Facing Deep Doubts on the Path
Tonight we’ll be talking about doubts on the path. We’re not talking about superficial doubts; we’re talking about doubts which make you question everything you have built your life around, your identity around.
And I’m very familiar and intimate with all of these doubts. Whatever I talk about today and whatever you all have described, I have seen them or experienced them at different parts and phases of my journey.
There were periods in my search where I could not sleep. At night, I would lie awake in the dark. And one of the doubts which really bothered me was: “Am I even making progress? Maybe I’m just going backwards instead of forwards.”
I had been practicing meditation for years—retreats, hours of self-inquiry. I had given up things most people would consider non-negotiable in life. Of course, my relationships had changed, career ambitions had been set aside. And after all this, the reward was a doubt that I was further from the truth than when I started.
Doubt 1: “Have I Wasted My Life?”
And so the first doubt that I will go through today is: “Have I wasted my life? I seem worse off than before.” This is the same as thinking maybe I’m going backwards in life, that I have not progressed.
This one doubt broke my heart because it created a cascade of emotions. It made me sad, angry, and sometimes disillusioned.
I’ve heard this—and you all have talked about this—and I’ve heard this so many times on the path. There was a man who came to me long back and he said, “I’ve been 15 years on the path. Before I started seeking, I was fine. I had a career and hobbies. Now I’m uncertain. Sometimes I feel maybe all these years I’ve not practiced at all.”
What I realized in myself, and what you will realize, is that when you start becoming conscious—first of all, the spiritual journey is not linear, it’s non-linear. When you start becoming conscious and start waking up, you’re waking up from a long sedation. Before the path, we are sedated, we are numb, we have repressed. We had a hundred distractions to keep the pain away: there was work, there was entertainment, the next big thing.
Then you start becoming conscious, you start waking up, and that sedation is no longer available. Everything that you buried or didn’t want to look at comes up into the light. Of course, it feels like going backward. Later on, I understood this is more like a detox.
The Analogy of the Cocoon
I’ll give you a simple example. Say you want to clean your room, right? What do you do? You open your cupboards, you put everything out in the open, and things are just all over the place. If a visitor comes in, they might say, “Oh, look at the mess! It’s so messy; it’s even messier than before.” But you know that this mess is part of cleaning up. There’s a process to it, and once it gets cleaned up, the mess will be put in the proper place.
This is what I have realized on the journey: the times you feel you’re going backwards, or the times when you think there’s no progress and that you have wasted time, are the times when a lot of things have come up. You’re going through a transitional period where the old sedation—the old habits which kept you numb—have died down, but the pain and the subsequent emotions have not transformed yet.
It’s like the caterpillar. When the caterpillar dissolves in a cocoon, it becomes liquid. If you open the cocoon at that time, you’ll say, “This caterpillar is worse off than it was before because earlier it had a form, but now it’s just liquid goo; there’s nothing in it.” But of course, that’s mid-transformation. Once the transformation happens… and transformations are never easy. They are glamorized and romanticized in spiritual books, but the real work is hard, and there’s a lot of heartache involved in it, like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly.
So what I would say for this doubt is: don’t judge the cocoon by the standards of the caterpillar. You don’t know yet what the butterfly is.
Doubt 2: Are Spiritual Experiences Real or Created by the Mind?
I’ll come to the next doubt, which is one of my favorite doubts and one that you all will also resonate with pretty strongly: “Are my spiritual experiences real or created by the mind?”
Again, this doubt is tied to people who are very rational, logical, and intellectual. People who are more emotional just take in the experience and are happy with it. But rational people like to dissect everything, and I did that too.
I’ll share a small experience which I went through years back. I was staying with my parents at that time, sitting—I remember very clearly—on the bed in my mom’s room. I had just read the Gita; I was reading the Gita at that time, sitting and contemplating. Suddenly, out of the blue, there was this experience where I knew I was birthless, that there was no question I was born and no question I will ever die. It took me by surprise because I was not in any way seeking or wanting that experience. It just came, and it was so clear and amazing.
I got up after the experience and was like, “Wow, I was never born! How could I ever think I was born?” Of course, I’m not talking about the body, but the consciousness within.
