Archives at Zinester: Weekly HERMES Quotes by Sri Raghavan Iyer. Weekly Quotes by Sri Raghavan Iyer. Inspirational

__Gandhi was sometimes apt to speak of God in the language of Christian mystics, despite his explicit commitment to a more philosophical view of Deity, as given in the most advanced Hindu schools of thought and practice. He wavered at times between the standpoints and terminologies of contemplative monists and ecstatic dualists, but he never abandoned his early axiom that Truth is God, which he preferred to the statement that God is Truth, and he also held that Truth is the root of pure love and unconditional compassion.? His lifelong faith in God as Truth (SAT) implied a concrete, if inviolable, confidence in the spiritual and ethical potential of all humanity, far surpassing the historicist and immanentist beliefs of reductionist sociological doctrines and rival political ideologies. He could, he felt, honestly call himself a socialist or a communist, although he explicitly repudiated their materialistic assumptions, violent methods, utilitarian programmes and totalistic claims. He spoke of socialism of the heart and invoked the Ishopanishadic injunction to renounce and enjoy the world, which nourished his own reformist aspirations, revolutionary zeal, and Tolstoyan conviction that the Kingdom of God is attainable on earth and is, in any event, a feasible, life-sustaining ideal. He knew, especially in his last decade, moods of pessimism and even moments of despair, when his inner voice would not speak, which lent a poignant and heroic quality to his life reminiscent of the passion of Jesus Christ, the psychological martyrdom of saints, and the early strivings of the wandering monk, Siddhartha Kapilavastu, who became the enlightened Buddha. But he returned always to the conviction that it is presumptuous to deny human perfectibility or the possibility of human progress, let alone to take refuge in the fashionable armchair doctrine that Ramarajya is irrelevant to Kali Yuga, that the Kingdom of God is wholly unattainable in the world of time.

__Towards the close of his extraordinarily eventful life, so crowded with petitioners and visitors of every sort from all over the globe and from the farthest corners of rural India as well as from the towering Himalayas, he reaffirmed his inward vision of the "Himalayas of the plains" and the inextinguishable integrity of socialist sannyasa and Bodhisattvic compassion. He ever recalled the formative early influences in his life ? the Vaishnava ideal of Narasinh Mehta, The Key to Theosophy of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and the telling instructions of Bishop Butler, William Salter and Henry Drummond. He evidently knew the vivid encomiums of Drummond to Jesus as the Man of Sorrows, though he never explicitly cited the most memorable of such statements:

__Christ sets His followers no tasks. He appoints no hours. He allots no sphere. He Himself simply went about and did good. He did not stop life to do some special thing which should be called religious. His life was His religion. Each day as it came brought round in the ordinary course its natural ministry. Each village along the highway had someone waiting to be helped. His pulpit was the hillside, His congregation a woman at a well. The poor, wherever He met them, were His clients; the sick, as often as He found them, His opportunity. His work was everywhere; His workshop was the world.?

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? Henry Drummond, "The Ministry of Christ", in The Jewel in the Lotus, Raghavan Iyer, ed., Concord Grove Press (Santa Barbara, 1983), p. 201.
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__In his ashrams and during the periods of abstention from politics, which were longer and more frequent than many imagined, Gandhi was fortunate to experience the secret joy of living in the atman, which he early saw in Rajchandra, the jeweller and theodidact. Gandhi's demanding conception of his svadharma, his self-chosen obligations, repeatedly thrust him back into the arenas of political conflict and conciliation, as well as into the wider forums of the Constructive Programme, social reform and nation-wide rural reconstruction. Even here his quintessential philosophy of anasakti yoga, the gospel of selfless, disinterested action taught by Krishna in the Gita, came to his aid in distilling non-violent socialism to its irreducible core, as construed by Henry Drummond:

__The most obvious lesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving.... And half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It consists in giving and serving others. He that would be great among you, said Christ, let him serve. He that would be happy, let him remember that there is but one way ? it is more blessed, it is more happy, to give than to receive.?

