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18. What God has meant to me |
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I have not seen Him,
neither have I known
Him. I have made the
world’s faith in God
my own, and as my faith
is ineffaceable, I
regard that faith as
amounting to
experience. However,
as it may be said that
to describe faith as
experience is to tamper
with truth, it may
perhaps be more
correct to say that
I have no word for
characterizing my
belief in God.
Autobiography, (1940),
p. 341
I am endeavouring to
see God through service
of humanity, for I know
that God is neither in
heaven, nor down below,
but in every one.
Young India, 4-8-1927,
pp. 247-48
It is an unbroken
torture to me that I am
still so far from
Him, who, as I
fully knew, governs
every breath of my life,
and whose offspring I
am. I know that it
is the evil passions
within that keep me
so far from Him,
and yet I cannot
get away from them.
Autobiography, (1948),
p. 8
What I want to
achieve,–what I have
been striving and
pining to achieve these
thirty years,– is
self-realization, to
see God face to
face, to attain Moksha.
I live and move and have
my being in pursuit of
this goal. All that I do
by way of speaking and
writing, and all my
ventures in the
political field, are
directed to this
same end.
Autobiography, (1948),
pp. 4-5
On all occasions of
trial He has saved
me. I know that the
phrase 'God saved me'
has a deeper meaning for
me today, and still I
feel that I have not yet
grasped its entire
meaning. Only richer
experience can help me
to a fuller
understanding. But in
all my trials–of a
spiritual nature, as a
lawyer, in
conducting
institutions, and
in politics,–I can say
that God saved me. When
every hope is gone,
‘when helpers fail and
comforts flee’, I find
that help arrives
somehow, from I know not
where. Supplication;
worship, prayer are no
superstition they are
acts more real than the
acts of eating,
drinking, sitting or
walking. It is no
exaggeration to say
that they alone are
real, all else is
unreal.
Autobiography, (1948),
p. 96
I have no special
revelation of God’s
will. My firm belief
is that He reveals
Himself daily to
every human being but
we shut our ears
to the still small
voice. We shut our eyes
to the Pillar of Fire in
front of us. I realize
His omnipresence.
Young India,
25-5-1921, pp. 161-62
When I admire the wonder
of a sunset or the
beauty of the moon, my
soul expands in worship
of the Creator. I try to
see Him and His mercies
in all these creations.
But even the sunsets and
sunrises would be
mere hindrances, if
they did not help me
to think of Him.
Anything which is a
hindrance to the flight
of the soul, is a
delusion and a snare;
even, like the body,
which often does hinder
you in the path of
salvation.
Young India,
13-11-1924, p. 378
I do not want to
foresee the future.
I am concerned with
taking care of the
present. God has
given me no control
over the moment
following.
Young India,
26-12-1924, p. 430
God saves me so long as
He wants me in this
body. The moment His
wants are satisfied,
no precautions on my
part will save me.
Bapu’s Letters to Mira,
(1949), p. 91
I am in the world
feeling my way to light
‘amid the encircling
gloom’. I often err
and miscalculate....
My trust is solely
in God. And I trust
men only because I
trust God. If I had no
God to rely upon, I
should be, like Timon, a
hater of my species.
Young India,
4-12-1924, p. 398
If I did not feel the
presence of God within
me, I see so much of
misery and
disappointment every day
that I would be a raving
maniac and my
destination would be
the Hooghli.
Young India, 6-8-1925.
p. 275
I know the path. It is
straight and narrow. It
is like the edge of a
sword. I rejoice to walk
on it. I weep when I
slip. God’s word is: ‘He
who strives never
perishes.’ I have
implicit faith in
that promise. Though,
therefore, from my
weakness I fail a
thousand times, I
will not lose faith
but hope that I shall
see the Light when the
flesh has been brought
under perfect
subjection as some
day it must.
Young India,
17-6-1926, p. 215
I have had my share of
disappointments,
uttermost darkness,
counsels of despair,
counsels of caution,
subtlest assaults of
pride, but I am able to
say that my faith,–and
I know that it is
still little enough, by
no means as great as I
want it to be,–has
ultimately conquered
every one of these
difficulties up to now.
If we have faith in us,
if we have a prayerful
heart, we may not
tempt God, may not
make terms with Him.
Young India,
20-12-1928, p. 420
My uniform experience
has convinced me that
there is no other
God than Truth..
..The little fleeting
glimpses... that I have
been able to have of
Truth can hardly convey
an idea of the
indescribable lustre
of Truth, a
million times more
intense than that
of the sun we daily
see with our eyes. In
fact, what I have caught
is only the faintest
gleam of that mighty
effulgence. But this
much I can say with
assurance as a result of
all my experiments, that
a perfect vision of
Truth can only follow a
complete realization of
Ahimsa.
Young India, 7-2-1929,
p. 42
Prayer has been the
saving of my life.
Without it I should have
been a lunatic long ago.
My autobiography will
tell you, that I
have had my fair
share of the
bitterest public
and private
experi-ences. They
threw me into
temporary despair, but
if I was able to get rid
of it, it was because of
prayer. Now I may tell
you, that prayer has
not been part of my
life in the sense
that truth has been. It
came out of sheer
necessity, as I found
myself in a plight
when I could not
possibly be happy
without it. And the
more my faith in
God increased, the
more irresistible
became the yearning for
prayer. Life seemed to
be dull and vacant
without it.
