Questioning belief?

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Namaste Shri Richard,

 

In message #36690 of Jul 28, you say:

 

" By the way, I am not challenging the truth of advaita and am on

board with the teaching. What I'm asking is what logical reason is

there to believe the teachings of advaita? "

 

I would put it to you that there are two kinds of logical reasoning.

 

One kind of reasoning is outward and worldly. It seeks to justify

our minds' beliefs, as these conceiving minds build up their

differentiated pictures of a changing world.

 

The other kind of reasoning is reflective and spiritual. It

questions back from all our mind-constructed pictures and beliefs --

in search of a knowledge that is plainly and simply true, quite

independent of all doubtful picturing in which our minds may or may

not believe.

 

In Advaita teaching, what use is made of these two kinds of

reasoning? Clearly, the teaching is meant to turn away from outward

to reflective reasoning. It's meant for an uncompromising

questioning that challenges all mind's belief in any conceived ideas

or arguments. That reflective questioning essentially destroys

belief, instead of justifying it.

 

Accordingly, where someone asks for a logical reason to believe

Advaita teachings, this question is illogical. It asks for a reason

to believe in teachings which are meant to show that all such belief

is unjustified.

 

But then, it may well be asked how anyone may learn from Advaita

teaching. Or, to put the question more precisely: On what basis can

anyone proceed with a teaching that no mind can rightly believe?

 

One answer to this question is given by the English word 'faith' or

the Sanskrit word 'shraddha'. These words imply a depth of belief

which is beneath all mental picturing. It's only the pictures that

may or may not be believed, by this same doubtful mind which has

here dubiously constructed these imagined pictures.

 

Belief and doubt are thus activities of mind. They are changing

activities through which the mind functions, in its imagined

picturing. But all belief and doubt imply a discernment of truth and

falsity. And that discernment in turn implies a continued knowledge,

which carries on beneath the changing pictures in our minds. An

underlying knowing must stay present in the mind, as changing

pictures come and go.

 

That continued knowing is the changeless background of all pictured

change. It is present in each picture that appears, no matter

whether this picture is believed or doubted by the mind. Without

that knowing background, no picture could appear. Nor could any

picture disappear.

 

That background does not act at all. It only knows, unchangingly, as

all mind's changing acts depend on it. Upon that changeless knowing,

mind always depends, in order to distinguish what is true from what

is false in the apparent picturing. All minds beliefs and disbeliefs

implicitly depend upon an essential faith in that background

knowing.

 

That faith is essentially implied, in all our mental functioning --

through all our changes of belief and doubt, concerning what the

pictures show. That faith is found beneath all change and

difference, at the unchanging background, at one with the true

knowing which stays always present there.

 

Advaita teaching is expressed from there, and must reflect back

there, through questioning all mind-conceived beliefs. The questions

must turn back upon the questioner's own false beliefs, on the basis

of an underlying faith in true knowing at the inmost background.

 

Ananda