And now coming to the third stage of belief, and that belief is that it is not because someone says so, nor is it because the crowd says so, but, "I think so, that is why I believe it." That is a wonderful belief. But if a person who is simple and unevolved, if he thought, "What I believe or what I reason is the right thing," and did not believe in the authority or in the crowd, instead of going upwards, he would be going downwards. And very often it happens that a simple one is more fixed in his idea than a person who is reasoning. Very often a simple person has no reason and yet he is fixed in his idea; and you may bring before him any reason, he will not listen to it. He says, "That is what I believe, what the crowd believes, I do not care."

If it is written in the scripture, in history, by professors, scientists, priests, or clergy, they say, "I do not believe." That becomes a kind of illusion, a kind of madness. Because a person who believes in his reason, independently of the crowd and of the authorities, must be ready to understand the reason of another and must be simple enough to give up his reasoning when another person's reasoning appeals to him. Very often reasoning becomes rigid in the case of a simpleton, because he covers the reasoning with his personality. He calls his reason his own reason and the reason of another another person's reason, and there is no relation between another person and himself. He thinks, "Another person's reason is his property, my reason is my property, "And therefore he is not ready to understand.

And then we come to reason. Reason is as a cover, a cover behind which there is another cover. And if we go on penetrating one cover after another cover, there are numberless covers we can penetrate, and yet there will be another behind it.