Young India,
24-9-1931, p. 274
I started with disbelief
in God and prayer, and
until at a late stage in
life I did not feel any
thing like a void in
life. But at that stage
I felt that as food
was indispensable
for the body,
so was prayer
indispensable for the
soul. In fact food for
the body is not so
necessary as prayer
for the soul. For
star-vation is often
necessary in order to
keep the body in health,
but there is no such
thing as
prayer-starvation..
..In spite of despair
staring me in the
face on the
political horizon, I
have never lost my
peace. In fact I have
found people who envy my
peace. That peace, I
tell you, comes from
prayer; I am not a
man of learning but
I humbly claim to be a
man of prayer.
Young India,
24-9-1931, p. 274
I am giving you a bit of
my experience and that
of my companions when I
say that he who has
experienced the magic
of prayer may do
without food for days
together but not a
single moment without
prayer. For without
prayer there is no
inward peace.
Young India,
23-1-1930, p. 25
I have learned this one
lesson – that what is
impossible with man is
child’s play with God,
and if we have faith in
that Divinity which
presides on the destiny
of the meanest of His
creation, I have no
doubt that all things
are possible; and in
that final hope, I live
and pass my time and
endeavour to obey His
will.
Young India,
19-11-1931, p. 361
I must go with God as my
only guide. He is a
jealous Lord. He will
allow no one to share
His authority. One
has, therefore, to
appear before Him in
all one’s weakness,
empty-handed and in a
spirit of full
surrender, and then He
enables you to stand
before a whole world
and protects you from
all harm.
Young India, 3-9-1931,
p. 247
I am impatient to
realize the presence of
my Maker, who to me
embodies Truth, and
in the early past of
my career I discovered
that if I was to realize
Truth, I must obey, even
at the cost of my life,
the law of Love.
Nation’s Voice, p.
319
God is the hardest
taskmaster I have known
on this earth, and He
tries you through and
through. And when you
find that your faith
is failing or your
body is failing you, and
you are sinking, He
comes to your assistance
somehow or other and
proves to you that
you must not lose
your faith and that He
is always at your beck
and call, but on His
terms, not on your
terms. So I have found.
I cannot really
recall a single
instance when, at the
eleventh hour, He has
forsaken me.
Speeches and Writings of
Mahatma Gandhi, (1933),
p. 1069
I will not be a
traitor to God to
please the whole
world.
Harijan, 18-2-1933, p.
4
God having cast my
lot in the midst of
the people of India, I
should be untrue to my
Maker if I failed to
serve them. If I do not
know how to serve them
I shall never know
how to serve
humanity.
Young India,
18-6-1925, p. 211
And as I know that God
is found more often in
the lowliest of His
creatures than in the
high and mighty, I am
struggling to reach
the status of these.
I cannot do so without
their service. Hence my
passion for the
service of the
suppressed classes.
And as I cannot
render this service
without entering
politics, I find
myself in them.
I recognize no God
except the God that is
to be found in the
hearts of the dumb
millions. They do not
recognize His presence;
I do. And, I worship
the God that is
Truth or Truth which
is God, through the
service of these
millions.
Young India,
11-9-1924, p. 298
My God is myriad-formed
and while sometimes I
see Him in the spinning
wheel, at other times I
see Him in communal
unity, then again in the
removal of
untouchability; and that
is how I establish
communion with Him
according as the spirit
moves me.
Harijan, 8-5-1937, p.
99
I am surer of His
existence than of the
fact that you and I are
sitting in this room.
Then I can also testify
that I may live without
air and water but not
without Him. You may
pluck out my eyes, but
that cannot kill me.
You may chop off my
nose, but that will not
kill me. But blast my
belief in God, and
I am dead. You
may call this a
superstition, but I
confess it is a
superstition that I hug,
even as I used to do the
name of Rama in my
childhood when there was
any cause of danger or
alarm. That was what an
old nurse had taught me.
Harijan, 14-5-1938, p.
109
My aspiration is
limited. God has not
given me the power to
guide the world on the
path of non- violence.
But I have imagined that
He has chosen me as His
instrument for
presenting non-violence
to India for dealing
with her many ills.
The progress already
made is great. But much
more remains to be
done.
'Harijan, 23-7-1938,
p. 193
There is not a moment
when I do not feel the
presence of a Witness
whose eye misses
nothing and with whom I
strive to keep in tune.
Harijan, 24-12-1938,
p. 395
I have never found Him
lacking in response. I
have found Him nearest
at hand when the horizon
seemed darkest–in my
ordeals in jails
when it was not all
smooth sailing for me. I
cannot recall a moment
in my life when I
had a sense of
desertion by God.
Harijan, 24-12-1933,
p. 395
Rightly or wrongly, I
know that I have no
other resource as a
Satyagrahi than the
assistance of God in
every conceivable
difficulty, and I
.would like it to be
believed that what may
appear to be
inexplicable actions
of mine are really
due to inner
promptings. It may
be a product of my
heated imagination. If
it is so, I prize that
imagination as it has
served me for a
chequered life
extending over a
period of now nearly
over fifty-five years,
because I learned to
rely consciously upon
God before I was
fifteen years old.
Harijan, 11-3-1939, p. 46
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