Very often we confuse the word "belief" with faith. Belief is a settled thought. As long as a thought is wavering it is not a belief. When a person says, "I wonder is it so, or is it not so?" that does not mean there is belief. He may appear to believe, but he does not believe. Belief means the thought has settled in the mind and it is difficult to root it out. And yet belief is not necessarily faith, because faith is the culmination of belief. Faith is that belief which no longer is a settled thought, but it is the very being of the person. Although we use the words "faith" and "belief" in our everyday life, when we come to analyze it and understand it from the metaphysical point of view, belief and faith are quite different. People have used the word "faith" for a person's religion, but that is another thing.

It is very good to say that one has a Christian faith, another a Moslem faith, and another has a Jewish faith. If a Christian had a Christian faith, if a Moslem had a Moslem faith, if a Jew had a Jewish faith, what more do you want? Because faith no longer is Christian or Moslem or Jewish: once a person has reached faith, he no longer needs a faith, he is above all religions and he is of all religions. In the Hindustani language, they separate the word faith, which is used in everyday language, from the other word, which is used in connection with one's spiritual evolution. That faith is called "Yaqin" and that yaqin develops into what they call "iman." Yaqin is a settled belief; iman is the culmination of faith. When you say, "It is so," that means belief. But when you say, "It cannot be otherwise," that means faith. And when you say, "I wonder," it is imagination.

There are four stages of iman, which means four stages between belief and faith.