Page 7 - All India Magazine Jul-2020

Faith or trust
There is a second, which is obviously, as indispensable if
you want to go forward; it is to have faith. Or another word,
which seems more limited but is for me more important, be-
cause (it is a question of experience) if your faith is not made
of a complete trust in the Divine, well, you may very easily
remain under the impression that you have faith and yet be
losing all trust in the divine Power or divine Goodness, or the
Trust the Divine has in you. These are the three stumbling-
blocks:
Those who have what they call an unshakable faith in the
Divine, and say, “It is the Divine who is doing everything, who
can do everything; all that happens in me, in others, every-
where, is the work of the Divine and the Divine alone”, if they
follow this with some kind of logic, after some time they will
blame the Divine for all the most terrible wrongs which take
place in the world and make of Him a real demon, cruel and
frightful — if they have no trust.
Or again, they do have faith, but tell themselves, “Well, I
have faith in the Divine, but this world, I see quite well what
it’s like! First of all, I suffer so much, don’t I? I am very un-
happy, far more unhappy than all my neighbours”— for one
is always far more unhappy than all one’s neighbours —“I
am very unhappy and, truly, life is cruel to me. But then the
Divine is divine, He is All-Goodness, All-Generosity, All-Har-
mony, so how is it that I am so unhappy? He must be power-
less; otherwise being so good how could He let me suffer so
much?”
That is the second stumbling-block.
And the third: there are people who have what may be
called a warped and excessive modesty or humility and who
tell themselves, “Surely the Divine has thrown me out, I am
good for nothing, He can do nothing with me, the only thing

All India Magazine, July 2020 7