BELIEF, FAITH, BEING AND DOING

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

37. BELIEF, FAITH, BEING AND DOING
When food is withdrawn from our physical bodies, strength decreases, one feels weak, one
is unable to exert. If food is stopped beyond a certain limit of time, starvation ensues. And if food is
further withheld, starvation leads to death. But then, a person can fall ill, lose weight and become
weak even when he is provided with the most nourishing food if he cannot digest and assimilate it.
Even if his stomach can digest the food, if due to a diseased condition his intestines cannot
assimilate it or absorb it, he will slowly starve unless he is fed through the veins. So, the essence of
sustaining yourself physically by physical food lies in your ability to assimilate, to absorb, to take in
and utilise the food that is given.
Similarly, our life, our strength, our progress day by day, the enhanced conditions of our
inner faculties of mind—memory, thought, intelligence, rationality, psychological
development—through vichara and viveka, enquiry and discrimination etc., depend upon what we
are actually able to absorb, what we actually assimilate into ourselves. And what we take in that
makes for gradual growth in our personality, our wisdom, our deep understanding of life, our
becoming sensitively aware of certain insights in life pertaining to ourselves and the world around
us—the nature of things and people, of human relationships, of what should be and what should not
be—all depends upon how much we are able to absorb and assimilate.

It is not without reason that our ancients reiterated again and again: “You must not only hear
and read, but you must reflect. You must not only hear, read and reflect, but you should deeply
meditate and understand. You must not only hear, read, reflect, meditate and understand, but it
should become your svabhava, your own. You must become that.”
In the Gita it says: “A person is what he believes in.” And the key to this process of
successfully assimilating from whatever you learn and becoming what you assimilate is in
believing in what you want to become. Have firm and deep belief: “I believe, and I know I will be
what I believe. I will become what I believe because that is the truth. And, if I do believe, it will
certainly transform me into what I wish to become and believe in.”
So, faith and belief are the twin wings, as it were, of the bird of your spirit. Faith and belief
are the two legs that have to take you to your destination. Faith and belief are the left and right hands
that can enable you to achieve anything, take up any task and do it. Faith and belief are like the two
eyes that enable a person to see correctly, wholly, with the right perspective. Faith and belief are the
indispensable twin factors that succeed in making you what you wish to become—deep faith, deep
belief.
Again and again you should keep the company of those in whose company your faith
increases, your beliefs become confirmed, unshaken, they become firmly established within you,
and you become firmly established in what you believe. Then, with deep faith and belief and being
what you believe in, striving your very best to actualise it in life so that it becomes your svabhava, it
becomes your very nature. You become that.
Translate what you are into your daily activity. Never put much interval between what you
have become due to your firm faith and belief and acting it out. What you are, that you must do.
Otherwise, a condition will arise when faith, belief and what you have become due to faith and
belief becomes a static condition, not a dynamic and progressive condition. There is stagnation,
arrested movement, no action. You get stuck. If you maintain the status quo having attained the
highest and ultimate, it is all right, it is in the fitness of things. But, if you maintain the status quo in
the middle of the way, you deprive yourself of the supreme, crowning glory of the highest
attainment and achievement.
Therefore, examine yourself, and keep on examining yourself, ruthlessly: Are all these
ingredients actively operating within you, namely, deep belief, firm faith, becoming what you
believe in, and translating what you are into living, into doing, into a dynamic expression of what
you are by constantly, actively manifesting it, expressing it in every detail of your day-to-day
living?
Backed up by firm faith and a living belief, being and doing will take you to the Goal, to the
supreme consummation of your life. It can make you one with the Cosmic Being. Therefore, the
ingredients of sure, gradual success and attainment lie in these four: belief, faith, becoming what
you believe and have faith in, and living and doing that which you are—sraddha, visvasa,
svabhava, abhyasa, belief, faith, being and doing.

Most problems for a seeker are due to negligence rather than willfulness, error rather than
sin, weakness rather than wickedness, foolishness rather than wantonness, as well as a lack of
vigilance and laxity in maintaining a certain minimal level of spiritual tone in one’s thinking,
feeling and living. Therefore, it is necessary to keep oneself keyed up to a certain condition of inner
tension—tension in the positive and desirable sense of the term, not in the negative sense. And this
essential tension is called tapasya; it is called determination; it is called resoluteness.
Therefore, go on progressing forward, onward, Godward, towards perfection and liberation,
always trusting in God, depending on Him, but, nevertheless, exerting with all heart, determination,
resoluteness and keen interest.