Means and end are convertible terms in my philosophy of life. - YI,
26-I2-24, 424.
Our Limitations
Knowledge is limitless and so also the application of truth. Every day
we add to our knowledge of the power of the Atman, and we shall keep on doing
ever the same. New experience will teach us new duties, but truth shall ever be
the same. Who has ever known it in its entirety? -YI, 8-4-26, 131.
I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Nonviolence are as
old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a
scale as I could. In doing so I have sometimes erred and learnt by my errors.
Life and its problems have thus become to me so many experiments in the
practice of truth and nonviolence. As a Jain muni once rightly said, I was not
so much a votary of ahimsa as I was of truth, and I put the latter in the first
place and the former in the second. For, as he put it, I was capable of
sacrificing nonviolence for the sake of Truth. In fact it was in the course of
my pursuit of truth that I discovered nonviolence. - H, 28-3-36, 49.
Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible
to disentangle and separate them. They are like the two sides of a coin, or
rather a smooth unstamped metallic disc. Who can say, which is the obverse, and
which the reverse? Nevertheless, ahimsa is the means; Truth is the end. Means
to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty.
If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later.
When once we have grasped this point, final victory is beyond question.
Whatever difficulties we encounter, whatever apparent reverses we sustain, we
may not give up the quest for Truth which alone is, being God Himself. - YM,
13.
The path of Truth is as narrow as it is straight. "Even so is
that of ahimsa. It is like balancing oneself on the edge of a sword. By
concentration an acrobat can walk on a rope. But the concentration required to
tread the path of Truth and ahimsa is far greater. The slightest inattention
brings one tumbling to the ground. One can realize Truth and ahimsa only by
ceaseless striving. - YM, 7.
Realization of Nonviolence comes by Training
Nonviolence is not a mechanical performance. It is the finest quality
of the heart and comes by training. - YI, 16-4-31, 75.
It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain to a mental
state of nonviolence. In daily life it has to be a course of discipline though
one may not like it, like for instance, the life of a soldier. But I agree that
unless there is hearty cooperation of the mind, the mere outward observance
will be simply a mask, harmful both to the man himself and others. The perfect
state is reached only when mind and body and speech are in proper
co-ordination. But it is always a case of intense mental struggle. - YI,
1-10-31, 287.
Patience
God travels at a snail’s pace Those who want to do good are not
selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good
requires a long time. - IHR, 21.
Having flung aside the sword, there is nothing except the cup of love
which I can offer to those who oppose me. It is by offering that cup that I
expect to draw them close to me. I cannot think of permanent enmity between man
and man and believing as I do in the theory of rebirth, I live in the hope
that, if not in this birth, in some other birth, I shall be able to hug all
humanity in friendly embrace. - YI, 2-4-3I, 54.
This is the path of ahimsa. It may entail continuous suffering and the
cultivating of endless patience. Thus step by step we learn how to make friends
with all the world; we realize the greatness of God-or Truth. Our peace of mind
increases in spite of suffering; we become braver and more enterprising; we
understand more clearly the difference between what is everlasting and what is
not; we learn how to distinguish between what is our duty and what is not. Our
pride melts away, and we become humble. Our worldly attachments diminish, and
so does the evil within us diminish from day to day. - YM, 10.
Fearlessness
Fearlessness connotes freedom from all external fear-fear of disease,
bodily injury and death, of dispossession, of losing one’s nearest and dearest,
of losing reputation or giving offence, and so on. - YM, 41.
We must give up all external fears. But the internal foes we must
always fear. We are rightly afraid of animal passion, anger, and the like.
External fears cease of their own accord, when once we have conquered these
traitors within the camp. All such fears revolve round the body as the centre,
and will, therefore, disappear as soon as one gets rid of attachment for the
body. ‘We thus find that all external fear is the baseless fabric of our own
vision. Fear has no place in our hearts, when we have shaken off the attachment
for wealth, for family and for the body. Nothing whatever in the world is ours.
Even we ourselves are His. When we cease to be masters, and reduce ourselves to
the rank of servants, humbler than the very dust under our feet, all fears will
roll away like must; we shall attain ineffable peace, and see Satyanarayana
(the God of Truth) face to face. - YM, 43.
The pursuit of Truth is true bhakti (devotion). It is the path that
leads to God, and, therefore, there is no place in it for cowardice, no place
for defeat. It is the talisman by which death itself becomes the portal to life
eternal. - YM, 5
Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for
violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence.
