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The Four Elements of Faith
Fall 1996
Presented January 11, 1995 in New York City


     We are taught, and we experience, that in order to make progress on the Path, to grow spiritually, one must have faith. Having faith might simply mean "trusting" or believing in something, someone or some process that is "good." Faith is Trust - trusting in something good. No matter how life appears to us at any given moment, we are taught to still have faith.
     Our problem with faith, however, is that it calls on us to exercise our faculties in ways to which we are not accustomed. Faith does not entirely depend on nor is it identified with what we see, hear, smell, taste or touch. These are our normal mundane faculties. These are the same faculties that are used to measure life, define reality and catalogue creation in the physical world - the world of material science. Scientists look into microscopes. Physicists measure the frequency of vibrations and sound. Doctors examine patients by touching, by looking into their eyes, ears, nose and mouth. But we know from our own experience that faith does not exist nor depend upon the five senses and therefore, cannot be materially measured. The "leap of faith" is even greater than being asked to trust in something that is "good." It requires that you believe in and trust in a Reality that is beyond what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. That old saying, "I'll believe it when I see it," flies in the face of true faith. It might be said that true faith realizes a new expression, "I'll see it when I believe it!" It is the other way around.
     No matter how acutely we might think we have sharpened our senses, our judgments and our minds, within a moment's notice, what we think was, is no more. What is it that we thought we "heard?" Something that we once "touched" and thought was tangible soon escapes our grasp. There is a famous spiritual parable about three blind men meeting an elephant. One grabs the trunk, one grabs the tail and one grabs the leg. They proceed to have an argument about the "true reality" of an elephant. Which one's experience is the real elephant? What is an elephant really like? Because they are blind, none of them has the sight to see the whole.
     How well do our senses really work? Our senses are only subjective. They are filtered through the limitations of our own personal conditioning, of our own personal samskaras (Sanskrit: the psychic impressions of cause and effect). Our senses are subjected to the mechanisms of our thoughts, words and actions. If it weren't so, we wouldn't have different tastes. Some of us like different colors, some of us like different foods, some of us like different styles, right? All is reflected against the inner dimension of ourselves, of how we have been formed.
     So I ask you, "How faithful and trustworthy is it to rely solely on our physical senses for the measurement of our personal and spiritual growth?" Science can't even agree on what is time, space and light. Yet we have the experience of time, space and light, not to mention Love, every day. What are these things? They cannot be measured with the senses.
     Now the fear of believing in something that cannot be measured with the senses, which is transcendent or beyond the mind, is that it leaves room open for us to be misled, misguided or exploited. And boy, that's something we fear! For when we are asked to believe in something that somebody else simply tells us, the alarms go off. How do we know it for ourselves? Why should we believe? Why should we trust?
Faith often requires using intuition. The word "intuit" means the immediate knowing of something, to know something directly, without going through the senses or processing it by the rational mind. The inherent problem for most of us with having "intuitive experiences" is we never know exactly when we are going to have our next intuitional experience. Can we trust our experience or not? Was that little tickle inside our throat, the gush of feelings inside our stomach, that little feeling back behind our head or that special moment, was that real or was it not? Our perceptions are especially complicated by being inundated in a world of images, sounds and colors that teach us not to pay attention to what is taking place inside. By in large, almost all of the messages that we receive teach us to seek approval from others, from the market, the television, the newspaper or from some type of authority figure that is outside the feelings of our Inner Self.
    Faith keeps calling us forward, "Believe in something, someone that is bigger than your small self - this process of goodness - without being able to necessarily confirm your belief through the senses." How can you trust or know what is Real? Some religious people profess that once you accept their doctrine, you must have "blind faith." Actually, blind faith is a very dangerous thing! We do not advocate blind faith. We are supposed to be on a path of enlightenment, right? A path of "en-light-enment." The root word of enlightenment is what? Light! How can you have blind faith on a path of enlightenment? Blind, in other words, means "cannot see." It doesn't work, does it? Blind faith or simply believing in something without having any experience whatsoever leads to dogma and divisiveness. It leads to doctrine and it leads to institutionalization. It leads to bureaucracy.
     In case you haven't noticed, institutions and bureaucracies have a difficult time being "intelligent." They cannot think. A bank can't seem to figure out how to cash your check in New York City. The Church continues to argue over whether something is right or wrong or whether it's a virtue or a sin. Every couple hundred years they change their minds on a major one. Not too long ago Galileo was "reinstated" by the Church. He had been in hell all this time, but the Church finally figured out that he was right about a few things, i.e., the world is round, and we live in a universe that has stars and planets that revolve around each other in orbits. So he got reinstated. I wonder how they're making restitution for all those centuries in hell. Maybe he can sue!
     We can see, and we have evidence of what happens when things go along without being empowered by intelligence. The system and the people in it will no longer think. Systems that cannot think intelligently do not serve people. A mind inside a person or system that cannot think properly is worthless and even scary. So blind faith is very dangerous, and it is not something that we want, because it short circuits the operations of an intelligent mind.
     Here is the underlying contradiction again. We are saying to use our mind, yet we are directed to have experiences that are beyond our mind, and told to have faith in the goodness of those experiences, even though we cannot perceive or measure their impact through our senses and with the mind. See the contradiction? So how do we know what is faith? There is a distinction between blind faith and what I call "complete faith" or "whole faith." We know that our faith is complete when it has four qualities to it.
