Fanaticism

Faith vs. Fanaticism

Our connection with saints is our gateway to faith.  Their company should inspire us and guide us on the path. As we have seen, faith is not the same as naïve trust, baseless belief, or blind confidence. And while saints are often compared to pastors of a flock, faith is distinct from sheepish ignorance. Faith is a powerful form of trust, but trust is a hard won allegiance. It doesn’t come overnight.

Faith is a firm conviction formed on the basis of deep spiritual understanding; it is as self-evident as sight or hearing to those who have it. For one who is born blind, sight is a theoretical construct. Music is a vague abstract idea with no evidence to one who is deaf. One who loves music may not be able to explain its charm to a deaf man. On the other hand, Beethoven, even while deaf, could hear symphonies in his mind. His inner dance was one of faith in the power of music; inexplicable but tangible. There can be no scientific proof that a series of tones generated with a certain frequency and rhythm is poetic or charming, or that it will make people dance.

There is no evidence that certain wavelengths of light, when combined will provoke a tear. And yet millions visit the portrait of the Mona Lisa or listen to Tchaikovsky’s ballet. There is no objective proof or evidence that anything like “art” or “music” exists, if by proof I mean solid mathematical formula tested in a vacuum where human thought and feeling has no influence. Despite the best science fiction scenarios of Philip K. Dick, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas, androids do not dream of electric sheep. Robots get no thrill from reading Shakespeare, dancing the tango, or injecting cocaine. The hard problem of consciousness remains a challenge to the best minds in artificial intelligence.

Faith, like fine art or good jazz, like radio waves, has an intangible quality. Anyone who doesn’t know how to tune in the radio will doubt the existence of radio waves.  One who is deaf may not understand the charm of music. Feeling is intangible for scientists. What explanation can evolutionary biologists give for the charm of blowing out a birthday candle, or the fun of wearing paper hats at a New Year’s Eve party? There is something deeper in the human character than even the moral sense which Kant was at such great pains to justify. A deeper sense of reality and transcendence that only faith can see and fathom.

Saints are those who have fathomed the depths of faith and who have returned from the other world with a glow of confidence about what it holds.  Their company reassures us that it exists.  And yet, we are wary of saints. The faithful are often seen as fanatics.

There are important differences between faith and fanaticism. And it is essential to understand the distinction.  Faith and fanaticism are not the same thing at all.   Fanaticism closes in on itself; faith is open. Faith in a higher ideal leads to a deeper experience of reality. Fanaticism is uncritical zeal and obsessive enthusiasm ungrounded by experience. It may be based on no evidence at all, but rather peer pressure, tradition, submission to bullying.  The attitude of a faithful truth-seeker is much different from that of a true believer who follows the charismatic prophet. Fanaticism denies reality and facts, while hiding behind doctrines and dogmas. Faith is a personal way of knowing, of communion with divinity and deeper reality. Faith is authentic experience of the divine, fanaticism is imitation of that experience, existential plagiarism. As Woody Allen once put it, “I cheated on my philosophy exam: I looked into the soul of the boy next to me.”

True Believers

Those who are truly faithful are different from “true believers” who blindly follow a cause. The true believer is the enemy of faith. True believers use bullying, coercion, and hatred to maintain chastity to an institution. The faithful seek out like-minded souls in a heart-to-heart connection of friends who are charmed by the same ideal. The true believers ostracize; the faithful include.  True believers follow dogma, The fanatic displays very strict standards and little tolerance for contrary ideas or opinions. Lacking any realization of their own, the true believers follow the leader. They worship guru as a god without understanding what either guru or god means. True believers may come from the ranks of atheists just as easily as they form the herds of religious dogmatists unable to distinguish between dogma and realization.

Faithful Truthseekers

Faithful truth-seekers, on the other hand, follow their guiding principle.  They understand when to abandon form for substance. That guiding light leads them to the truth just as the North Star guides lost sailors in the dark.  But when they reach the equator they must abandon the North Star for a surer compass. Below the equator the North Star never shines, but the expert sailor will find his way, even going so far as to find a new star to guide him: The Southern cross. The true believers cannot cross the equator: they fear dragons and the end of the earth. They have not grasped the inner meaning of things; their faith is weak, so they cling to formulas without understanding their true light. True believers rely on village talk and bullying, fatwas and censorship to keep the sheep in line. Some of the best shepherds are dogs; but the best pastors are not doglike, they are leaders who know how to guide. They value the welfare of their sheep.