After a few days, of course, like all experiences, this experience faded. The intensity fades. Then I started questioning myself: “Was that even real? Did I make it up because I was reading the Gita?” In the Gita, Lord Krishna says again and again, “You are birthless, you are deathless, you are beyond life and death.” So did I just manufacture it?
This is what the mind does: it takes the experience and begins evaluating it. “Was it real? Was it deep? How does it compare to what Nisargadatta said? How does it compare to what that master said?” The mind turns the experience into evidence and then puts that evidence on trial in a court, asking, “What does this experience mean?”
This is the mind’s nature. It is a machine that makes measurements and comes to conclusions, and it will measure everything. But what is the benchmark for the reality of an experience?
I’ll give you an example. We fall in love. All of you would have fallen in love at some point, loving that person like crazy. And after three years—or maybe even after three months—you say, “I can’t even stand that person.” But you see, when you had that love at that moment, that was real. It was as real as it could be. With the passage of time, things change, and this is what happens with all experiences.
You also have to understand that the mind is conditioned. The mind has its own parameters, its own perceptions of what’s real and what’s made-up, and it will apply that benchmark to all your experiences. This doubt also points to something very fundamental on the path: all experiences, however profound, will fade away. They will come and go; they are like visitors. You are not a visitor—you are the house. You are the awareness on which all these experiences arise. So again, this is one of the doubts you will encounter: “Is this real? Is this not real? Is it made up by my mind?”
Doubt 3: What If There Is No Meaning or Purpose?
Now I’ll come to another doubt, which is a pretty deep and unsettling one: “What if there is no meaning, no purpose, no divine plan? What if I’m walking the spiritual path and it means nothing?”
This doubt is not only about the path; it is about our existence itself—the meaning of what it means to be here on earth for a limited period of time and then die. We are seeking, but what does it even mean? What am I seeking?
What I have seen with people who follow non-duality deeply is that slowly, because on some level meaning is stripped out of you—meaning about existence, about emotions, about most concepts is stripped out by non-duality—it’s probable that the mind will move towards nihilistic viewpoints. And it happened with me.
I have been through a period of atheism—I’ve talked about it—where I got disillusioned with everything. That’s when this doubt of, “What is the meaning of everything? What is my purpose? If there’s no divine plan and no enlightenment, what am I even doing?” caused me a huge amount of distress.
The issue, or the thing that struck me years later when I investigated it, is: what is meaning? Meaning is just created by my mind; it is just a concept. Life is neither meaningless nor meaningful—it just is at this moment.
Even right now, if we drop the path—if you mentally drop spirituality, drop enlightenment, drop moving forward—even after dropping all those stories, there is something here right now which requires no divinity, no validation, or spiritual path. It is just there. We cannot deny that fact. It is here, and that is life; that is beingness; that is this consciousness in all its glory without a filter. You don’t need a story or a meaning to be in contact with it.
Doubt 4: Financial Comparison and Social Conditioning
After this, there is a very interesting doubt which I encountered again and again: “I should have earned more by now. Everyone is financially better off than me. I’m behind others now. I should have maybe earned more rather than meditating more.”
Sometimes you’ll open your social media or LinkedIn, and you’ll see your old classmate or someone junior to you at work promoted to a big position. Sometimes envy—that uncomfortable feeling—rises up, and you think, “I could have been them.” With that comes shame, because you’re spiritual, so you’re not supposed to feel all those stupid thoughts and feelings. So you try to say, “No, I should be happy for him.” Then there’ll be fear: “What if I’ve fallen behind? Can I ever catch up?” And then grief: “Oh, maybe I wasted all this time.”
So there is a cascade of emotions that comes with this particular doubt. It can happen when you see someone materially progressing a lot, or it can come up uninvited at night when you’re going off to sleep and the thought arises: “Ah, I’m not financially that secure,” or “I could have earned so much,” or “I could have been at this position in such a company.”
This is one of the doubts that is purely a conditioning that society has created in us. For society, a life well lived produces results that are measurable. Money is measurable; security can be seen and measured; status can be seen—you can relatively see who has more status and fame than others.
