill him.

The above story, with some minor variations, could well be the story of any of the spiritual teachers who have come down to earth to teach us about the existence of a spiritual reality that goes beyond the material world as we can sense it. Clearly the foreigner who came to the island knew more about reality - and yet there was no way for the people on that island to realize that with certainty.

Now how could they have understood him better? What they should have done was to question him - ask him about the world as they knew it. If they did, they would have found that he had just as good a command over the other senses they were familiar with - maybe even better. And he could tell them everything about the world as they knew it - and more. And this would help build some trust in them. Then they could interact with him on a regular basis, observe how he lived his life, how he interacted with other people - and all this would help them, over time, build more and more trust in his words, as they saw how it all consistently fit together. And then eventually they would reach a stage where they trusted him enough to accept that they could not understand sight not because the concept didn't exist, but because of their own imperfections. And as they grew more sensitive and open to this, they would become aware of other evidences in the world for what the foreigner claimed, the heat of the sun's rays on their hands, the coolness at night, the correlation between that and climate in a part of the island etc - and they would find it all fitting in with the foreigner's claims about reality.

The process of spiritual acceptance, I think, is pretty similar. We are encouraged to never accept anything blindly, but question it. But the questioning must always be done with the attitude of learning, not with the attitude of trying to prove something wrong. And then it requires a lot of sustained effort over time, studying the writings of these teachers to see how it all fits together, looking at the effects of these teachings on people who follow them. And finally it requires us to relate it back to our own lives, see how it fits in with what we can perceive of reality, and see how it can help us better understand our own lives, and how we should think and act. As we continue doing this over time, and find more and more things that make sense, it helps us be more trusting and believing, and helps us accept those things that maybe we cannot prove for certain.

It all comes back, as Hamid once said, to the fact that spiritual growth is a dynamic process and not static - and so by focusing on that which we do understand (not on what we don't) and applying it to our lives , and by constant effort through prayer and studying, we will automatically understand more over time. For action begets greater wisdom, which in turn motivates more action, and so on.

Would love to hear more thoughts on this...