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? Henry Drummond, "Happiness", in The Jewel in the Lotus, Raghavan Iyer, ed., Concord Grove Press (Santa Barbara, 1983), p. 71.
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__This is the secret of sarvodaya, the doctrine of non-violent socialism which Gandhi fused with his alkahest of global trusteeship and his lifelong experience of the reality and continual relevance of radical self-regeneration through selfless service. Krishna's sovereign remedy of buddhi yoga, the yoga of divine discernment, points to the crucial connection between viveka, discrimination, and vairagya, detachment, between self-chosen duty and voluntary sacrifice, dharma and yajna, individual self-conquest and the welfare of the world, lokasangraha. Even a little of this practice, as taught in the Gita and as realized by Gandhi, is invaluable:

In this path of yoga no effort is ever lost, and no harm is ever done. Even a little of this discipline delivers one from great danger.?

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? The Bhagavad Gita, Raghavan Iyer, ed., p. 79.
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In the words of Dnyaneshwar, the foremost saint and poet of Maharashtra, "just as the flame of a lamp, though it looks small, affords extensive light, so this higher wisdom, even in small measure, is deeply precious".

__This is the ideal of the suffering servant of Isaiah, the means of entry into the wider human family as shown by Ibn al-'Arabi in his haunting poems, the evocative vision of the monkish revolutionaries known to the Russian Populists, the basis of inspiration of many a Christian socialist and even the Christian Communists of the thirties, the demanding conception of Philo, who concluded from his observation of the Therapeutae and other small communes that "every day is a festival",** let alone the ancient Hindu ideal of the true Mahatma or self-governed Sage, the jivanmukta or spiritually free man, for whom each day is like unto a new incarnation, and each incarnation like unto a manvantara, the vast epoch of cosmic manifestation.
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** The Bhagavad Gita, Raghavan Iyer, ed., p. 79.
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__Gandhi prophesied that for thirty years after his death, his ideas would be largely forgotten, but that, generations later, the tapas of millions would bear fruit, and that out of his ashes "a thousand Gandhis will arise".?? Even though this is still an elusive hope, it is enormously encouraging that courageous pioneers have emerged from the host of the disillusioned who find the world of today too ghastly to contemplate, a world of mindless mass consumerism induced by the rising curve of shallow expectations, a world in which there is a widespread alienation of lonely individuals from disintegrating societies, of conscience from the intellect, of angry rebels from the agonies of the compassionate heart, of impotent politicians from the global imperatives of radical change and genuine coexistence among all nations and peoples, creeds and ideologies. Ragnarok, the end of the gods and of the world, is the sole alternative in Nordic mythology to the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth, Bifrost, at which crossing many may camp at the boundary of a new land, a new frontier, a new settlement. Whether or not a New Jerusalem is attainable on earth in the lifetime of the humanity of the present, there is much wisdom in Gandhi's own well-tested message in times of trial.
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?? M.K. Gandhi, "Message to Students", Harijan, Jan. 16, 1937; MPWMG, vol. 1, p. 35.
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In "One Step Enough for Me" he said:

__When, thousands of years ago, the battle of Kurukshetra was fought, the doubts which occurred to Arjuna were answered by Shri Krishna in the Gita; but that battle of Kurukshetra is going on, will go on, forever within us; the Prince of Yogis, Lord Krishna, the universal Atman dwelling in the hearts of us all, will always be there to guide Arjuna, the human soul, and our Godward impulses represented by the Pandavas will always triumph over the demoniac impulses represented by the Kauravas. Till, however, victory is won, we should have faith and let the battle go on, and be patient meanwhile.??

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?? M.K. Gandhi, "One Step Enough for Me", Speech at Wardham Ashram, Navajivan, Dec. 27, 1925; MPWMG, vol. 1, p. 21.
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__Those who cannot share this testament of faith, rooted in the spiritual convictions of antiquity concerning the periodic descent of Avatars or Divine Redeemers, the immortality of the soul and the inexorable law of Karma, the law of ethical causation and moral retribution, may yet actively respond to "the still, sad music of humanity". After all, even agnostics and atheists, socialists, humanists and communists, may share a living faith in the future of civilization and hold a truly open view of human nature, social solidarity and global progress. All alike may well ponder upon Mahatma Gandhi's life-message. Towards the end of his pilgrimage on earth he delivered a deeply moving and testable challenge to theophilanthropists everywhere:

__I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [self-rule] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.??

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?? M.K. Gandhi in D.G. Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 8, p. 89; MPWMG, vol. 3, p. 609.
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