Pariprasna Approach the wise sages, offer reverential salutations, repeatedly ask proper questions, serve them and thus know the Truth. — Bhagavad Gita
July 2019
Reason and Faith
QUESTION: What are the relative roles of reason and faith in the path of devotion? MAHARAJ: Faith and reason are the two unique faculties of the human mind. Animals have neither of these. Many a learned man recognizes that reason is a distinguishing feature of man from animal. But by a strange perversity, they fail to recognize that the faculty of faith is equally so. Faith and rationality are like the two legs of a man. One who is devoid of either of these faculties is like a one-legged man. In everyday life also it would be noticed that ninety per cent of our activities are based on information accepted on faith. For this the so-called rationalists have perhaps no objection. All their objection is reserved for the acceptance of an ultimate spiritual principle that transcends Nature and of which Nature is only an expression. Now, it is an obvious fact that reason understood as a processing of data cannot in itself provide the data. In matters connected with life and Nature, the data are provided by sense experiences. These also include scientific powers of the senses enhanced by instruments. The function of reason consists in processing these data and establishing connections between them drawing inferences from them, and formulating theories based on them. Naturalism contends that Nature is self-sufficient, and self-explanatory. There are no data beyond Nature and even if there are, there is no way of getting at them. Large numbers of people feel that this is a very unsatisfactory position. For it makes life and Nature meaningless and to submit to a meaningless existence is an impossible situation with the human spirit. Those who are satisfied with the life of the senses and the joys and fulfilments it offers, however, stifle questions on this problem. They follow the way of the ostrich by ignoring the problem. But no one with an earnest spirit can rest at that. Such a person struggles through the path of introspection to overcome this stalemate and it is the verdict of the best among such, that they are able to solve the riddle by developing the power of intuition by which they recognize that Reality in its essence is Sat Chit Ananda (Existence Knowledge Bliss) and not a mere mechanical entity. The witness of intuition is immensely more powerful than sense perception. Now this power of intuition is only developed from faith. Faith must begin to operate when pure reasoning gets stultified. Faith is the pre-acceptance of the nature of the ultimate reality as Sat Chit Ananda, with utmost sincerity and with resolution to live in a way as to lead to this intuitive experience. It includes also faith in the Sastras or scriptures that inculcates doctrines based on the intuitions of the great seers of the spiritual reality and the disciplines laid down by them for aspirants to follow.
33 The Vedanta Kesari
PA G E S P O N S O R : S R I H A R I S H R A N G A N AT H A S H A S T R I , B E N G A LU R U
Q & A with Srimat Swami Tapasyananda (1904 to 1991), Vice-President of the Ramakrishna Order.