But the spiritual path does not produce all these measurable things. I have met billionaires who still feel poor. And one of my friends took the other path: he was spiritual initially, but then he went into material life, paying attention to his career and money. When I met him years later, you know what he said? He said, “Raji, what if I had chosen the spiritual path? Maybe I wasted my life running after money.” So there are people on the other side of the fence who have earned a lot and think, “Oh, did I waste my life doing all that?”
In this situation, I believe the middle path is the best path. I’m not saying don’t go after a career; I’ve never said that. I’ve always encouraged everyone because money is a tool and you need it to survive, so there’s nothing wrong with it. If you earn your livelihood cleanly and don’t use money to measure your self-worth, then it’s fine. It’s okay to think about career progression or to earn money; there’s nothing wrong with it. But be on the middle path, where you’re not measuring your worth with all these material aspects, but you’re also not completely ignoring it. You know the value of these things as tools you use in society to live your life.
Doubt 5: “Why Do I Still Feel Like This?”
And there is one last doubt that I have to talk about: “Why do I still feel like this?” You can change “feel like this” to “Why do I still feel anxious?”, “Why do I still feel sad?”, or “Why do I still feel angry?”—different emotions, different feelings.
Many seekers have come up to me and said, “I’ve been meditating for 10 years. Why do I still feel this anxiety? Why do I still feel this way? What is wrong with me?”
The question “Why do I feel this?” is not a question—it is a rejection. Why I say it’s a rejection is because what it means is: “This feeling should not be here.” Whatever I’m feeling after 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years of meditation, “Why do I still feel this?” begs the question: what is wrong with the feeling?
Again, with this doubt comes shame, guilt, and other associated emotions: “I should not be feeling this.” Then comes a doubt of, “Maybe I have not followed the path properly.” Then it will cascade into another emotion: “Maybe all of this is nonsense. Maybe there’s nothing called enlightenment.” So one doubt will cascade into multiple doubts.
For example, say you’re stuck in traffic and you’re irritated. Immediately you say, “I’m a spiritual person; I should not be irritated.” Now you have two problems: irritation and the conflict with irritation, because you, being a spiritual person, should not be like this, or having meditated for 10 years, should not feel irritated now.
All these emotions and feelings are like weather—they’re like clouds in the sky. You are the sky. If you do not understand that basic premise, then of course feelings will take over the mind. Even if they take over the mind, even if a certain feeling is there, it’s okay. It is part of the waters that arise and go; it comes and moves on.
So the antidote to this doubt is developing the capacity to accept the waters, because not only feelings, but life will throw situations at you which will not be to your liking, and that is life. We as human beings are a very small speck on earth in society. As a person, as an identified self, I’m a very small speck, and most things around me are not in my control. They will never be in my control.
The ego wants things to be in a particular way: emotions to be in a particular way, situations to be in a particular way, people to be in a particular way, finances to be in a particular way. But they will not be in a particular way because the universe will not wait for you or wait for your validation or permission to do what it does. So if you do not have the capacity to accept whatever arises, then of course it will be a challenge when the universe decides to do things which are not in line with your limited egotistical demands.
Clearing the Ground for Transformation
So these are the five unsettling doubts which most of you will encounter. Of course, there is a host of other doubts on the path. Since I had limited time, I just spoke about the most pressing ones.
The doubts are endless, especially on the path of inquiry, contemplation, non-duality—whatever you call it. It’s a very deep, abstract path. It’s not for everyone. If you have entered the path, that means a lot of evolution and groundwork has been done.
As you walk, a lot of things will get dismantled: your beliefs, your identity. You might feel less equipped to deal with external situations because maybe earlier you could be angry, or manipulate, or do things that were a bit more self-centered. But now that you’re not that self-centered, situations will not turn out the way they used to.
So parts of your identity will crumble, will be dismantled, and it’s a ruthless process. It’s like the caterpillar turning into a butterfly—all the stories and narratives will slowly dissolve. That is a ground being cleared. The new cannot come in until the old is removed. If you want to create a field full of flowers, you have to first clear the weeds, right? You have to clean the ground, remove all the weeds, and then sow the seeds for the flowers so they can come up.
So the clearing is important. This is the ground being cleared, and once the ground is cleared, there is a chance for something vast, something immense, something new to appear, rather than the old conditionings and old identities running in the same patterns again and again for lifetimes.