.:in Honor of Gandhi:.

In honor of Mohandas' birth...

महात्मा

There is an indefinable mysterious power that 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 perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses.
But it is possible to reason out the existence of God to a limited
extent. Even in ordinary affairs we know that people do not know who
rules or why and how He rules and yet they know that there is a power
that certainly rules.

In my tour last year in Mysore I met many poor villagers and I found upon inquiry that they did not know who
ruled Mysore. They simply said some God ruled it. If the knowledge of
these poor people was so limited about their ruler I who am infinitely
lesser in respect to God than they to their ruler need not be surprised
if I do not realize the presence of God - the King of Kings.
Nevertheless, I do feel, as the poor villagers felt about Mysore, that
there is 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 living being and
thanks to the marvelous researches of Sir J. C. Bose it can now be
proved that even matter is life. That law then which governs all life
is God. Law and the law-giver are one. I may not deny the law or the
law-giver because I know so little about it or Him. Just as my denial
or ignorance of the existence of an earthly power will avail me nothing
even so my denial of God and His law will not liberate me from its
operation, whereas humble and mute acceptance of divine authority makes
life's journey easier even as the acceptance of earthly rule makes life
under it easier.

I do dimly perceive 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 of spirit is
God, and since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or
will persist, He alone is. And is this power benevolent or malevolent ?

I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see that 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, light. He is love. He is the supreme Good. 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 definite
realization, more real than the five senses can ever produce. Sense
perceptions can be and 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.

Such testimony is to be found in the experiences of an unbroken line of prophets and sages in all countries
and climes. To reject this evidence is to deny oneself. This
realization is preceded by an immovable faith.

He who would in his own person test the fact of God's presence can do so by a living
faith and since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence
the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world
and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth and
love.

Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to truth
and love. I confess that I have no argument to convince through reason.
Faith transcends reason. All that I can advise is not to attempt the
impossible.

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