transends the senses

Over the years Gandhi tried many times to prove the existance of God. 'There is an indefinable mysterious power', he wrote, 'which pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I percieve through my senses. It transends the senses.

'But', he added optimistically, 'it is possible to reason out the existance of God to a limited extent...There is an orderliness in the Universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is not a blind law, for no blind law can govern the conduct of human beings...That law then which governs all life is God...I do dimly percieve that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing Power or spirit is God...In the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, and Love. He is Love. He is supreme God.'

After this valiant rational effort, Gandhi says, 'But He is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if He ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. He must express Himself in every smallest act of his votary. This can only be done through a definate realization more real than the five senses can ever produce. Sense perceptions can be, often are, false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.'

Louis Fischer - The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi