37. Means and end are convertible terms in my philosophy of life. - YI, 26-I2-24, 424.
Our Limitations
38. 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.
Non-violence as means
39. 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.
40. 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.
41. 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
42. Nonviolence is not a mechanical performance. It is the
finest quality of the heart and comes by training. - YI, 16-4-31, 75.
43. 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
44. 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.
45. 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.
46.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
47. 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.
48. 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.
49. 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
50. 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
51. 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.
52. 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.
53. 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.
54. 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
55. 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.
56. 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.
57. 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
58. 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.)
59. 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.
60. Suffering, cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering
and is transmuted into an ineffable joy. - YI, 13-10-21, 327.
Purity
61. 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
62. 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.
63. 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.
64. 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
65. 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
But the Quest is Endless
66. The goal ever recedes from us. The greater the progress
the greater the recognition of our unworthiness. Satisfaction lies in the
effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory. - YI, 9-3-22, 141.