Wisdom Notes on Spirituality

Faith

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There are three forms of self-pity: it can be the self-pity form of guilt, or the self-pity form of jealousy, or just self-pity alone. So there are also three forms of faith. Jealousy is a social emotion, and its mode of self-pity can generate blind faith in a teacher or in any person acting as a role model. Guilt in self-pity mode can lead to faith in God. Self-pity by itself can lead to a person having faith in himself /herself. [¹]

The two factors of consciousness that have the greatest impact on spiritual ideals are faith and love. There are three forms of love, these being narcissistic love, jealous love, and pure love. Pure love is non-sensual, without any component of jealousy or of narcissism: hence there is no aspect of sexuality or of egotism. Pure love is divine love, though mystics often fail to distinguish between it and sexual love.

Love and faith can inter-act in order to offset the three forms of hatred: pride (mode of hatred of other people), guilt (mode of self-hatred), and pure hate. I interpret their inter-action as follows.

• In the disciple of a teacher, the disciple responds to the teacher's jealous love as a way of side-stepping his subconscious hatred of his parents and of society. The hatred is pride (mode of hatred of others).

• The follower of God responds to divine love as a way of neutralising his own subconscious hatred of himself. The hatred is actually guilt (mode of self-hate).

• The person who finds faith in himself uses narcissistic love to counter-balance his subconscious hatred of God. 

Faith in a Teacher

First I look at the kind of faith that one person can have in another person, usually a teacher.
The love within either narcissism or jealousy is sensual love. The most problematic form is that of jealousy. Jealousy produces the phenomenon of  blind faith in a teacher. The child’s identification with a parent centres on jealousy in love mode. If love from the parent is absent or in short supply, the child-become-adult then seeks a new role model. He develops blind faith in a teacher ; however, now his jealousy is in the self-pity mode. Blind faith is an attempt by the introvert to return to the state of unquestioned obedience and happiness of his childhood prior to dissatisfaction with the parent. Religious conversion ends the feelings of rebellion. Blind faith represents the child within the man.

Why does the convert adhere to the teacher through jealousy? Because the teacher himself has dominant jealousy!  The teacher projects and transmits his major dispositional traits, as well as projecting a suitable image of character (that is, he brings out any similar qualities in the disciple). This means that the teacher transmits his jealousy, and the receptive listener absorbs it as blind faith. So the bond between teacher and convert is established through jealousy: the jealousy (love mode) within the teacher stimulates the jealousy (self-pity mode) within the convert. This is the way that jealous love flows, from love mode in one person to the self-pity mode in the recipient.

The values of the religious convert reflect the same values of the teacher, since the convert does not question his faith. Therefore the convert has a surrogate morality and a surrogate desire for power : this gives him a vicarious moral authority. This point is important to understand. Blind faith is a mechanism that can enable a powerless person to acquire power. In fact, all three forms of faith can be means of acquiring power ; the power within blind faith is simply more obvious than the other two forms.

This desire for power explains why militant cult members hate their heretics and apostates worse than non-cult members. Heretics divide the power of the cult ; and apostates discount that power, thereby weakening the validity of the other members’ desire for power. The perennial bane of religious sects is the inability to handle the problem of jealousy.

Now I turn to Guilt and Faith in God

The unconscious ideas that generate guilt are: ‘ life is punishment ’ (guilt in self-pity mode), and  ‘ I deserve punishment ’ (guilt in self-hate mode). [2]. Such a faith built on these ideas therefore inculcates obedience to authority as freedom expires. The person who follows his idea of God aims for a life focused on goodness ; truth is always only of a secondary consideration, and is distorted (that is, 'rationalised') or abandoned if it conflicts with the traditional ideas of goodness.

The way of harmonising this faith is to try and cultivate joy, as a means of offsetting the limiting influences of the underlying guilt.

Faith in Oneself

This is the third form of faith, and the one that I prefer.
This form came to prominence in me during the time of my self-analysis. The unconscious idea that produces self-pity is : ‘ I need help’.  I obtained the help that I needed by going deep within myself. My attitude to life rested on the sole criterion that anything that I needed to solve my problems had to come from within myself alone . Faith acts through my attitude to life. I live my ideas, and my ideas come from within my own reality. I live my ideas, and simultaneously examine them whilst I live them – this is the real meaning of empiricism. Or perhaps it should be called ‘existential empiricism’.

