Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.

― Mahatma Gandhi

Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

- Mohandas Gandhi

All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family

No one is free when others are oppressed.
- Mahatma Gandhi

benefit from your effort

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you.

Gandhi

What do the souls of Hitler and other past leaders have to say?

Read this very interesting article here: http://www.cosmiclighthouse.com/aug08/articles/expecting_the_unexpected

As we compiled the Leaders book a huge issue emerged concerning the meaning and purpose of evil, suffering, and all kinds of negativity. One of our leaders was Mahatma Gandhi, whose human spirituality ran very deep.

I asked him: You have spoken of having many lifetimes. Have you learned in the course of those lifetimes what is the purpose of human life?

Gandhi: “The purpose of human life is to learn as much as we can about ourselves and (as they say up here) to learn lessons. At Home we’re in an ocean, an all-consuming environment of unconditional love. Here we do not feel hate, despair, or any emotions or feelings that would be considered negative. It is only by assuming a human body that we are able to experience these things, yet in each one of these seemingly negative experiences of our lessons, our appreciation and wisdom concerning the unconditional love from which we come grows, magnifies, and intensifies. So we come to Earth to partake of the lessons we may learn there in order that we may grow in appreciation of what we have at Home and who we are as a soul, a piece of the all-encompassing divinity.”

flash of light

The stature of a man is in the eye of the beholder. Harassed, unhappy, thwarted by those who adored him, Gandhi could not have seen what heights he attained in the last months of his life. In that period he did something of endless value to any society: he gave India a concrete, living demonstration of a different and better life. He showed that men could live as brothers and that brute man with blood on his hands can respond, however briefly, to the touch of the spirit. Without such moments humanity would lose faith in itself. For ever after, the community must compare that flash of light with the darkness of normal existance.

Louis Fischer - The Life of Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi Hoes His Garden

India 1947

'You must not lose faith in humanity,' Gandhi wrote on 29 August. 'Humanity is an ocean. If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.'

He had kept his faith in man. He had kept his faith in God. He had therefore kept his faith in himself. 'I am born a fighter who does not know failure,' he assured a prayer meeting audience. Partition of India was a fact, but 'it is always possible by correct conduct to lessen an evil and eventually even to bring good out of evil', Gandhi said.

He still hoped his faith would move people, but how? 'I am groping today,' he declared. He was full of 'searching questions' about himself. 'Have I led the country astray?'

A lesser man might have sulked or grown bitter or plotted the discomfiture of those who thwarted him. Gandhi turned the searchlight inward; perhaps it was his fault.

'I can echo your prayer that I may realize peace and find myself,' he wrote in a letter to Kurshed Naoroji. 'It is a difficult task but I am after it.' 'O Lord,' he exclaimed, 'Lead us from darkness into light.'

He was approaching his seventy-eighth birthday. The world he had built lay partially in ruins all around him. He must begin building anew. Congress was too much a political party; it must become an instrument for the constructive uplift of the people. He wrote two articles in Harijan on the virtues of non-violent, non-revolutionary, God-loving, equalitarian Socialism. He was seeking new directions. He was old in body and young in spirit, old in experience and young in faith. Future plans lifted past troubles from his back.

He had gone to Calcutta and been taken into a Moslem house in an area were the stones were slippery with fresh blood and the air acrid with the smoke of burning homes. The moslem family to whom the house belonged were friendly to him. 'For the moment I am no enemy,' he wrote Amrit Kaur. He rejoiced more in the smallest triumph of brotherhood than in the political independance of a country.

The bereaved came to him in the lowly house and he wiped their tears. He found solace in the balm he gave others. He had discovered his new task. It was his old task: to assuage pain, to spread love, to make all men brothers.

St Francis of Assisi, hoeing his garden, was asked what he would do if he was suddenly to learn that he was to die at sunset that day. He said: 'I would finish hoeing my garden.' Gandhi continued to hoe the garden in which he had worked all his days. Sinners had thrown stones and filth into the garden. he continued to hoe.

Pertinacity was Gandhi's antidote to frustration and tradgedy. Action gave him inner peace.

The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer

Attitude of silence

In the attitude of silence what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.

Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi 1945

In April 1945, on the eve of the San Fransisco Conference to draft the charter of the United Nations, Indian and foreign correspondents sought a statement from Mahatma Gandhi.

'India's nationalism spells internationalism,' he declared.

'There will be no peace for the Allies of the world,' he asserted, 'unless they shed their belief in the efficiacy of war and its accompanying terrible deception and fraud, and are determined to hammer out a real peace based on the freedom and equality of all races and nations...' Freedom of India will demonstrate to all the exploited nations of the earth that their freedom is near and that in no case will they henceforth be exploited.

'Peace,' Gandhi added, 'must be just. In order to be that it must neither be punitive or vindictive. Germany and Japan should not be humiliated. The strong are never vindictive. Therefore the fruits of peace must be shared equally. The effort will then be to turn them into friends. The alllies can prove their democracy by no other means.'

But he feared that behind the San Francisco Conference 'lurk the mistrust and fear which breed war'.

Gandhi saw that freedom was the twin of peace, and fearlessness the parent of both.

The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi - Louis Fischer

doing what everybody could do but doesn't

Gandhi was a strong individual, and his strength lay in the richness of his personality, not in the multitude of his possessions. His goal was To be, not To have. Happiness came to him through self-realization. Fearing nothing, he could live the truth. Having nothing, he could pay for his principles.

Mahatma Gandhi is the symbol of personal morality and public action. When conscience dwells at home but not in the workshop, office, classroom and marketplace, the road is wide open to corruption and cruelty and dictatorship.

Gandhi enriched politics with ethics. He faced each morning's issues in the light of eternal and universal values. He always distilled a permanent element out of the ephemeral. Gandhi thus broke through the framework of usual assumptions which cramp a man's action. he discovered a new dimension of action. Unconfined by considerations of personal success or comfort, he spilt the social atom and found a new source of energy. It gave him weapons of attack against which there was no defence. His greatness lay in doing what everybody could do but doesn't.

'Perhaps he will not succeed,' Tagore wrote of the living Gandhi. 'Perhaps he will fail as the Buddha failed and as the Christ failed to wean men from their iniquities, but he will always be remembered as one who made his life a lesson for all ages to come,'

The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi - Louis Fischer

may not be in your time

It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.

Gandhi

Reject Power

Gandhi had more than influence, he had authority, which is less yet better than power. Power is the attribute of a machine; authority is the attribute of a person. Statesman are varying combinations of both. The dictator's constant accretion of power, which he must inevitably abuse, steadily robs him of authority. Gandhi's rejection of power enhanced his authority. Power feeds on the blood and tears of its victims. Authority is fed by service, sympathy and affection.

Louis Fischer - The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi

The Gandhi Mind

Gandhi's loyalty to truth exceeded his loyalty to political dogma or party. He allowed truth to lead him without a map. If it took him into an area where he had to discard some intellectual baggage or walk alone without past associates, he went. He never impeded his mind with STOP signs. Many groups have claimed him. But he was private property of none, not even of Congress. He was its leader for years, yet at the Congress convention in Bombay in December 1934, having immersed himself in Harijan and peasant uplift work, he ceased to be a dues-paying member, let alone an officer, of the Congress party. 'I need complete detachment and absolute freedom of action,' he said.

Gandhi's individualism meant maximum freedom from outward circumstances and maximum development of inner qualities. His antagonism to British rule was part of a larger antagonism to fetters of all kinds. His goal was Gita detachment, in politics as in religion. Gandhi's intellectual receptivity and flexibility are characteristics of the Hindu mind. There is a Hindu orthodoxy but it is not characteristic of Hinduism. In Hinduism it is the intensity and quality of the religious zeal, not so much the object, which constitutes religion. In 1942, when I was Gandhi's houseguest for a week, there was only one decoration on the mud walls of his hut: a black and white print of Jesus Christ with the inscription , 'He is our Peace.' I asked Gandhi about it. 'I am a Christian,' he replied. 'I am a Christian, and a Hindu, and a Moslem, and a Jew.'

