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The Nature of Faith · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  What is faith? Faith has generally been
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  associated with belief in a religion and it's specific
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  tenants, or articles of faith. We are educated within our
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  religion of choice about the basic beliefs, that underlie,
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  that religion, and we are asked to accept them on faith.
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  In some cases, these articles of Faith are due to negotiated
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  agreements among Church Elders, at some point in the distant
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  past. And in some cases, these beliefs
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  are fully contradicted by knowledge that has subsequently
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  come to light as Humanity grows and advances in its
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  understanding. It is, for this reason,
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  primarily that science has rejected the common idea of
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  faith faith. However, is not the affirmation
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  of beliefs, tenants or dogmas associated.
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  With a specific religious background in its deepest and
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  truest sense, Faith represents a form of non mental, knowing that
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  nevertheless is felt as true and self-evident.
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  For those who are immersed in the mental Consciousness, the
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  idea that there can be a form of knowledge that is not directly
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  available to the mind or that relies on an instrument of
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  knowing other than the mind is inconceivable.
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  Yet, if we examine closely, we can see that the range of mental
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  understanding is limited within a specific upper and lower
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  field. Below the mental level of
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  understanding knowing takes the form of a subconscious or even
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  unconscious habit, which we call Instinct.
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  Instinct does not rely on the mind and is evident throughout
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  the Animal Kingdom in some cases.
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  This instinct is very precise and detailed and it's working
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  just as there is a form of knowing below the mental field.
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  There are also forms of knowing above the I filled the evolution
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  of Consciousness is not completed and man, therefore is
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  what funeral been do? Calls a transitional being Faith
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  them from this standpoint is not a dogmatic belief in a system of
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  ideas. But rather the confirmation of a
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  knowledge obtained through a different instrument of knowing
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  than the mind the rightness and truth of the faith is something
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  more akin to intuition and to mental logic, Faith, gives the
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  individual the courage to continue even when faced with
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  the contradictory view of the mind, or the vital being SRI
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  aurobindo writes, quote Faith does not depend upon experience.
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  It is something that is there before experienced when one
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  starts the yoga, it is not usually on the strength of
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  experience, but on the strength of faith, it is.
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  So not only in yoga and the spiritual life, but in ordinary
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  life, also, all men of action, discoverers inventors, creators
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  of Acknowledge proceed by faith and until the proof is made, or
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  the thing done, they go on. In spite of disappointment,
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  failure, disproof, denial, because of something in them
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  that tells them that this is the truth.
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  The thing that must be followed, and done ramakrishna even went
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  so far as to say when asked, whether Blind Faith was not
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  wrong. The Blind Faith was the only
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  kind to have for Faith as either blind.
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  Or it is not Faith, but something else reasoned.
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  Inference, proved conviction where a certain knowledge.
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  Faith is the souls witness to something, not yet, manifested
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  achieved or realized, but which yet the nowhere within us even
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  in the absence of all indications feels to be true or
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  sir pleat supremely worth following or achieving. this
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  thing within us can last even when there is no fixed belief,
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  in the mind, even when the vital struggles in Revolt and refuses,
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  Who is there that practices the yoga and has not his periods
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  long periods of disappointment and failure and disbelief and
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  darkness. But there is something that
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  sustains him and even goes on in spite of himself.
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  Because it feels that what it followed after was yet true and
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  it more than feels, it knows. The fundamental Faith In Yoga.
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  Is this inherent in the soul that the Divine exists?
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  And the Divine is the one thing to be followed after.
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  Nothing else in life is worth having in comparison with that.
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  So long as a man has that Faith, he is marked for the spiritual
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  life and I will say that even if his nature is full of obstacles
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  and crammed, with denials and difficulties, and even if he has
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  many years of struggle, he is marked out for success in the
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  spiritual life. And quote, reference SRI
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  aurobindo, and the mother growing within the psychology of
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  inner development. Chapter 3 growth of
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  Consciousness basic requisites Pages 41 to 42,