4. The Prison of Beliefs
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| Plato's Cave by Lalita Hamill |
4.1 What is a Belief?
We have already discussed beliefs previously in brief. Here I’m going to peel the onions, do hair splitting and perform surgery on them. This is needed because beliefs are one of the most dangerous afflictions of the Mind. A belief is an assumption, an unfounded idea. It masquerades in the form of knowledge. It is a partial or false knowledge, a structure in the Mind, that lacks solidity of experience to support it. A belief is an epitome of ignorance. These will serve as some definitions for the term belief [1].
A belief is a poor substitute for knowledge. If I tell you a story, which is beyond your experience, you have only two options, either to believe it or disbelieve it. Any of them are not going to take you anywhere. I want you to know.
- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev (Paraphrased)
If you look at beliefs via the microscope of self-observation, you will find that they are mental structures called Concepts. So a belief is not a new entity, it is just an idea, a concept, a higher level abstraction. So why do we need a new word, a new definition? Because a belief is a concept that is erroneous. It is an assumption that takes the form of knowledge. It does not come from experience. A concept that is firmly founded on direct experience is knowledge. When you see beliefs, you will find no solid experiences, no impressions, no memories, no logical chains of thought there, they just simply hang in air.A belief is never founded on experience, it is derived from other sources. It can also be an erroneous interpretation of an experience, which again means that the interpretation is unfounded. A belief can be based on other beliefs, which makes the matter more convoluted, because the person may believe that it is based on a fact, and so is a fact. It is easy to get lost in the jungle of beliefs.
