Reinvent The Self!

“If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowances for their doubts too”, says Rudyard Kipling. I did not understand the finer modulation of the phrase “make allowance for doubt”, when I first read it. I didn’t know that any doubt could be an opening to a great realisation! Arjuna had a doubt. And there’s none other than Lord Krishna who helped him navigating through the ocean of doubts. The apotheosis of all these dialogues (Gita) was in a Vishwa Roopa Darshan! What a Realisation it is!

Original Sin! As I understand it, Eve doubted what God had told them. And instead ate the fruit of a tree of wisdom. Now Adam and Eve both were none other than God himself as they have been created in His image. So if Eve had a doubt, where did it come from? Serpent? Satan? I think, it came from within! Doubt is that intrinsically woven into every soul!

Doubt let’s us explore, experiment. If there’s no doubt, there would be no journey. Doubt is the starting point of a journey. A scientific journey, a spiritual journey! After all, the God is in the details! And the doubt is the window that lets us go into those details. Any doubt so far?

Statistically speaking, doubt is a prior too! It has probability= 0.5, the highest degree of doubt (purest form of doubt), considering the binary problem. Initially, doubt is unbiased, in the sense uniform, not predisposed. It’s not influenced by anything or anyone. It most likely, gives equal weightage to every outcome. So neither did Eve believe in God nor in Satan, serpent. She just had an unbiased doubt, a curiosity, an intrinsic inclination to explore the reality. And therefore, to me, doubting is innocent. A curious and innocent mind is symbolised by deer. 

People have hundreds of perspectives to look at you, to see you, to talk about you, to form an opinion (just another form of belief) about you. Therefore, any action of yours is liable to be doubtful at least by one perspective. Rama’s action of accepting Sita was doubted by a Washerman. Rama heeded that doubt and disowned Sita. People are the best critic. They always point at the errors in your action, your character. However, you don’t need to get carried away by the public opprobrium but you definitely need to tune yourself to minimise it. Perhaps that is what Kipling meant. You don’t need to be overconfident about your actions. At the same you are just incapable of doubting your own actions. And that is why you need to make allowances for their doubt too!

I think Doubt is not “The Original Sin” by Adam and Eve. Instead it is “Originally Seen” in the Adam and Eve!

To me, doubting shouldn’t be a tendency. It should be a tool to see the Reality unfolding. 

If doubt is a prior, it has to be the initial form of belief! I believe that doubting is a virtue. In that sense, call me Believer!

Being a skeptic is not bad. In a Bayesian way of thinking, I have a doubt about the truth, initially and always. But the degree of that doubt keeps on changing all the time as and when I experience some event.
A doubt about the Reality (Truth) gets diluted and diluted as the time passes. However it would never become zero. Even if the probability of negating the Truth is zero, there is always a possibility of the truth to be negated! Allowance! Remember Black Swan? This trait of being sceptic always points to continuity, and infinity! And that’s what life is and God is all about! An Infinite Game! Curiosity Forever!

Ok, enough about doubt, but what about the Reality? What is that? Have a doubt? Good. Happy Journey!