After full discussion and mature deliberation I took the vow in 1906. I
had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only
consulted her at the time of taking the vow. She had no objection.
But I had great difficulty in making the final resolve. I had not
the necessary strength. How was I to control my passions? The
elimination of carnal relationship with one's wife seemed then a
strange thing. But I launched forth with faith in the sustaining
power of God.
As I look back upon the twenty years of the vow, I am
filled with pleasure and wonderment. The more or less successful
practice of self-control had been going on since 1901. But the
freedom and joy that came to me after taking the vow had never been
experienced before 1906. Before the vow I had been open to being
overcome by temptation at any moment. Now the vow was a sure shield
against temptation. The great potentiality of brahmacharya
daily became more an more patent to me. The vow was taken when I was
in Phoenix. As soon as I was free from ambulance work, I went to
Phoenix, whence I had to return to Johannesburg. In about a month of
my returning there, the foundation of Satyagraha was laid. As though
unknown to me, the brahmacharya vow had been preparing me for it. Satyagraha had not been a
preconceived plan. It came on spontaneously, without my having
willed it. But I could see that all my previous steps had led up to
that goal. I had cut down my heavy household expenses at
Johannesburg and gone to Phoenix to take, as it were, the
brahmacharya vow.
The knowledge that a perfect observance of brahmacharya
means realization of brahman,
I did not owe to a study of the Shastras. It slowly grew upon me
with experience. The shastric texts on the subject I read only later
in life. Every day of the vow has taken me nearer the knowledge that
in brahmacharya lies the protection of the body, the mind and the soul. For brahmacharya
was now no process of hard penance, it was a matter of consolation
and joy. Every day revealed a fresh beauty in it.
But if it was a matter of ever-increasing joy, let no one believe that it was an
easy thing for me. Even when I am past fifty-six years, I realize
how hard a thing it is. Every day I realize more and more that it is
like walking on the sword's edge, and I see every moment the
necessity for eternal vigilance.
Control of the palate is the first essential in the observance of
the vow. I found that complete control of the palate made the
observance very easy, and so I now pursued my dietetic experiments
not merely from the vegetarian's but also from the brahmachari's
point of view. As the result of these experiments I saw that the brahmachari's
food should be limited, simple, spiceless, and, if possible, uncooked.
Six years of experiment have showed me that the brahmachari's
ideal food is fresh fruit and nuts. The immunity from passion that I
enjoyed when I lived on this food was unknown to me after I changed
that diet. Brahmacharya needed no effort on my part in South Africa when I lived on fruits
and nuts alone. It has been a matter of very great effort ever since
I began to take milk. How I had to go back to milk from a fruit diet
will be considered in its proper place. It is enough to observe here
that I have not the least doubt that milk diet makes the
brahmacharya vow difficult to observe. Let no one deduce from this that all
brahmacharis must give up milk. The effect on
brahmacharya of different kinds of food can be determined only after numerous
experiments. I have yet to find a fruit-substitute for milk which is
an equally good muscle-builder and easily digestible. The doctors,
vaidyas and hakims have alike failed to enlighten me. Therefore, though I know milk to
be partly a stimulant, I cannot, for the time being, advise anyone
to give it up.
As an external aid to brahmacharya,
fasting is as necessary as selection and restriction in diet. So
overpowering are the senses that they can be kept under control only
when they are completely hedged in on all sides, from above and from
beneath. It is common knowledge that they are powerless without
food, and so fasting undertaken with a view to control of the senses
is, I have no doubt, very helpful. With some, fasting is of no
avail, because assuming that mechanical fasting alone will make them
immune, they keep their bodies without food, but feast their minds
upon all sorts of delicacies, thinking all the while what they will
eat and what they will drink after the fast terminates. Such fasting
helps them in controlling neither palate nor lust. Fasting is
useful, when mind co-operates with starving body, that is to say,
when it cultivates a distaste for the objects that are denied to the
body. Mind is at the root of all sensuality. Fasting, therefore, has
a limited use, for a fasting man may continue to be swayed by
passion. But it may be said that extinction of the sexual passion is
as a rule impossible without fasting, which may be said to be
indispensable for the observance of brahmacharya. Many
aspirants after brahmacharya fail because in the use of their
other senses they want to carry on like those who are not brahmacharis.
Their effort is, therefore, identical with the effort to experience
the bracing cold of winter in the scorching summer months. There
should be a clear line between the life of a brahmachari and
of one who is not. The resemblance that there is between the two is
only apparent. The distinction ought to be clear as daylight. Both
use their eyesight, but whereas the brahmachari uses it to see the
glories of God, the other uses it to see the frivolity around him.
Both use their ears, but whereas the one hears nothing but praises
of God, the other feasts his ears upon ribaldry. Both often keep
late hours, but whereas the one devotes them to prayer, the other
fritters them away in wild and wasteful mirth. Both feed the inner
man, but the one only to keep the temple of God in good repair,
while the other gorges himself and makes the sacred vessel a
stinking gutter. Thus both live as the poles apart, and the distance
between them will grow and not diminish with the passage of time.
Brahmacharya means control of the senses in thought, word and
deed. Every day I have been realizing more and more the necessity
for restraints of the kind I have detailed above. There is no limit
to the possibilities of renunciation, even as there is none to those
of brahmacharya. Such brahmacharya is impossible of attainment by
limited effort. For many it must remain only as an ideal. An
aspirant after brahmacharya will always be conscious of his
shortcomings, will seek out the passions lingering in the innermost
recesses of his heart and will incessantly strive to get rid of
them. So long as thought is not under complete control of the will,
brahmacharya in its fullness is absent. Involuntary thought is an
affection of the mind, and curbing of thought, therefore, means
curbing of the mind which is even more difficult to curb than the
wind. Nevertheless the existence of God within makes even control of
the mind possible. Let no one think that it is impossible because it
is difficult. It is the highest goal, and it is no wonder that the
highest effort should be necessary to attain it.
But it was after coming to India that I realized that such brahmacharya
was impossible to attain by mere human effort. Until then I had been labouring
under the delusion that fruit diet alone would enable me
to eradicate all passions, and I had flattered myself with the
belief that I had nothing more to do.
But I must not anticipate the chapter of my struggles. Meanwhile let me make it clear that those
who desire to observe brahmacharya with a view to realizing God need not despair, provided their faith
in God is equal to their confidence in their own effort. 'The
sense-objects turn away from an abstemious soul, leaving the relish
behind. The relish also disappears with the realization of the
Highest.'1 Therefore His name and His grace are the last resources of
the aspirant after moksha.
This truth came to me only after my return to India.