This word ‘impossible’ is not the word of an arrogant person. With faith one can eliminate disease, no matter what it is; one can change one’s nature overnight, no matter how bad it is; and what’s more, one can be anything in life regardless of what one is today. A humble person with limited resources in life, once he realizes faith, realizes God. So tell me, what is impossible?
God is formless; God is an experience. God is transcendental existence. One cannot see him with the naked eye or by means of this mind. One cannot realize him by any mundane sensual tools but when faith becomes effulgent, God is there.
The main support of human life is faith, not the intellect. One never thinks about that which is clear. This is faith. Faith and trust are deep and mysterious. A child believes in God naturally, as Mirabai did. Some saint gave her a wooden statue of Krishna and Mirabai fell in love with it. She must have been a small girl at the time. To the little girl, that small statue of Gopal became her husband. When she grew up she saw Gopal as an adult, like herself.
Mirabai was either insane or she was completely natural. The thought just did not occur to her as to how a wooden statue could be a man or her husband. This thought just never entered her mind. So many people tried to reason with her, but she had just the one thing on her mind:
Mere to Giradhara Gopaala doosaro na koyee, Jaake sira mora mukuta mero pati soyee.
Only Krishna is mine, nobody else; the one who wears a peacock feather on his head is my husband.
Faith needs no explanation. One may feel devotion or respect towards someone after seeing them; one might feel that they are wise or beautiful. However, faith is experienced without ever seeing the object of the faith. There is not a thought about it; it is spontaneous and simple. One believed that one’s father was one’s father. This is trust. It is the same with God. Those who have this kind of faith, they attain. Such trusting people are straight forward and simple.
When I reached Munger, Nandkishore Goenka was twelve or thirteen years of age. He had the white patches of leucoderma on his lips. One day he asked me for a cure and I said to him, “Practise Chhat pooja.” He performed Chhat pooja during the festival that celebrates and worships the sun, and the patches disappeared. Why did they go? They disappeared because of trust.
Children are spontaneously and naturally trusting. They believe whatever people tell them. Whenever one accepts something without contesting it, that is vishwasa, trust. Vishwasah siddhidayakah vishvassah phaldayakah – “The fruit is attained only by trust.” In this world, at least ninety percent of the population lives on trust. Such people can be found everywhere, not only at the Kumbha Mela. At the Kumbha Mela, when the Naga sadhus urinate here and there, everyone runs to pick up some of that sand and rub it all over the body like bhasma. Who will stop this? Is this written in some Veda or shastra? Has some guru preached this? No, this is one’s own faith. That which is inborn is called faith and that which is given by another is called knowledge. This faith has been born within oneself. People go and smear themselves with urine-soaked sand. Why they do it is something only they know. Such things do not happen only in India, it happens in all religions.
A friend of Raidas was going to Varanasi, so he asked Raidas if he would accompany him. Raidas answered, “No, I cannot come. I am a cobbler and I am very poor.” Instead he gave his friend some pieces of haldi, turmeric, to offer to Ganga. His friend went to Varanasi and he had his bath in the Ganga. Forgetting to offer the turmeric which Raidas had given to him, he started off on his return journey. All of a sudden he heard a voice behind him, saying, “Haldi, haldi.” When he turned around, he saw two hands rising from the Ganga. It was a miracle – Gangaji was asking for the turmeric from Raidas. Such faith and belief are the greatest human qualities.