Violence does not mean emancipation from fear, but discovering the means of
combating the cause of fear. Nonviolence, on the other hand, has no cause for
fear. The votary of nonviolence has to cultivate the capacity for sacrifice of
the highest type in order to be free from fear. He recks not if he should lose
his land, his wealth, his life. He who has not overcome all fear cannot
practice ahimsa to perfection. The votary of ahimsa has only one fear, that is
of God. He who seeks refuge in God ought to have a glimpse of the Atman that
transcends the body; and the moment one has a glimpse of the Imperishable Atman
one sheds the love of the perishable body. Training in nonviolence is thus
diametrically opposed to training in violence. Violence is needed for the
protection of things external, nonviolence is needed for the protection of the
Atman, for the protection of one’s honour. - H, I-9-40, 268.
Non-possession
If we are to be non-violent, we must then not wish for anything on
this earth which the meanest or the lowest of human beings cannot have. -
Ceylon, 132.
Possession implies provision for the future. A seeker after Truth, a
follower of the law of Love cannot hold anything against tomorrow. God never
stores for the morrow; He never creates more than what is strictly needed for
the moment. If, therefore, we repose faith in His providence, we should rest
assured that He will give us every day our daily bread, meaning everything that
we require. Perfect fulfillment of the ideal of Non-possession requires that
man should, like the birds, have no roof over his head, no clothing and no
stock of food for the morrow. He will indeed need his daily bread, but it will
be God's business, and not his, to provide for it .-YM, 34.
From the standpoint of pure Truth, the body too is a possession. It has
been truly said, that desire for enjoyment creates bodies for the soul. When
this desire vanishes, there remains no further need for the body, and man is
free from the vicious cycle of births and deaths. The soul is omnipresent; why
should she care to be confined within the cage-like body, or do evil and even
kill for the sake of that cage? We thus arrive at the ideal of total
renunciation, and learn to use the body for the purposes of service so long as
it exists, so much so that service, and not bread, becomes with us the staff of
life. We eat land drink, sleep and wake, for service alone. Such an attitude of
mind brings us real happiness and the beatific vision in the fullness of time.
- YM, 37.
Love and exclusive possession can never go together. Theoretically
when there is perfect love, there must be perfect non-possession. The body is
our last possession. So a man can only exercise perfect love and be completely
dispossessed, if he is prepared to embrace death and renounces his body for the
sake of human service.
But that is true in theory only. In actual life, we can hardly
exercise perfect love, for the body as a possession, will always remain with
us. Man will ever remain imperfect, and it will always be his part to try to be
perfect. So that perfection in love or non-possession will remain an
unattainable ideal as long as we are alive, but towards which we must
ceaselessly strive. - MR, 1935,412
Voluntary Suffering for the sake of Love
In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages
that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s
opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For
What appears to be Truth to the one may appears to be error to another. And
patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication off
Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one’s self. - YI,
Nov.Tagore,6.
The Satyagrahi seeks to convert his opponent by sheer force of
character and suffering. The purer he is and the more he suffers the quicker
the progress. - YI, I8-9-24, 306.
The religion of ahimsa consists in allowing others the maximum of
convenience at the maximum of inconvenience to us, even at the risk of life. -
YI, 2-12-26, 422
It is no nonviolence if we merely love those that love us. It is
nonviolence only when we love those that hate us. I know how difficult it is to
follow this grand law of love. But are not all-great and good things difficult
to do? Love of the hater is the most difficult of all. But by the grace of God
even this most difficult thing becomes easy to accomplish if we want to do it.
- (From a private letter, dated 31-12-34.)
I saw that nations like individuals could only be made through the
agony of the Cross and in no other way. Joy comes not out of infliction of pain
on others but out of pain voluntarily borne by oneself. - YI,31-12-31, 418.
Suffering, cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is
transmuted into an ineffable joy. - YI, 13-10-21, 327.
Purity
To see the universal and all-pervading spirit of Truth face to face
one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. Identification
with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification. God can
never be realized by one who is not pure in heart. - Auto, 615.
Self- restraint
Sex urge is a fine and noble thing. There is nothing to be ashamed of
in it. But it is meant only for the act of creation. Any other use of it is a
sin against God and humanity. - H, 28-3-36, 53.
Although I have always been a conscientious worker, I can clearly
recall the fact that this indulgence interfered with my work. It was the
consciousness of this limitation that put me on the track of self-restraint. -
H, 4-4-36, 61.
A man, whose activities are wholly consecrated to the realization of
Truth, which requires utter selflessness, can have no time for the selfish
purpose of begetting children and running a household.YM, -1- 4. cf. 600-607.
God’s Grace essential for perfect Self-control
Perfection or freedom from error comes only from grace. Without an
unreserved surrender to His grace, complete mastery over thought is impossible.
This is the teaching of every great book in religion, and I am realizing the
truth of fit every moment of my striving after that perfect Brahmacharya. -
Auto, 388
