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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: Sufis - The People of the Path, Vol 2 | Previous Next | |
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negative part of the valley of tribulations is doubt -- great doubt will arise! You don't know what doubt is you don't know yet! All that you think is doubt is nothing but scepticism, it is not doubt. Doubt is an altogether different phenomenon.
Somebody says, 'God is'; you say, 'I doubt.' You don't doubt. How can you doubt? You are only being sceptical. You are only saying, 'I don't know.' Rather than saying 'I don't know' you are using a very strong word 'doubt'. How can you doubt? Doubt is possible when you are facing a reality.
For example, you have never seen a ghost. And you say, 'I doubt the existence of ghosts.' That is not doubt, that is just being sceptical. You are simply saying, 'I have never come across one so how can I believe. I doubt.' That is not doubt. Doubt will be when one day, passing through the cemetery, you suddenly come across a ghost! Then your whole being will be shaken. Then you will be for the first time in a state where doubt arises: whether that which you are facing is true or an hallucination.
Doubt is very existential; scepticism is intellectual. Scepticism is only in the mind; doubt enters into your very being, your whole body-mind-soul. Your totality is shaken.
In this dark night of the soul, doubt arises. Doubt about God -- because you were seeking for more light and this is happening, just the opposite. You were seeking for more bliss and you have fallen into the dark night. A great doubt arises about whether you are going right, about whether this seeking is worth it -- because you were seeking for gold, you were seeking for great light and great enlightenment and nirvana and samadhi and satori, and instead of satori and samadhi, this dark night has overwhelmed you. Even those lights that used to be there are there no more. Even those certainties that used to be there are there no more.
You used to know certain things; now you know nothing. You had some security. Even that is gone. The very earth underneath your feet has slipped away; you are drowning. Then doubt arises. Then you start feeling that maybe this whole religious trip is nonsense, maybe there is no God, maybe you were tooling yourself,
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