Daily Offerings from Alokda

They are different ways the same thing is seen from different levels.

At the highest level everything is predetermined, not only marriage but all the experiences of life we must go through in our journey from the darkness to the Light.

At the cosmic level, there is the play of cosmic forces that fulfils the original plan. Here there is a relation between the state and level of our consciousness and the situations and circumstances of our life. Here the play gets distorted due to the action of the cosmic Ignorance.

At the individual level, – and that is the main thing that concerns us from the practical point of view, we have been given a relative sense of freedom of choices. These choices do not necessarily determine the result that we hope or expect, but it does make a difference to the experiences that we draw from it, thereby compressing or prolonging the journey in terms of time.

Trust and surrender to the Grace of course brings in the most powerful element in shortening and fast tracking the journey or even changing the course.

Affectionately

Alok da

Faith, in its deepest sense is the very essence of our being. It is not a mental idea or belief but an unshakable conviction held deep within. Once there, it is never lost, though it can be momentarily clouded. It is like a key that opens the inner doors for the higher powers to act.

Faith can be developed by asking for it from the Divine, by contact with those who themselves carry this flame and by the influence of books written by realised ones.

Some persons believe that faith is an irrational thing and to encourage it in this modern world of scientific knowledge is simply to go back to some primitive age when man feared and worshipped nature as if it were conscious and capable of relating with us. They say that man has discovered the laws and processes of Nature and has even harnessed them to his advantage. We do not need faith anymore but only an expansion of scientific knowledge and technology to match. This is a gross error. In reality, we are replacing only one kind of faith with another. Faith in spiritual things is as consistent with reason as faith in scientific methods. The spiritual ideas including the idea of a Divine Grace that can intervene and heal is as much based upon experience, albeit of another kind and order of reality than the physical.

In its deepest sense, faith is the soul’s witness to a knowledge that our surface mind and reason as well as the senses do not yet have or grasp. It is the deepest will-to-be that governs our nature and presides over all we do and receive. If we have faith only in science and its methods we end up discovering only that much which Science presumes and is willing to admit through the curtain of mind and no more. Instead of quarrelling over faith we need to enlarge it and widen its scope so that both Science and Spirituality can find their respective place in an integral faith that is vast enough to include both without cancelling each other.

In truth, we can say without exaggeration that faith is the very stuff of which we are made of. Though normally and unfortunately it is perceived to be limited to a religious belief, in reality, it extends to everyone. Even the atheist has faith in his atheism and in his reason!

Q: Can we help another person by our prayers? Do collective prayers, as in some congregations, have a greater power than individual prayer?
ALOKDA: Praying for another person is certainly the best inner help we can offer in our ignorance, provided it is done with an unwavering love and goodwill in the head and heart. But we should not confuse it with whatever involves the intercession of a priest or preacher on your behalf, or of a collective congregation praying for someone. Each of these activities are a little different from each other and almost all of them have many things mixed in them – the vital, occult, psychological as well as a little bit of a spiritual element. Obviously where the prayer or intercession is done to further a propagandist spread or partly as an advertisement for an individual or group or simply to satisfy an ambition or greed for money, it is no more in the right attitude for spiritual forces to act. Intercession can help however, not due to the intercessors themselves and often in spite of them, but because the patient has a genuine faith that God is working through them! It is this faith that can make even an impostor perform miracles! In this sense, faith moves mountains, makes the lame walk, the dumb speak and the blind see.

Wherever there is true spiritual consciousness, faith will turn the switch on to its full action. But of course spiritual consciousness and the man who dwells in it does not turn it into a profession to heal all who come to him. It acts according to its own vision and law and a much greater purpose than our ignorant hopes can dream of. Above all, a truly spiritual man acts only in obedience to the divine Will in him and does not get carried away by human sentiments and its ignorant petitions and demands. Even where it seems to act that way, the real reason is something else, much subtler and more intrinsic. Otherwise, it will be as simple as putting a prayer in a slot and then just go fooling around because the answer will arrive exactly as we want it to be! So those who turn it into a profession to earn fame and money, to fulfil spiritual ambition and aggrandise the ego, or else to satisfy a lust for power and domination by having many disciples and followers are obviously a very different category than the truly spiritual being who does not act to satisfy the ignorant human demand for transient and perishable goods.

There are other issues as well. Collective healing sessions, especially in a religious or quasi-religious atmosphere, generate heightened expectation and hope due to the pressure of the collective and the large number of believers. This in itself augments the faith of the individual at least on some level and even overrides or temporarily suspends his personal doubts. All this is conducive to healing. There is however one problem with these sessions: many of them create a very vital atmosphere, full of drama and excitement and induce a state of heightened suggestibility in that person. Such a state may bring a certain degree of dissociation from the symptoms, thereby leading to sudden though temporary relief. This is often the case where the very nature of illness/symptom is functional and there is no anatomical damage. In other words, it is usually more of a psycho-physiological rather than anatomical/physical lesion.

Such healing séances and mediumistic trances may well also attract vital entities in the atmosphere that are generally not good for one’s inner progress. Sometimes, it may be advisable and an even better strategy to go through with trust and equanimity what one needs to go through rather than exchange one’s soul strength for superficial rewards or barter one’s spiritual rights with some passing and temporary gain for the body.

Nevertheless, at the bottom of all this, what truly works is faith. It is the single common denominator in all therapies—physical, psychological, spiritual—and indeed an element acknowledged by each system. We can truly say that, “Finally, it is faith that cures.”