'All faiths', Gandhi wrote in From Yeravada Mandir in an unintended definition of religious tolerance, 'constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect, and liable to error. Reverance for other faiths need not blind us to their faults. We must be keenly alive to the defects of our own faith also, yet not leave it on that account, but try to overcome those defects. Looking at all religions with an equal eye, we would not only not hesitate, but would think it our duty to blend into our faith every acceptable feature of other faiths.

That paragraph is a portrait of the Gandhi mind: he was the conservative who would not change his religion, the reformer who tried to alter it, and the tolerant believer who regarded all faiths as aspects of the divine. he was loyal yet critical, partisan yet open-minded, devout yet not doctrinaire, inside yet outside, attached yet detached, Hindu yet Christian, yet Moslem, yet Jew.

Louis Fischer - The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi and Truth

'There should be Truth in thought, Truth in speech and Truth in action,' Gandhi wrote in From Yeravda Mandir. 'Devotion to Truth is the sole justification of our existance.' This Truth is honesty, and also something else: 'It is impossible for us to realize perfect Truth so long as we are imprisoned in this mortal frame...if we shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, we share it's dignity. To feel that we are something is to set up a barrior between God and ourselves; to cease feeling we are something is to become one with God. A drop in the ocean partakes of the greatness of its parent, although it is unconscious of it. But it is dried up as soon as it enters upon an existence independant of the ocean.'

Truth is identification with God and humanity. From Truth, non-violence is born. Truth appears different to different individuals. 'There is nothing wrong in every man following Truth acoording to his lights,' says From Yeravada Mandir. Each person must be true to his own truth. But if the seeker after Truth began to destroy those who saw truth in their way he would recede from the Truth. How can one realize God by killing or hurting? Non-violence, however, is more than peacefulness or pacifism; it is love, and excludes evil thought, undue haste, lies, or hatred.

Louis Fischer - The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi

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

interdependance

Ghandi saw that the only beneficient independance was the kind that led to interdependence. 'Isolated independance is not the goal,' he said. 'It is a voluntary interdependance.' He arrived at this conclusion through no abstruse theorizing about internationalism or world government. Gandhi was addicted to love; it was the basis of his relations with people. Love is creative interdependance. And since Gandhi regarded nations not as abstract legal entities but as agglomerations of human beings with names, noses, aches and smiles, he believed that international relationships should be founded on interdependance and love.

Louis Fischer - The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi

Acceptance

Gandhi accepted people as they were. Aware of his own defects, how could he expect perfection in others? He believed in the educational and curative value of time and good deeds. Gandhi took from a person, a book, a religion and a situation that which was congenial to him and discarded the rest. He refused to see the bad in people. he often changed human beings by regarding them not as what they were but as though they were what they wished to be, as though the good in them was all of them.

The Life of Mahatma Gandhi - Louis Fischer

reached by his spirit

Gandhi toured the country incessantly, indefatigably, in torrid, humid weather, addressing mammoth mass meetings of a hundred thousand or more persons who, in those pre-microphone days, could only hope to be reached by his spirit. For seven months he travelled in hot, uncomfortable trains which were besieged at all day and night stops by clambouring multitudes who demanded a view of the Mahatma. The inhabitants of one backwoods area sent word that if Gandhi's train did not halt at their tiny station they would lie down on the tracks and be run over by it. The train did stop there at midnight, and when Gandhi, aroused from deep sleep, appeared, the crowd, until then boisterous, sank to their knees on the railway platform and wept.

Louis Fischer - The Life Of Mahatma Gandhi (1982)

confession of error

Gandhi never regretted a confession of error. 'I have always held', he wrote in his autobiography, 'that it is only when one sees one's own mistakes with a convex lens and does just the reverse in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two.' What politician would say that?

His miscalculation, Gandhi explained, was in overlooking the fact that a person must be trained in civil obediance before civil disobediance against some laws could succeed.

Louis Fischer - The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1982)

Gandhi, the leader

Professor Gilbert Murray wrote: 'Be careful in dealing with a man who cares nothing for sensual pleasures, nothing for comfort or praise or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes is right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy because his body which you can always conquer gives you so little purchase over his soul.'

That was Gandhi, the leader.

Louis Fischer - The life of Mahatma Gandhi