By living my ideas I find out which ones are true for me and which ones are false. This is my perspective. This is my being. I did not live my ideas to find out which ones were good or bad. In my reality, truth overrode goodness – though now that I have reached my ceiling of truth I am focusing on goodness. This perspective on truth and on life only becomes a realistic option when the individual has an intense idealism.

Faith in an external teacher or in God is an external faith. Faith in oneself is an internal faith. The difference between these modes produces the paradox of faith: faith is that which can rescue a person from despair and suffering, yet that same faith can perpetuate the chains of bondage and subservience in that person. The paradox arises when the person finds faiths in the wrong order. If a person puts faith in God without first finding faith in himself, his view of God will be conditioned by his psychological problems – he will be trapped into a denigration of his role in creation. However, if he first finds faith in himself and so comes to terms with his assets and liabilities he can later move on to a faith in God which will place him harmoniously within creation.

Dynamics of Faith

Many people cannot distinguish belief from faith. To help distinguish between them I look at the function of faith and the unconscious ideas that underlie it. I also mention the limitations to faith.

What is the function of faith?
Faith functions so as to re-orientate the person to the world of spirituality, by changing the relative importance of his system of values. His value system changes because his beliefs change. Faith can be considered to act through a ‘valuation’ belief. From this way of looking at it, finding faith is a process of having oneself valued. The person either tries to find a perspective from which he can value himself, or else he seeks a teacher or a God to do the valuation for him.

What are the unconscious ideas that underlie faith?
Faith is clearly separated from belief only when the person comes under immense psychological pressure. Only under such pressure is faith revealed for what it is. When conflict arises in me due to external pressures, I will sacrifice everything, no matter how alluring and entrancing, in order to follow my own path. I reject even the prize of enlightenment if there are unpleasant (to me) strings attached. I will sacrifice everything to follow my own path to freedom. This view of sacrifice can be extended to one’s relations to teachers and to God.

The unconscious ideas that create faith are:

Faith is the sublimation of self-pity. The unconscious idea of faith gives a person the determination to rise above self-pity. When a person is not prepared to sacrifice everything then any faith that he has is weak and will not survive much adversity during times of change.

The unconscious ideas of faith are formless, that is, they do not have a specific content. This is why faith needs to be channelled through concrete beliefs. The view of my own path sums up my beliefs ; hence faith acts through these beliefs. When a person has faith in God his concrete beliefs are usually principles of morality or ethics. These principles can be viewed as coming from a personal God but not from an impersonal God. An impersonal God can only have an impersonal relationship to a person. Hence an impersonal God has little attraction as a source of faith. An impersonal relationship to an impersonal God is perhaps best felt as a relationship of trust.

Faith is not a cure-all for every human problem. Faith is only the beginning of the spiritual life, and not the end of it. The re-orientation of beliefs and values is not very deep at first and takes a great deal of time in order to work its way through the structure of the person’s mind.

There are Three main Limitations to Faith

a). Character traits
These rarely change with the acquisition of faith. Unpleasant traits are simply masked by the new enthusiasm, but come back into prominence when the new beliefs are challenged (perhaps by former believers who have now become dis-illusioned, or by believers who prefer a different interpretation of tradition). Faith does not generate self-awareness, so the person sees only that his surface beliefs have changed ; he does not realise that his subconscious traits have remained more or less the same. Faith does not remove character weaknesses.

The Faiths of Jealousy and Guilt
The difference between the faiths of jealousy and guilt is not always self-evident. I give an example. Suppose that I visit the pope, or the equivalent person in other religions. If my mood is guilt (in self-pity mode) then I may bond to him because he is the office-holder, he is the incumbent of the charismatic office of pope. In other words, I really bond to the office, it is the office that is sanctified and holy ; what the pope is like as a person is usually irrelevant.

By contrast, if my mood is jealousy (in self-pity mode) then I bond to him as a personal teacher. What he is like as a person determines everything ; the fact that he is the pope is just a bonus.

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[¹]. A summary of the factors of some important compound emotions is :

In guilt, for example, either the self-pity or the self-hate is emphasised. Whichever one is currently being emphasised, I call that a mode of guilt.

My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See home page. [1]

[²]. The unconscious ideas of guilt are explained in the articles on Emotion. See home page.   [2]

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