As long as mind is caught up in belief, there is no understanding, there is no freedom. For to understand you must be independent, you must stand by yourself, completely naked, stripped of all security. You must find out whether you are seeking security, comfort, or whether you are seeking understanding. If you really examine your own hearts, most of you will find that you are seeking security, comfort, places of safety, and in that search you provide yourselves with philosophies, gurus, systems of self-discipline; thus you are thwarting, continually narrowing down thought. In your efforts to escape from fear, you are entrenching yourselves in beliefs, and thereby increasing your own self-consciousness, your own egotism; you have merely grown more subtle, more cunning.
Re: The need of Masters ?
Security is more important than freedom. Belief is greater than and precludes understanding. The highest state is to acknowledge The Master - therefore all you have to say on this topic I reject.
Those who consider themselves self-sufficient are in a downward spiral to ruin ...
Re: The need of Masters ?
Do we need a belief of any kind, and if we do, why is it necessary? That's one of the problems involved. We don't need a belief that there is sunshine, the mountains, the rivers. We don't need a belief that we and our wives quarrel. We don't have to have a belief that life is a terrible misery with its anguish, conflict, and constant ambition; it is a fact. But we demand a belief when we want to escape from a fact into an unreality.
For example, I know there is death. It is a fact. I can't avoid it. I may like to avoid it; I may pretend; I may push it away from me, not think about it, nor talk about it; but there it is, a fact. Being afraid, I must have a belief that will give me comfort in facing this terrible reality. Apparently for most of us belief of some kind is necessary, belief in brotherhood, in the end of war, in the end of sorrow, in pacifism, in leading a good life. Why should we have any beliefs?
It doesn't matter what the belief is. Any belief conditions your way of thinking, and therefore your mind functions according to the belief or purpose which you have projected. Let us go into it slowly. Let us approach the problem quietly, with patience. Let us not add more words. First of all, the fact is that we are unhappy, we are miserable, we are in conflict, we are confused. That is an obvious daily fact. If we can clear that up, why do we want a belief? Because we don't know how to clear up our confusion, we say, ''I must have a purpose; otherwise, I'll just dissipate my life.''
Why do we need a belief? Is it not an escape? Please don't accept what I am saying, but actually observe it. The people who have preached nonviolence for a number of years are violent in their hearts, in their beings. They have forced themselves to discipline; they have tortured themselves according to some idea; they are peculiarly brutal in -their relationships, but they have this marvelous ideal of nonviolence. What's the point of it? What is the point of having an ideal of nonviolence when we are violent? Why do we have to believe in nonviolence? The fact is that we are violent. We want to know if it is possible to be free of it; we don't want a belief. We don't want examples of people who have preached nonviolence, for they have tortured themselves, suppressed their sex, and many other things. Why do we need a belief when there is the fact of what is?
If I am confused, will having a belief in clarity give me enthusiasm to get rid of my confusion? It only creates contradictions. I dissipate my energy in this contradiction, in this effort. Do I say to myself, ''I am going to throw away all my purposes, all my beliefs, because I first want to be rid of confusion''? Realizing that I am confused gives me energy. There is a waste of energy when I don't realize that I'm confused, or knowing that I'm confused, I believe in ideals.
If you are confused, and someone says there is a state of mind in which there is clarity like sunshine on a lovely day, without any mist, without any fog, in which you can see everything clearly, in which every line is clear, why do you believe in that person? The fact is that you are confused. To be free of confusion you don't need a belief. You want to know whether it is possible to be free of the confusion. You don't have to believe me because I say that you can be free.
Re: The need of Masters ?
Peace rajey
I think you need to strengthen your understanding of what a fact is compared to what a belief is ...
Death is only a fact to those who have died ... We can see everything so far that has ever lived dies, but we cannot say that death is a fact for all living things. It is a belief that is based on historical data/experience. In order to make that statement a fact we will need to prove that we have seen all the living things that are ever going to live and all previous things too.
However the Qur'an tells us that all souls shall taste the flavour of death and this we trust and hence bring into our domain of belief.
There are plenty of other things that you "think" are facts but really are "beliefs" and hence to conclude whether we really need to believe the answer is yes ... we do. To try otherwise is to limit the colour of our existence. Beliefs should be based on reason but not all things of reason are factual. Facts are limited to domain of logic and there more are things than logic that are exposed for us to use.
Even to say that "we don't need belief" is a belief that we don't need it, because it is not a fact that we don't need it. Hence the whole argument crumbles because then the statement needs to be modified to "we don't need to believe anything except one thing, which is this statement", which provides nothing different to the person who understands that belief is important, but also sees the statement as self-defeating.