     The first element of developing complete faith is to be willing to take risks for having greater life experiences. One must realize that in order to be a true spiritual aspirant, one is the scientist in the laboratory of one's own life experience. This is very critical. It is a profound teaching, because many so-called spiritual teachings or religious teachings will actually attempt to train you away from having your own experience. "Just do it by the book. The book has all of the answers in there; just do like the book."     
     Meanwhile, the people, the practitioners, may not yet have had nor understand the "experience," the realization of the Book. "No matter," the dogma insists, "just do it by the book. Wear the uniform. Count the beads!" Wearing your hair a certain way, wearing your clothes a certain way, saying certain mantras and "magic words," chanting this or that particular slogan and superstitiously enforced behaviors like "this or that" are not substitutes for true spiritual experience or spiritual understanding. Pretty soon what happens in this dogmatic approach to religious and spiritual practice is that a person will no longer be "their self." They have forfeited the use of their own body and mind for what it was given -- to be here in life's laboratory to have their own experience!
     Think of yourself as a "life scientist." You are the scientist and you are the laboratory. You get to mix the chemicals; you get to have the explosions; you get to make the hypotheses; you get to go out and test the hypotheses. Why do you think you have a body? Why do you think you have a mind? It's to have at it! You've got life, so live it! Start living life. Life is the experiment. Life also has a purpose, but our relationship to life is to have the experience of life. Experience what life means, and experience its purpose.
     In order to have complete faith, we must take the responsibility to put ourselves into experience, which means that we will be putting ourselves at risk. If you want to really live life, you must take risks. It goes hand in hand. No doubt, life is not a play-it-safe game. And "spiritual life" is even worse than that. I've said before, "High risk, high gain." It is kind of like the stock market -- a spiritual stock market. High risk. Spiritual life is high risk, but it is also high gain!
     By putting ourselves into life's experiences, we have the evidence that "something more" is taking place. Otherwise, why do it? Why have faith, or live life for that matter, if you have no evidence or experience that you are growing? Granted, the evidence that you are examining might not be measurable through your senses. You might not be able to "see" your spiritual growth with your eyes because eyes go bad. Then you have to wear glasses. You may not be able to "hear" how much you're improving because ears go bad too. Some people are tone deaf. You may not be able to "touch" your spiritual realizations with your physical hands because you cannot touch a feeling with your physical fingers, but the evidence is located in feelings.
     You know, we all have a developed sense within us, in our intuition, of when something resonates true for us. We hear something and say to ourselves, "That rings true for me. It feels good; this feels right." Something "awakens" inside. That awakening feeling is the evidence, its location so to speak. Look to that. The evidence in this first element of faith means that we have an on-going and ever increasing experience that we are in a place of goodness, growing into greater goodness.
     Regardless of what is happening on the outside, the manifestation of possible difficulties, or whether some experiences look good or bad, we know that we are opening up, that we are expanding beyond our previous limitations, and that we are here to do that. It is a feeling in the Heart. Everyone knows what I'm talking about.
We also have the corresponding other feeling. We know when we are around "badness." Sometimes we even "get off' on badness, and it is hard for us to pull out--like in the case of certain attitudes, habits, certain company or certain things that we are used to doing that are not healthy and productive. The badness may give us a little bit of pleasure somehow, for a fleeting moment. However, even when we are engaged in it, we know. Something inside of us says, "I don't really know if I should keep doing this. This isn't really that good for me."
     We have both sides to our intuition for knowing good and bad. This is where our evidence is located. It is another reason why we must have a free and operating mind, our own intelligent mind. We need to be able to have that experience inside; not just have someone else tell us what the experience is, but to have it for ourselves.
     After reviewing the evidence of our life experiences, the second element of complete faith or whole faith is exercising the insight that everything that has ever happened to me or that I have ever done through thought, word and action has brought me to this moment here and now. All of it was required, and everything on that basis is connected. Everything that I have ever done, however old I am, got me right here to this place, and none of it can or could have been omitted.
     I guess hypothetically scientists, like theologians, could argue whether or not all of one's previous life experiences were necessary in order for one to be the person one is. The fact still remains, no previous experiences can be omitted from a person's life, because they happened already, and now it is done and over. You can't go back and make your past different. It is dead. So everything that you have ever thought, done or said and anything that you have ever been exposed to has made you what you are right now.
     Just by putting together these first two elements of complete faith, you already are developing a faith that is radical. The first element includes your personal experience and evidence, and the second element is the insight that everything is interconnected and has brought you up to this moment. Therefore, every experience of your life was necessary. Even with only these first two elements, you will start to develop an intuitive sense of things.
     There are no accidents. There are only incidents. Why do we call some things accidents? We call them accidents because we cannot see the cause and effect located close enough together in the same time and space. If your vision is broad enough, you will realize that there is no such thing as an accident; there are only incidents. Everything that happens is happening and has happened because of some cause. Nothing is without a reason, even if it is something with a slow, long-term effect like an earthquake. The cause may take hundreds of millions of years to set up and then one day when we are on the Santa Monica Freeway, the earthquake goes off.
     We say that it is an accident when the road goes out from under us, but actually the cause of the quake had been setting up for a very long time. By the law of cause and effect, every cause creates a corresponding effect, and every effect becomes the cause for a new and corresponding effect. Likewise, within our lives, everything that we ever think has a corresponding cause of the rest of our thoughts. Everything that we are exposed to is a cause for corresponding effect for other situations for us to be in.
     Our present moment is linked to the repercussions of our past. We will realize at some point that part of the "liberation experience" is to be liberated from this cycle of cause and effected so as not to be bound by its suffering any longer.