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Aspects of Faith (Cont'd)
Faith compels Master to respond: What is it that we are
giving Him which releases such powers, the release of which even He
is not aware? I would suggest it is faith. Faith is the coin (if you
will excuse that word), it is our currency, you know. Every act of
faith in some mysterious way releases His powers, with or without His
consciousness. It is not necessary that the Master should be conscious
of what is going on. So, it is a faith in Faith itself I should say.
Because when we have no faith in Faith, we cannot have Faith! "No,
no Sir, this is a situation which has gone beyond faith." How can
any situation go beyond faith? For instance, "Faith can move mountains."
'Mountains' is a non-living material; conglomerate of matter. If you
can move a mountain by faith, can't you move a human heart by faith
- whether it is awake or sleeping? Heart never sleeps. If your heart
is going to sleep when you sleep, you won't wake up! Isn't it?
Therefore, it is to that heart that we address our faith; not to His
mind. In some way, the heart receives that message, and heart being
the heart, is to our advantage, because momentarily it is not under
the control of the consciousness which may otherwise say, "No,
this fellow is undeserving." The heart is supreme when the Master
is sleeping. This is a truth which we should understand, that the Master
is more a Master, more generous, more kind when asleep. However infinitely
kind He may have been in the waking hours, yet there is an element of
the conscious judgement of situations and men and matters, which is
held in abeyance when He goes to sleep! It is to that, that the faith
appeals.
Now, if the heart must respond, the call must come from another heart.
You cannot go and tap and say, "Open!" Therefore, faith must
be in the heart. We are all intellectually faithful. We all believe
in faith: "Yes Sir, I am very faithful to my wife. But this is
the first act of infidelity!" So, when there is no faith in That,
on what else are you going to have faith? So, we have been taught to
believe with the mind. True faith must emanate from the heart. When
my stupid human heart, cluttered up with all the things that are hidden
in dungeons and caves, can respond to the call of another heart, will
my Master's heart not respond?
Now it is to the goodness in our nature that we appeal, when we have
an act of Faith - which hits the Master's heart. Because if you remember
reading in the Master's literature, He says, "If you are able to
knock in such a way that the Master's heart opens, your job is over.
So, that brings us to the next question: "How often have we to
have faith?" This is stupid. There can be only one act of faith.
Now, we are used to perennial acts of faith. Like our recurring monsoons
and monsoon failures, we have recurring acts of faith and faith-failures.
Why? Because they are not acts of faith at all! They are intellectual
indulgences: "No, no, Sir, I am having faith. But my headache is
preventing my doing it." Or, "I am having faith in Babuji,
but you know He does not even look at me when I sit before Him!"
What I am suggesting is, faith is like love; only once it is necessary.
We love a person and that is that. You don't have to love again and
again and again. It cannot be possible to love again and again. Similarly,
if you have ever been capable of faith, it could have been only one
act of faith; once and that is it. There is nothing more in it to say,
"I have faith." What is there? Because in that act of faith
I have laid my heart at His feet: "Take it. You say it is yours:
well, I give it to you. Now, administer it." So, if anybody says,
"Sir, yesterday I had faith. Today I am having faith. Tomorrow
too: no, no; I shall have to have faith! After all, without faith how
can we exist?" It does not work.
I would like to suggest that every time you are anxious of what the
Master is going to do for you or has done for you or will do for you,
it is an act of mistrust, lack of faith in the Master. It is a direct
hit at his capacity to know what we need and when we need it, and to
fulfill that need. In a sense it is a disgraceful act of total lack
of faith. One who has faith in the ultimacy of the Master, the supremacy
of the Master, the Divinity of the Master, can never ask. What is there
to ask for? Do we know even what to ask for? Suppose Babuji says, "Ask
and I shall give you." What are you going to ask for? And in all
our traditions, whether it be of Christ on the Mount or Nachiketa before
Yama, whenever they have been asked to ask, it was temptation.
So let us remember that the Master never says, "My son, ask me
what you want," because he can give without my asking. He knows
my needs better than myself. He knows when that need has to be fulfilled,
better than myself. He knows how much he has to do, before I know it.
Then what is the tamasha (joke) in going to such a person and
saying, "Babuji you know, my wife is saying that, "You have
been here for six months in Sahaj Marg, are you liberated?" Or,
My wife says, "The brother-in-law is liberated, why are you not
liberated?" Even worse, it's a competition between human beings
you see. So we are playing like children with spirituality.
When we have faith, miracles are possible; when we believe, only
mundane things are possible; when we trust, human relations are
possible. This elevates the concept of faith to, shall we say, a
divine level where by having faith, the very act of having faith seems
to mobilize the resources of the Universe, what you can call the resources
of God Himself; Deity Itself, in some way to achieve that miracle which
is exemplified in the English Proverb, "Faith moves mountains."
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