Credere est inimicus fidei

Alan Watts observed that if you believe in God, then you don't really have faith. Believing in God means you're still clinging to something, whereas faith means totally letting go.

Belief in things like God or souls is actually easy to let go of, since those concepts are speculative. The hard part is letting go of beliefs about things that we're certain exist.

We know that life exists, consciousness exists. They invite beliefs about them which can be difficult to detach from. To look at a simple thing like a tree and say, "I don't know what that is" almost flies in the face of reason. And yet to say, "I know what that is" is to suggest that our conceptualization of reality has no limits, which is obviously false. Or is it?

Rosicrucian teachings suggest that our objective conceptualization has limits, but our subjective conceptualization does not. Our subjective conceptualization is part of a whole which is in itself an infinite absolute.

As an article of faith, this is debatable. But the only way to reach subjective conceptualization would be to acknowledge the limits of the objective.

The teachings themselves are like a tree. We have to say ourselves, "I don't what that is" in order to approach the inner alchemy that lies at the heart of the tradition. That inner alchemy, as described in The Chemical Wedding, may be less a transmutation than an obliteration. We can only know by not knowing.