Belief and faith

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

Words like 'belief' and 'faith' can of course be used in different

ways. But it strikes me that these two English words have an advaita

interpretation that shows up an essential difference in their

meaning.

 

The word 'belief' refers to our conditioned habits of supposing and

assuming. These are conditioned habits in our minds, through which

the world of objects is conceived. These habits are entangled in the

world that they conceive. It is a world of created appearances,

which come to be and keep on getting changed. In this world of

becoming and change, our minds conceive of pictured objects; and

this imagined picturing produces more conditioning, with more

suppositions and assumptions that produce more appearances in an

endlessly diversified and changing world.

 

In short, the word 'belief' is objectively directed. It is directed,

through outgoing mind, towards a changing variety of objects in the

world. This word 'belief' comes from the Old English 'leaf' and

'leave', meaning 'permission'. Hence the phrases 'by your leave' and

'leave of absence'. The sense is one of required allowance under an

external compulsion.

 

By contrast, the word 'faith' is essentially subjective, in its

direction. It comes from the Latin 'fides' -- as in the phrase 'bona

fides', meaning 'good faith'. Other words from the same root are

'fidelity' and 'confidence'. The sense implied is one of loyalty and

trust, towards an inner principle of value and truth that underlies

the outward show of change and difference in our seeming lives.

 

To 'believe' is simply to accept an assumption through external

influence and habituation that has been imposed objectively, from

outside. But to 'have faith' essentially implies a reflection

inward -- to a subjective ground of knowing from where expression

arises of its own accord, spontaneously inspired from within.

 

That expression is alive. It is not just a structured form,

mechanically constructed from external parts. Nor is it just an

objective chain of cause and effect, with earlier events directly

linked by causal force to later ones. Instead, as each expression

arises, its motivating cause is the knowing light of consciousness,

which illuminates all expressions and activates them into life.

 

That knowing light and ground is essentially implied, when we use

the words 'subject' and 'subjective'. 'Sub-' means 'under', and

'-ject' implies throwing. In everyone's experience, as objects come

into appearance, they are thrown up from the underlying ground of

knowing, which carries on beneath their differences and change.

 

That knowing ground is the one subject of experience, the one common

principle beneath the throwing up of differing and changing objects.

 

In the word 'object', the prefix 'ob-' has a dual meaning. On the

one hand, it means 'upon' or 'overlying'. The objects of experience

are accordingly described as a differentiated and changing overlay

upon the underlying subject, from which they are thrown up. But on

the other hand, 'ob-' also means 'facing' or 'against'. In this

second sense, the objects of experience are what faces against the

knowing subject. As they are perceived and interpreted, they face

against the consciousness whose knowing light makes them appear. As

each of them appears, its appearance is reflected back, through

perception and interpretation, into the knowing subject from which

they all appear.

 

Reflecting back into that knowing subject, it is the one reality of

all the objects which appear. It thus turns out to be what every

object truly is. In truth, there is no difference between subject

and object, no matter what seems to appear. The duality of subject

and object thus turns out to be unreal. That final non-duality is

what Advaita seeks, through all its turned-back questioning.

 

So, in the course of Advaita enquiry, there is a simple way of

describing the difference between 'belief' and 'faith'.

 

Belief is objectively inclined, through suppositions and assumptions

that produce our objective pictures of the world. This objective and

worldly inclination is described by the Sanskrit word 'mata',

meaning 'opinion' or 'creed' or 'doctrine' (from the root 'man',

meaning to 'think' or 'suppose'). The same inclination is described

by the Greek word 'doxa', meaning 'belief' or 'opinion' or

'appearance'. From 'doxa' come English words like 'doctrine',

'dogma', 'orthodox', 'paradox', 'doctor', 'document' and 'docile'.

 

Faith is subjectively inclined, through a reflective turning back

from objective pictures to an inner ground of knowing that continues

underneath the changes and the differences of picturing. This

subjective inclination is described by the Sanskrit word 'shraddha',

meaning 'faith' or 'trust' or 'inner loyalty' or 'deep conviction'

or 'spiritual commitment' (from the root 'dha', meaning to 'place'

or 'repose'). The subjectivity here is described by the Sanskrit

word 'atman', which refers to an inmost self of pure spirit, beneath

all changes and differences of personality. From 'atman' comes the

word 'atmiya', which means both 'subjective' and 'spiritual'.

 

The same subjective and spiritual inclination is described by the

Greek word 'philosophia', which indicates a love ('philo-') of true

knowledge ('sophia') that is sought by reflective questioning of

'doxa' or 'belief'. That love of truth implies a relentless

spiritual commitment -- which will not give up until all trace of

falsity has been discovered and removed, on the way from confused

and misleading appearances to unmixed reality. I would say that such

a commitment is the essence of the English word 'faith' and the

Sanskrit word 'shraddha'.

 

Ananda