But trust is not afraid of doubt because trust is not against doubt. Trust uses doubt, trust knows how to use the energy contained in doubt itself. That’s the difference between faith and trust. Faith is false; it creates a pseudo kind of religion, it creates hypocrites. Trust has a sublime beauty and truth about it. It grows through doubt, it uses doubt as manure, it transforms doubt. Doubt is a friend, doubt is not the enemy.
The soul is arrived at through doubt, not through believing. Belief is just a mask: you are hiding your original face. Trust is a transformation: you are becoming more illumined. And because you are using doubt as a challenge, as an opportunity, there is never any repression. Slowly slowly doubt disappears, because its energy has been taken by trust. Doubt, in fact, is nothing but trust growing. Doubt is trust on the way. Always think of doubt in such a way: that doubt is trust on the way. Doubt is inquiry and trust is the fulfillment of the inquiry. Doubt is the question and trust is the answer. The answer is not against the question – there will be no possibility of any answer if there is no question – the question has created the occasion for the answer to happen.
And unless your trust has moved through many doubts it will remain impotent. From where will it gather strength, from where will it gather integration? If there is no challenge it is bound to remain weak. Doubt is a challenge. If your trust can respond to the challenge, can befriend your doubt, it will grow through it. And you will not be a split person – deep down doubting and just on the surface faithful, believing – you will have a kind of unity, you will be an individual, undivided. And that individuality is what is called ’soul’ in the old religions.
Use doubt – doubt is beautiful – because it is only through doubt that the trust attains to maturity.
It is only through doubt that the trust flowers, blooms. It is the dark night of doubt that brings the golden morning closer to you. The dark night is not against the dawn, the dark night is the womb for the dawn. The dawn is getting ready in the very being of the dark night. Think of doubt and trust as complementary: just as man and woman are, just as night and day, summer and winter, life and death. Always think of those pairs in terms of inevitable complementariness, never think in terms of opposition.
Once you start seeing doubt as a friend, as an occasion, not against trust but pushing you towards it, suddenly, guilt disappears. There is great joy. Even when you doubt, you doubt joyously, you doubt consciously, and you use doubt to find trust. It is absolutely normal.
The Secret of Secrets Volume 1 (Osho)
