Belief and Knowledge

A speaker at a sermon I recently attended said “Knowledge without belief is not sufficient.” For a person with a desire to seek knowledge it was intriguing.

All religious texts emphasize unequivocally on the need to have faith. All books on spirituality and modern propagandists of the power of mind say that the mind can achieve whatever it believes and thus the need for unstinted belief.

Why is this need for faith or belief? Is knowledge, followed by action not enough to achieve what we desire to achieve?

The logical mind seeks to understand and this seeking for understanding leads to the thirst to know or knowledge. This knowledge coupled by a strong desire for achievement of goal or purpose or need for success leads us into action. And when we act with knowledge we succeed.

Where does belief and faith come in all of this?

There could be many answers to this, and each one of us can discover his own answer. That is a matter of faith. And that probably is also the shortest, and as with anything shortest, also the most complex answer.

Let us get a little simpler.

If I have to travel from Mumbai to Pune and I decide to take the train because my knowledge says it is the cheapest, reliable as well as comfortable mode of transport, I need to first find out which trains go to Pune. That is seeking knowledge. So I will act, i.e. visit the railway site, find out the trains using a query and then book a ticket on the train which suits my schedule.

However at the basis of all this is my fundamental faith in the railway website and the fact that if it says a train will go via Pune and halt at Pune then it will indeed halt at Pune.

Imagine my state of mind if I didn’t have that belief in the railway website or the railways as a system. There would be a constant fear throughout the journey on whether I will reach my destination or not, whether I will achieve my desired outcome.

Life though is not as certain as the Indian (or for that matter any) Railways. And thus even when we act with knowledge we live in doubt, in the constant fear of achieving outcome.

Whether I am making the right investments which will yield expected returns? Whether the returns would be good enough when they happen? Is my current job going to continue or will I become redundant?

The fact of life is that most of the time we do reach our destinations; that our investments are good enough to meet our needs, that less than 5% actually lose a job and even for those few, 90% of them find something or other to earn a living.

Yet without belief we live in constant doubt and though in the end (or somewhere in the middle) we reach our goal, the journey is fraught with fear and uncertainty. And due to this fear and uncertainty of the outcome we fail to enjoy the journey; notice the verdant greenery of the plains of Karjat, the thrill of overlooking the valley at Lonavala, the childish excitement of counting the tunnels or the beauty of the always full Indrayani river as it snakes along the railway track at Kamshet.

Because all the time we are worried whether we will reach Pune or not.

Belief takes away the fear of outcome. And without that fear, not only am I able to act with clarity and thus with greater chances of making the right decisions, I also enjoy the entire process.

Life, if one were to define it like a line, is a journey between two points – birth and death. Our ability to learn i.e. act with knowledge, retrospect, correct and act again determines the success during the journey. Belief ensures that we lead the journey with clarity and enjoy it without fear. And when I act with clarity and without fear success become that much more easy and guaranteed.

That was my discovery of the reason for belief. There would be many more and I am sure you may discover your own. Or you may believe otherwise – that would be your belief.

And there would be a similar argument for belief without knowledge and action. We will leave that for some other day.

40 Days with God – Love and Fear

Ever since I posted the article about the experience of actually ‘being there’ at Kaaba many people have over emails or personally talked about how they had a similar experience of having a practiced list of things to seek from God, but once in the presence of the deity having forgotten everything and simply returned with a bowed head and a light heart. Interestingly they belonged to different religions and sects each with his/her own deity or pilgrimage.

How then is my religion different from anyone else’s if our experiences are same? Could there really be different religions? We will continue to understand religion as we go along.

To understand, one needs to explore, to have, as we said in an earlier chapter, the ‘talab’. And for those on a quest to learn there is no dearth of questions. By the end of the first week I was confronted with the question of what is right behavior? To leave my wife and go to offer prayers or to accompany her but miss some part of it? To cry in private or allow the tears to flow publicly, because that would be tantamount to putting ones faith on display which is forbidden.

Is it the burden of the conscientious to be forever in doubt about right and wrong?

I don’t know.

And that was the overwhelming feeling towards the end of the first week. That I didn’t know the answers to so many questions; that I didn’t know whether I was taking the right decision or not and I didn’t know, with all due respect to our scholarly guide, whether he or anyone else would be able to understand my dilemmas and guide me. It was then that I understood what one truly needs to seek from the Lord when one is in His presence – Hidayat (guidance), Hikmat (wisdom), Ilm (knowledge) and Imaan (faith).

If we have this in true measure life would be so simple to live.

The first week at Makkah, as I have narrated earlier was a continuous process of gratitude and forgiveness and the natural tears that flowed from the realization of God’s graciousness and your own wrongdoings. After every such bout of crying, which was frequent in the first week, there would be a feeling of deep relaxation, of having shed a small burden. By the end of the week though, I began to worry about the intensity becoming diluted and the tears drying up. After all how long can one continue to be impacted by the same experience?

There was no need to worry. I should have rather, as one of my trainers at a coaching workshop long ago emphasized, trusted the process.

Sometime during the second week I suddenly realized that I loved the word of Allah on my lips. I have to admit that while I knew that jikr or chanting the name of God is a preferred act any time, I would do it either mechanically or due to the religious decree. There was a lack of feeling or belief in it. I couldn't see how it helped. Suddenly now I realized I loved taking that name – there was no logic or reasoning – just simple, plain liking.

I don’t know how or why that happened but when I think on hindsight I feel that when one is filled with penitence and gratitude it is only natural to eventually feel love. And what pleasure it is when you do something not for reward or fear of punishment but from a feeling of pure love?

I realized that day what the Sufi’s mean by ‘rab da ishq’ – the love of the Lord. When all you want is your beloved’s name on your lips and her sight in your eyes. When you raise your hands to the ears at the beginning of the namaaz saying ‘muh mera taraf kaaba sharief key’ (I start my prayer facing the kaaba) and raise your eyes to see the Kaaba actually in front of you – nothing can match that start. And then when you bow down in sijdaah (prostration) you do not want to rise up again, wanting the forehead to stay in contact with that holy land and the heart in total subjugation to God. That feeling is like no other.

And I questioned myself whether I had ever loved my wife, my parents with the same intense love that I now felt. Or was I only expecting such love in return? How happy would life be if one were to bring such love in all the relationships?

That evening though a new doubt awaited me. In his routine discourse after dinner our guide said that a true Muslim lived his life between the Love and Fear of Allah.

How can Love co-exist with Fear? They appear such contrasting emotions. When you love someone so completely where was the need to fear? How could the Prophet and his followers who were already blessed spend nights in contrition and fear?

The answer wasn't difficult to discover. If your boss told you at the beginning of the year that he was so impressed by the way you work that he had already marked you as ‘outstanding’ in the appraisal system, you would fear that nothing you did that year should make him change his impression. The higher the reward, the greater would be the sense of responsibility and the fear of wrongdoing. And thus the blessed would in fact be more afraid and contrite than anyone else.

The fear was not about losing the reward – that had been already marked in the ‘system’. The fear would be about losing the trust which your boss had reposed by taking that decision. And that is a much heavy but enabling fear which helps you take the difficult but right decisions when the wrong is so easy and desirable.

And this love and fear only can lighten the burden of the conscientious.

The gratitude and remorse of the first week had led to love and fear in the second. As the third and final week in Makkah arrived it started to turn into panic.

Had I done enough to achieve the objective with which I had set out – rab ko raazi karna – to seek Gods consensus. In one week I would be leaving the house of God. There was not much time to seek an answer to that critical question.