Faith is not a matter of choice; it is a matter of necessity. Some people may claim to have no faith, or, going even further, even ridicule as gullible those who have faith, but even such people have faith – faith in the nonexistence of the spiritual realities of life, especially the topmost spiritual reality, God, Krishna.

Many such disbelievers have faith in their eyes, as is encapsulated in the saying “Seeing is believing.” No matter how catchy the saying sounds, it is faulty.

Why?

Because it is untenable not just in the arena of spirituality that posits invisible non-material realms of reality, but also in the arena of science that posits invisible objects such as fundamental particles. Faith in the eyes, if adopted as an exclusivist credo that outlaws faith in whatever is not seen by the eyes, would be a permanent progress-stopper – both spiritually and scientifically.

Far more conducive to our growth is choosing the eyes of faith. Does this mean rejecting sensory perception? No, it begins with not letting overdependence on sensory perception deprive us of alternative higher forms of knowledge acquisition.

The Bhagavad-gita (04.39) indicates that faith engenders knowledge. This isn’t a call to blind faith; rather it is the call for the open-mindedness about the existence of higher realms of reality and the concomitant presence of alternative methodologies of acquiring knowledge that transcend our normal sensory methods. Such open-mindedness is the initial faith that catapults the seeker as a spiritual cosmonaut into the vast sky of transcendental reality.

Gita wisdom offers us a systematic intellectual framework and a sound spiritual pathway for raising our consciousness from the material level of reality to the spiritual level, where we join in love with Krishna, thereby fulfilling our deepest longings for lasting fulfillment.

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 04 Text 39