Ego of belief
People are always questioning whether to believe in God or not to believe in God. If I ask you whether you believe you have two hands or tell you that you have them, even if you cannot see, you will say you have them because in your experience you know it is so.
When it comes to hands you know, but with gods and godmen you talk about believing because you are not sincere enough to admit that you do not know.
The basis of belief is that you are not straight enough to admit that you do not know. Only if you say “I do not know” does the possibility of knowing arise. “I do not know” opens up a tremendous possibility. When you realise that you don’t know, the longing to know will come. When the longing to know comes, seeking will come. When seeking comes, there is a possibility of knowing.
Whatever you do not know and yet believe ensures that you will never know. If your intention is to remain ignorant you must believe something, otherwise there is no need to believe anything. Either you know something or you do not know it — that is all there is to life. If you have not made your life in such a way that you can be straight with the world, or at least with yourself, you must be 100 per cent straight. What you know, you know; what you do not know, you do not know. If you are straight with the whole world, that is absolutely wonderful. But if you have not made your life that wonderful or beautiful, at least don’t deceive yourself.
If you make yourself believe things that are not a reality for you — about God or the devil — it is still a belief. The issue is not what you believe; the issue is believing something that you don’t know for sure. You are deceiving yourself, you are not willing to admit that you do not know. If you say “I do not know”, you will become gentle, you will walk gently. Only when you think you know, you will walk swaggeringly.
Belief is a horrible egoistic state because you think you know not just this life, but the Creator and beyond. All the struggle in this world is about one man’s belief versus another man’s belief. But it is always being projected as good versus evil, which is not true. It is time to stop this. There is enough intellect in the world to cultivate a certain level of awareness, to enable people to realise that what they know they know, and what they do not know they do not know. This is a simple way to exist. And this “I do not know” is the only possibility for you to know. If you destroy that, you will never know.
— Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an internationally renowned spiritual leader, is a visionary, a humanitarian,
author and poet. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org
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