Faith Vs Belief

Paramahansa Yogananda: "Faith comes with direct, personal experience. That is what Saint Paul meant when he said, 'Faith is the proof of things unseen.' The deeper your experience of truth, the greater the faith you will have.

"There was a man who had read in the Bible that if a person has sufficient faith, he will be able to say to this mountain, 'Be thou moved into the sea,' and it will be so. 'How wonderful!' the man thought. 'It has always bothered me that there is a mountain outside my window that obscures the view I might have, otherwise, of that beautiful lake on the other side. Let me remove the mountain by faith.'

"That night, he prayed earnestly, 'Let the mountian be removed and cast into the sea.' He then went to bed. The next morning, the first thing he did was rush to the window to see what had happened. The mountain hadn't budged an inch.

" 'I knew you'd still be there!' he cried.

"Such is the 'faith' of most people. Theirs isn't faith. It is merely belief."

(pgs. 432-433, Conversations with Yogananda by Swami Kriyananda)