Faith is not something that you can cultivate. If it happens to you, it happens, if it does not happen to you it does not happen, that’s all. Does it mean to say ‘I have to just sit and wait, and someday it will fall upon me?’ No, it is just that if you understand the fundamentals of living here in this existence, you will see, for anything to happen, you must create the right kind of situation. If you do not create the right kind of conditions, it does not matter how much you struggle, it is not going to happen. So if faith has to happen, for that also you must create the right kind of condition.
What is the condition necessary for faith? Jesus said, ‘Come follow me.’ When he said this, the intellectuals, the educated and the powerful of that time did not follow him. It is only the fishermen and the farmers who followed him because the thinking minds cannot follow anybody. Only the simple and innocent could follow him.
Faith is only for the innocent. The moment modern education enters you, you have a thinking mind, a questioning mind, a doubting mind. With this, you cannot follow the path of faith. Does it mean to say faith is impossible for you? No, but don’t start with something that you don’t have. Start with something that you have right now. Whatever is dominant in you, if you are a thinking person, let’s use that; if you are a very physical person, let’s use that; if you have a very strong sense of energy or if you have lots of emotions in you, let’s use those. But all the four need to be cultivated and used. If you come to a certain level of experience, then devotion becomes a natural part of you. If you try to be devout, you will become deceptive; this sort of devotion is just deception.
Faith is something that is within you. It is your quality. It is something that you become, not something that you believe in. Faith is just a deep falling back into the Existence. You as a person have fallen apart, you have just become like a simple little wave with the Existence. You understand and you experience that you are just a brief happening here. It is not an intellectual understanding, it is a living experience that you just see yourself as a small outcrop of this earth. When you are like this as a living experience, then you are faith. Until then there is no point talking about faith.
The faithfulness that people talk about is simply loyalty. That is for slaves and idiots. People who talk loyalty are always people whose vested interest is how to hold you. It is a device to hold you. Faith is not a device to hold you, faith is about liberating you. Faith is not about being for this group or that group. Faith is just to become a part of this Existence. That is not something that you do, that is something that you become.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017.
Isha.sadhguru.org