The rational aspect of our human nature often fails before our instincts, and very often we arrive at decisions and execute plans out of our instinctual responses or desires. These instincts can be related to our personal, familial, cultural, religious, and political realms, where we form certain prejudices and judgements based on such instincts. The best-selling author of our times, Yuval Noah Harari, often speaks of the myth of the rational individual, and he asserts in his 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2019) that “behavioural economists and evolutionary psychologists have demonstrated that most human decisions are based on emotional reactions and heuristic shortcuts rather than on rational analysis.”
This does not totally mean that all our natural instincts are adversarial. Rather, it points to the fact that we should be constantly vigilant about our thought process and its working. Now while analysing the religious experiences of ours, we are all more convinced that our instincts and feelings rule our religious consciousness rather than the theological or spiritual narratives of the faith community we belong to.
Of course, we cannot master all the nuances of the religious faith we adhere to due to its long history of development and divergences. At the same time, one shall not be subservient to one’s own or others’ emotional decisions and accounts.
If instincts are so strong and can even make reason their servant, then what shall be the case if instincts begin to dictate to the faith issues?
The realm of faith, spirituality, and religious experience is a slippery slope for many compared to reason and scientific thinking. Then the fall of faith will be more fatal than the failure of reason. Today’s highly polarised and politically sensitised society demands a cautious and judicious account of how different faith communities and their leaders disseminate their truth claims and spiritual narrations.
Faith is neither a warring act on others nor a triumph over the scientific temper. It is not an answer where reason stops. Faith is a humble search for the ultimate questions of life, making use of all human faculties such as reason, mind, and will. And this search is fulfilled when the mystery reveals itself in its own terms. All other claims are merely expressions of our instinctual ambition.
