Is having doubts unfortunate? Are doubts undesirable?

From Prem Raj P

if unluckily one has some doubts(lack of faith) on Krishna and his words or His representatives , then what is the solution?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Question from Premraj Brahm. Is having doubts a matter of misfortune? Are doubts undesirable? Doubts in the words of Krishna and his representatives? Answer not necessarily. Samshayot Paryaso.
So, the Bhagavatam, while describing the characteristics of intelligence, mentions five characteristics and the first among them is doubt. So, doubt is a characteristic of intelligence and how is that applied? You know, one observes material life and one observes the promises of material enjoyment that are presented before us from all directions in material life and one thinks that are these promises real? Will they really make me happy? And then one infers that one starts doubting, oh, these promises will not make me happy. So many people are promising happiness but then actually in real life we see people not happy.
So then one starts thinking, what is beyond? So, actually it is only intelligent people who can doubt. People who do not have intelligence they just believe whatever they hear and they get misled. And there are so many misleaders.
Materialism is one of the greatest misleaders. And even in the name of religion and spirituality there are many misleaders. So, having doubts is not necessarily wrong.
In fact, to some extent to be doubtful is important. But doubt should not become the only use of our intelligence. That means I just keep doubting.
Whatever I hear I keep doubting. No. Doubt should be our minister not our master.
That means when doubt the doubting faculty, the logical faculty, all these are related and they are valuable. But they alone cannot lead to the supreme destination of life. There is a full lecture, Tap the Power of Faith on www.missworldscientist.com where I talk about doubt and faith elaborately.
But suffice it to say that doubt can be very helpful in differentiating substantial spirituality from superficial spirituality. Authentic from the non-authentic. And similarly, doubt can be helpful for us in gaining a deeper comprehension because doubt can act as a stimulant for thought and that can take us further into the philosophy.
But doubt should be coupled with humility that it is not that everything I will understand in the first day. That doesn’t happen even in our academic subjects. So, we wait and we try, we inquire, we learn and that way we will be able to deal with the doubts.
And some people may have more doubts than others that may simply be because they are more intellectual than others. Now, that doubting nature may sometimes prevent us from relishing the simple joys of devotion which other devotees are able to relish. So, the intellectual faculty can be double its role.
It can enable us to relish the Krishna conscious philosophy more in some ways. But it can also impede our relishing the Krishna conscious philosophy especially its simple devotional aspects. And we have to be cautious that we don’t get so caught up in the intellectual side that the devotional side gets completely choked and suppressed by that.
So, as long as we balance, we don’t let the intellectual faculty, the doubting faculty become our dominant mode of thinking. But we keep it as one portion which we use as per our situation and learning. If some doubts come, if we have a forum where we ask the questions, we ask the questions and get the answers.
If we don’t have a forum, we keep them in a filing cabinet, mental filing cabinet and we note them down somewhere. And later on, when we meet some devotees who are learned enough, we can ask the questions. Or when we study the scriptures more systematically, many doubts will get answered.
Especially those devotees who have a lot of doubts, it’s good for them to do structured courses. For example, the Bhakti Shastri course by which the systematic philosophical understanding comes up. And then many doubts get resolved in a holistic framework.
So, we shouldn’t think of doubts necessarily as a sign of misfortune. The intelligence of which the doubts are one characteristic is vital for our spiritual advancement. But we shouldn’t just limit our intellectual function to doubting and we should not limit our spiritual life to just intellectualizing.
When we don’t do these two kind of limitations, reductions, then we will be able to integrate doubting faculty and intellectual faculty as a part of our devotional service and keep making spiritual advancement. Thank you. I think prejudices