Don’t let doubt stop our human search for understanding – We humans have an innate thirst for understanding. This thirst impels us to explore the world of matter through science and the world beyond matter through spirituality.
In quenching that thirst, science has answered impressively many questions about the workings of nature. Yet the more questions it has answered, the more it has encountered new areas of knowledge filled with unanswered questions. For example, science split the atom and discovered an unfathomed universe within the atom.
Such doubts and questions are natural in our quest for understanding because we all are finite beings, living in a vast and vastly complex universe. Just as we don’t let doubts deter us from our scientific quest, we needn’t let them deter us from our spiritual quest. Just as science equips us for our life-journey by providing us means, spirituality equips us by providing us meaning.
When we seek spiritual understanding, we may doubt the veracity of specific spiritual truth-claims. Anticipating such doubts, the Gita wisdom-tradition offers a profound philosophy that coherently integrates various aspects of spiritual reality. And it offers time-tested yoga practices that help diligent practitioners realize those spiritual truths through direct personal experiences (Bhagavad-gita 09.02).
How do we go beyond doubt in our scientific quest? By a potent combination of courage, humility and delight: courage to seek answers to difficult questions; humility to live with some unanswered questions while pressing on in other areas; and delight in making breakthroughs in our understanding. Using that same combination in the spiritual domain, we can persevere through doubts and enrich our life with enduring meaning.
One-sentence summary:
Focus not on the doubts that come from our finiteness, focus on the thirst for understanding that can take us beyond doubts in both science and spirituality.
Think it over:
- In our quest for understanding, why are doubts natural?
- How do we go beyond doubt in science?
- How does Gita wisdom equip us to deal with doubts?
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09.02: This knowledge is the king of education, the most secret of all secrets. It is the purest knowledge, and because it gives direct perception of the self by realization, it is the perfection of religion. It is everlasting, and it is joyfully performed.
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