Unlike commonly conceived, faith and reason are not opposed to each other. To see them as opposites is to be cut off from both, but to see them as complementary is to join the halves to make a whole. In common parlance words are very loosely used – therefore most often misused. Words such as “Sabda ” must touch in their true context and capacity, our awareness of a whole related world. Therefore Sabdas most often run into each other for a meaningful expression.
There is a wonderful word in the Sanskrit language that includes all that faith stands for and more. This is “Shraddha”. So also the reason for creative inquiry is “Jijnasa” , the tireless effort to discover the truth. Shraddha or faith is the attitude of Let me experience how it is so. Faith is not a static of belief (visvas) which hangs on the wall as maxim, it is a constant effort at experiencing Truth.
The Upanishads tell us about the lovely lives of the Gurus and Sishyas of this ancient land. In Chandogya Upanishad is mentioned a very fascinating story about Svetaketu and his great father Aruni. At the end of a memorable dialogue between the father and son, the father asks the young boy to have faith in the words of the Guru : “Shraddhasva soumya”, My boy, have Shraddha’.
This is a great piece of advice. Faith or Shraddha converts belief into conviction and conviction into realisation of truth. It is an active effort at experiencing belief; and the process is reason or jijnasa. Jijnasa. Jijnasa is not a curiosity. It is an active and constant travelling towards the very centre. Without reason faith remains merely an article of belief which does not expand, and quite often slips into fanaticism. A belief supported by faith carried on with the help of reason arrives at Truth. In Indian tradition, therefore, there was never a quarrel between faith and reason. This quarrel has been imported from the West, as are so many alien aspects of our lives today. The highest manifestation of Upanishadic reason is embodied in the process of constant elimination of untruth – “Neti, Neti”.
Faith does not go against investigation, rather it promotes investigation. But this investigation is not to find out whether our faith is acceptable, this is to investigate how to experience what we believe to be true.
The opposite of faith is not reason. It is cynicism. While faith is the will to believe, cynicism is the will to disbelieve. We have too much cynicism today, not too much reason. One who asks a question and has no patience to find the answer, and therefore rejects it as foolish is cynical. One who asks a question and willingly pursues it to find out the answer is rational.So radoxically, we are living in an age which has a good deal of irrationality in it. This irrationality is leading the Physical Sciences into a massive suicide. A cynic claims he rejects everything that his reason doesn’t accept. But his reason is bigotry. Faith is not superstition.
A superstitious man has no creative effort at experiencing the truth. So his Jijnasa or reason is inoperative. Therefore faith should precede reason not vice versa. Reason is the process to experience faith. Without fields to operate, reason cannot work so when we have no faith, reason cannot operate; and whatever operates by name of reason, is anything but reason.
Without Shraddha, no one can enquire and act. Arriving at truth presupposes having faith in truth. if one has no faith in truth, one arrives nowhere. Again merely having faith in Truth, and not enquiring into the true nature by applying it in daily life, eliminating whatever the buddhi points out as untruth and thus engaging relentlessly in the process of rejecting all that does not come into the fold of faith, that is the process of reason, one cannot only never touch it, but a time may come when one will question one’s faith and turn cynical.
A man of reason without a faith is like a grain of paddy without rice within the husk. A man of reason, who uses reason to know the truth, must have faith in his own reason ! Faith should strengthen reason, and reason feeds faith.
When a school boy cannot solve a problem by applying a particular set of formulas, he does not reject the question as nonsense; he applies a different set to solve it. When he finally solves it his experience justifies his faith and his reason. Reason, to be so, must admit its limitations, for reason operates on experience and no experience is terminal.
Faith is power. Reason uses it. They go hand in hand. Faith is the reservoir, reason channels to irrigate the fields of our living. If a person says “God is kind” a man of reason will not snap.’ No that is not, it is mere wishfulness’. He would rather say, ‘How do you want to show it to me ?’ The man of faith might reply, ‘I understand God’s kindness, and this makes me happy’. The man of faith has expanded a static belief in God’s kindness into experience and that is reason enough to prove his faith. That shows he has told himself, ‘Since God is kind, I must be able to remain joyful even in adverse situations’. He has by the active power of reason, turned his faith into practice and then into experience. Reason carries the torch of faith and when faith becomes experience, reason fulfills itself. In quite a few instances, reason shapes faith and by the power of faith refines itself for higher investigation. At times faith is spontaneous, free from any rational activities, due to some spontaneous experience. Then the experience feeds reason to fight doubt.
Reason accommodates doubt. Faith is the power to solve it. Reason lays the track, faith helps one to tread it. Reason cannot reach experience. Faith can. Reason activates faith. Faith gives reason the capacity for relentless inquiry and application. Faith awakens intuition by fulfilling reason. Reason gives cynicism by overriding faith. Reason seeks consistency, faith, truth. Reason sees parts. Faith sees Whole. Reason proves the whole through the parts, faith justifies the parts through the whole.
Faith understands reason. Faith is an uncut diamond, reason shapes it, manifests its inherent beauty and brilliance. Belief may turn out to be superstition. Faith never reason may fight with belief – Vishwas, not with faith, shraddha, Jijnasa devoid of shraddha shall inspire no Tapas. Shraddha devoid of Jijnasa no ‘Svadhyaya’. Faith and reason or Shradha and Jijnasa are the two breaths that a Sadhaka lives by.
By Dr. Prafulla Kumar Das
The writer is a Consultant Radiologist, MRI Center, SCB Medical College, Cuttack
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