7 Comments so far:

There is ALWAYS room for doubt because there is always free will.  Even if God did personally appear before your very eyes, you could always doubt it by considering it a hallucination, that someone spiked your drink etc.  In the Bhagavad-gita Krishna says that you can know him free from doubt in the stage of full Krishna consciousness, but even then there must be free will to doubt if you want to.

You say you want ABSOLUTE certainty.  I don´t think that absolute certainty is required, but at least there should be some good signs.

 As a (retired) scientist i can relate to the condition of lack of absolute certainty. A scientist may not be absolutely certain of his or her theory, but still figures it is worth pursuing further so long as he can see some possibilities for progress ahead. 

The fact is that faith is one of the laboratory conditions required for progress in Krishna consiousness.  Everyone has to decide for themselves whether they are willing to invest that faith.  Personally I continue to invest my faith because I consider the current rewards to be sufficient to maintain it, and I see a bright future in it.  I am happy.  If someone wants to believe that I am just religiously conditioned, indoctrinated, deluded, they have the free will to do so.

Thanks for that. I respect your clear and considered thinking on these matters.

"The fact is that faith is one of the laboratory conditions required for progress in Krishna consiousness."

This is interesting. What is faith exactly? Because if it is 'belief in the truth of something outside of our current experience', how is it even possible. How can I have such 'faith' in something I am not yet sure about?

Adherence to institutional doctrines is never a substitute for realization. You can't replace actual Krishna Consciousness with belief.

However, those things are good to provide structure for your practice, especially in the beginning.

For example: the idea of "the origin of the jiva" is the idea of a doctrine, a belief. The essential question is, however; "Who am I and where do I come from?"

Believing an official dogma (and there are several) is no replacement for actually knowing who you are and where you come from. It's the difference between religion and self-realization.

At the end of the day the devotee is one who lives apart from the general mass of people, and that includes the general mass of practitioners who are attracted and sustained by psychological and social aspects of participation in a mass movement or hierarchical organization of some kind.

Less frequently they can be found establishing one, but those guys are the really great souls.

I often think of something that Andy Stanley said: "Scriptual knowledge [my note: mastering doctrines] is no sign of spiritual maturity. When Jesus came, who knew more scripture than anyone? The Pharisees. And who crucified Jesus? Here we are two thousand years later on our knees crying out, 'Lord, just give me a sense of Your presence!', and they were right there with him, and couldn't recognize him."

It's that sense of longing to *know* that he expresses in that statement that really makes it stick in my heart.

If there is nothing more to this life that what we perceive with the senses, then it makes no difference what you do.

Otherwise, if the Supreme Truth is knowable through revelation, all we can do is try to more and more sincerely cultivate the desire to know. I personally find the doctrine of brahman and parabrahman to be compelling. The idea that personality must be present there in the source, as we see it here, is also compelling.

So we must have some faith that if we pray the Lord will guide us in the right way. Otherwise it's pretty much hopeless. Satanism in that case becomes the only logical choice. ;-)

Of course, to exercise the Satanic option you'd have to be absolutely certain that there was nothing else.

 The other night something like this discussion came up  . Faith means doubt. Otherwise there isabsolute certainty, either through  genuine realization or self-delusion. In either of these cases faith is unnecessary.

The fact that faith, sraddha, is the first step on the nine levels of developing love of God also indicates that doubt is part of it.