With this post we begin a short series in which Hazrat Inayat Khan speaks of the light of faith and the disease of doubt.
Faith and doubt are as light and darkness. The moments of faith are like the moments of the day, and the moments of doubt are like those of the night. As both day and night come in life, so hours of faith and hours of darkness also come. It is the seeking of the soul to reach that stage where it feels faith and it is the nature of the soul to gather doubts around itself. Therefore the soul attracts both faith and doubt. If it happens to attract doubts more, then more doubts will be gathered; if it attracts faith, then more and more faith will come.
Doubts may be likened to clouds. If there is one cloud, it will attract others, and if many clouds are gathered, still more will be attracted to join them. If there is one current of the sun shooting through the clouds, it will scatter them, and once they are scattered they will be scattered more and more, and more and more light will manifest itself to view. Doubts cover faith, but faith breaks doubt. Therefore faith is more dependable: doubts only come and go.
It would not be an exaggeration if I said that doubt is a disease – a disease that takes away faith. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that doubt is the rust that eats the iron, the iron-like faith. It is very easy to allow doubts to work, and it is difficult to keep faith. However much evolved a person may be, there comes a time when doubts take hold of him, and the moments he is in doubt, the light of intelligence disappears. Therefore, there is a constant conflict between doubt and faith. If there was not this enemy who always fights with faith, man could do great things, wonderful things; every man would perform miracles, every man would be perfect. This shows that the greater your faith, the greater person you are; the more deeply rooted your faith, the higher you reach.
One might ask: Is it possible to develop faith? Is it possible to find faith? Yes, in every person a spark of faith is hidden somewhere, but sometimes it is so covered, clouded and buried, that it needs digging, it needs being dug out. What is it buried with? With the sand of doubts. As soon as the sand is removed, the faith, like water, springs up.
One can study this principle in a child: a child is born with faith. When one says, ‘This is water, this is bread, this is father, this is mother,’ the child does not refuse to believe it; it does not say, ‘It is not so.’ The child at once takes it to be so. It is afterwards that doubts begin to come. When the infant grows up, when it begins to hear a story and asks, ‘But is it real?’ – then doubt begins. Very often worldly knowledge gives more and more doubts; the experiences of worldly life make one doubt more and more, and when doubt becomes predominant in a person’s nature, then he doubts everything and everyone. He doubts those who should not be doubted, and he doubts those who can be doubted; there is always a doubt before his eyes. No sooner does he cast his glance upon a person than the cloud of doubt stands between them. In this way inspiration is lost, power is lost, the personality is lost; man has become a machine, a mechanism.
In the business world, in the world of industry, a person does not care what your feelings are, what your being is, how much evolved you are, how deeply you feel, what your principles are, what your thoughts. What this person is concerned with is, if the other will sign the paper, whether he will stamp that paper at once, and whether there are two witnesses who watch it at the same time. It does not matter what you are, who you are, as long as the paper is perfect. We are coming to mechanical perfection; we seek after worldly, earthly perfection.
Five hundred years ago – this shows how the world has gradually changed – a Hindustani poet has written: ‘Those days have passed when a value was attached to man’s personality.’ That is so; it is some centuries since the world went downward. It seems that man has no trust, no faith in another man; what he trusts is the written word.
To be continued …