06. Faith and Reason |
Seeing God face to face is to feel that He is enthroned
in our hearts even as a child feels a mother's affection
without needing any demonstration. Does a child reason
out the existence of a mother's love? Can he prove it to
others? He triumphantly declares, ‘It is.’ So must it
be with the existence of God. He defies reason. But He
is experienced. Let us not reject the experience of
Tulasidas, Chaitanya, Ramadas and a host of other
spiritual teachers even as we do not reject that of
mundane teachers.
Young India, 9-7-1925, p. 239
It
is faith that steers us through stormy seas, faith
that moves mountains and faith that jumps across the
ocean. That faith is nothing but a living,
wide-awake consciousness of God within. He who has
achieved that faith wants nothing. Bodily diseased, he
is spiritually healthy; physically pure, he rolls
in spiritual riches.
Young India, 24-9-1925, p. 331
Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a
hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence.
Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad
a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone
believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression
of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which
sanctifies reason itself.
Young India, 14-10-1926, p. 359
There are some who in the egotism of their
reason declare that they have nothing to do with
religion. But it is like a man saying that he
breathes but that he has no nose. Whether by
reason, or by instinct, or by superstition, man
acknowledges some sort of relationship with the divine.
The rankest agnostic does acknowledge the need of a
moral principle, and associates something good with
its observance and something bad with its
non-observance.
Young India, 23-1-1930, p. 25
Without faith this world would come to naught in a
moment. True faith is appropriation of the reasoned
experience of people whom we believe to have
lived a life purified by prayer and
penance. Belief, therefore, in prophets or incarnations
who have lived in remote ages is not an idle
superstition but a satisfaction of an inmost spiritual
want.
Young India, 14-4-1927, p. 120
Everyone
has faith in God though everyone does not know it.
For, everyone has faith in himself and that
multiplied to the nth degree is God. The sum total
of all that lives is God. We may not be God but we
are of God–even as a little drop of water is of the
ocean. Imagine it torn away from the ocean and flung
millions of miles away. It becomes helpless torn from
its surroundings and cannot feel the might and
majesty of the ocean. But if some one could point out to
it that it is of the ocean, its faith would revive,
it would dance with joy and the whole of the might and
majesty of the ocean would be reflected in it.
Harijan, 3-6-1939, p. 151
My own
experience has led me to the knowledge that the
fullest life is impossible without an immovable
belief in a Living Law in obedience to which the whole
universe moves. A man without that faith is like a drop
thrown out of the ocean bound to perish. Every drop
in the ocean shares its majesty and has the honour
of giving us the ozone of life.
Harijan, 25-4-1936, p. 84
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