Fanatics and Creativity

The truly faithful seek out the company of saints and those who have a deeper understanding of truth. True believers and fanatics use hate tactics and litmus tests to divide and conquer the herd. They use articles of faith to trap thinkers into impossible situations; they hold outward shows of ritual perfection to identify dissidents and troublemakers and eliminate them. The leaders among the true believers tolerate no questions. No questions may be tolerated.  Sincere inquiry is not permitted.

The followers of such charlatans find themselves unable to think creatively. Instead of working with peers to discover new solutions, fanatic and immature students can only quote the master and say, “We must do it as the master did it without question.” New solutions are not allowed and these followers face the pitfalls of dogma.

Religion means proper adjustment

Every baker knows that a good recipe must be varied according to the altitude. At sea level, bread does not rise in the same way as in the mountains. A pinch of salt may be added or subtracted. But if we can only follow the recipe given by the master, the bread will not bake. Should we then question the master’s wisdom, saying, “Lo: the bread did not bake! The master was wrong!” Or is it possible to adjust the recipe slightly, using the master’s criteria? Can we not learn to see what the master saw and adjust our judgment? Is it not wisdom to make the proper adjustment when we must?

My guru was Bhakti Rakshak Śrīdhar Dev Goswāmī. He used to say, “Religion means proper adjustment.” When I cannot adjust the facts to fit my belief, I must allow my faith to lead me to a higher conclusion and a more perfect adjustment. This is the idea behind the Hegelian dialect of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.  Recipes and formulas are valuable; correct vision and proper adjustment are essential. As Śrīdhara Mahārāja put it:

 “The ideal is all valuable, not those materials that were gathered to help preach the ideal. Who are more interested with materials than with spiritual, so the spiritual dissatisfaction will come there as a reaction in general. To make too much of the material aspect, it can't satisfy the seekers after truth, quench their thirst. Ultimately none of you have come for material grandeur, you have come to surrender to the beauty of the ideal. The higher type of ideal, that has drawn you all surely, not the external grandeur. And we may be blessed with that sort of tendency in our heart.”

Srila B.R. Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj [05.82/3]

In order that we avoid the pitfalls of fanaticism a thoughtful student may study the models of history. Examples of true believers may be found from the days of the Roman conquerors to the Bolsheviks; from Hitler’s minions and Stalin’s sycophants to the modern followers of the KKK. Such fanatics are incapable of interpretation; they are not creative thinkers. They are incapable of adjusting the master’s teachings, or giving a deeper reading to the scriptures.

Real Chastity

Aristotle was a scientist because he sought to classify what he new: the scholastic movement of the medieval times took his observations as dogmatic truths and were unable to make observations of their own. “It is true because Aristotle said so,” was the dogma of the day and so encoded the Ptolemaic paradigm as absolute truth. But Aristotle was overturned when Galileo pointed a telescope skyward. Are we to honor the ideal of truth-seeking forwarded by Aristotle? Or shall we honor the master by taking every word literally and scream “Chastity to the master! The master said the earth is flat. All else is heresy!”

Do we burn Galileo at the stake for disagreeing with the master? Or shall we not rather see Galileo as a great truth-seeker coming in the line of Aristotle? Faith in the ideal follows the ideal of truth as begun by Plato and developed further by Aristotle and Galileo. Fanaticism stays chaste to the institution of Aristotle and his law. Fanaticism declares the earth is flat without need for observation or proof: “The master said so!” is enough. Fanaticism follows Aristotle’s institution. It accepts his system of classification as perfect without considering his love of truth or the need to adjust his paradigm. The master’s purpose is truth: his followers passionately insisted on his words. Hence Aristotle’s followers maintained his follies while losing the truth which was, after all, Aristotle’s ideal. Real chastity to the master includes chastity to his ideal, not simply to the words of the formula.

As my master put it, “Chastity means our adherence to the truth. The truth that we have come to realize, that truth is in Krishna consciousness. Krishna consciousness is not a limited thing that one can capture in his hand and swallow. It is of infinite character. There is gradation and there is room for progress in Krishna consciousness. We will say that one is chaste due to his own sincere progress, not due to adherence to the figure, the formal conception.”  (Śrīdhara Mahārāja, Centenary Collection)

One may require wisdom to distinguish between faith and fanatics, but again, that’s the whole point.  No one said it would be easy. Fanaticism is avoided by compassion for others.