Faith & the faithful

[1]

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev [1]

Faith is not something that you can cultivate. If it happens to you, it happens, if it does not, it does not. Does this mean that, “I have to sit and wait and someday it will fall upon me?” No. If you understand the fundamentals of living here in this existence, you know that for anything to happen, you must create the right kind of condition.

If you do not create the right kind of condition, it does not matter how much you struggle, it is not going to happen. So if faith has to happen, you have to create the right kind of condition.
What is the condition necessary for faith? Jesus said, “Come follow me.” When he said this, the intellectuals, the educated and the powerful of that time did not follow him. Only the fishermen and farmers followed him. The “thinking minds” cannot follow anybody, that’s why only the simple and innocent could follow him.
Faith is only for the innocent. The moment education enters you, you have a thinking mind, a questioning mind, a doubting mind. With this, you cannot follow the path of faith. Does this mean that faith is impossible for you? No, but don’t start with something that you don’t have. Start with something that you have. Whatever is dominant in you, make use of it. If you are a thinking person, use your intellect; if you are a very physical person, use your physical attributes; if you have a very strong sense of energy or if you have lot of emotions in you, use those. But all the four need to be cultivated and used. If you come to a certain level of experience, then devotion becomes a natural part of you. If you try to be devout, you will become deceptive.
Faith is something that is within you. It is your quality. It is something that you become, not something that you believe in. Faith is just a deep falling back into existence. You as a person have fallen apart, and now you are like a simple little wave with the existence. You understand and you experience that you are just a brief happening here. It is not an intellectual understanding, it is a living experience that you just see yourself as a small outcrop of this earth. When you are like this as a living experience, then you are faith. Until then there is no point talking about faith.
The faithfulness that people talk about is simply loyalty. That is for slaves and idiots. People who talk loyalty are those whose vested interest is in continuing their hold on you. Loyalty is a devise to hold you. Faith is not a devise to hold, it is about liberation. Faith is not about being for this or that group. Faith is to become a part of existence. It is not something that you do, it is something that you become.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an internationally renowned spiritual leader, is a visionary, a humanitarian, author, poet and speaker.