Should we critically evaluate bhakti or just believe and practice it?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So how should we approach Bhakti? Should we critically evaluate it or believe and practice it? Doesn’t have to be those two extremes only. We can both critically evaluate as well as practice as a test case. I’ll give you an example for this.
When we go to a doctor if we are sick and we are in a new place. Now when we go to a doctor even if the doctor is the best doctor in the world. If you go tell the doctor doctor I don’t have faith in you.
You have prescribed this medicine. I don’t have the faith to take this medicine. First you cure me.
Then I’ll have the faith. Then I’ll take the medicine. The best doctor in the world cannot do that.
So normally when we go to a doctor what do we do? We may be look for some reviews on Google or we may have some references from some friends. And we go to the doctor and we hear their diagnosis. You have pain in the stomach.
And the doctor says that we have to do surgery to cut off your leg. What? This doesn’t make sense. So when we go to a doctor we evaluate the diagnosis with our IQ.
Does it make sense? By the same time to evaluate the diagnosis we don’t go to medical college to get a medical degree. Isn’t it? With the intelligence that we have we evaluate it. Does it make sense? And then if it makes basic sense then we take the medicine.
Then we decide okay I’ll take this medicine for maybe if I’ve got stomach upset. Next three days, doctor says three days you’ll feel better. Actually kind of feeling better.
Feel better? Yeah, it’s a good doctor. So it’s reasonable faith. Faith it is.
Normally you think of either skepticism or blind faith. Either I have to be skeptical and reject everything or I have to put blind faith. These are two extremes.
If you have a pendulum one extreme is skepticism the other extreme is blind faith. The balanced is reasonable faith. Reasonable faith means when we go to a doctor we use our intelligence to evaluate whether what they say makes sense.
And then we use our experience to evaluate whether what they say works. So reasonable faith is sensible and verifiable. And the Bhagavad Gita calls for this kind of reasonable faith.
At the end of the Bhagavad Gita Krishna tells Arjuna Krishna doesn’t say I am God you have to obey me. He says I have given you this message now deliberate on it with your intelligence and then do as you desire. Do as you desire.
So we definitely need to use our intelligence because there are so many spiritual paths which may be not actually spiritual or semi-spiritual. So many people are telling so many things. If we don’t use our intelligence we will be naive and we can be exploited.
At the same time if we become too critical then it is like I don’t take the treatment of any doctor just because I don’t have faith. I have to take a leap of faith at some time or other. So we use our intelligence to analyze, get basic questions answered and then we try it out.
And if it works we continue it. If it doesn’t work then we move on to something else. So it’s just reasonable faith is sensible and verifiable.