"God Is"
M. K. Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi at Columbia Broadcasting Company, London for recording his speech on God on October 20, 1931
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 than God than they than 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 beings and, thanks to the marvellous
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. Even as my denial or ignorance of the existence of an earthly power will
avail me nothing, so will not my denial of God and His Law 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 or Spirit is God. And since nothing else 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 the 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, 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.
But the foregoing does not answer the
correspondent’s argument. I confess to him that I have no argument to convince
him through reason. Faith transcends reason. All I can advise him to do is not
to attempt the impossible. I cannot account for the existence of evil by any
rational method. To want to do so is to be coequal with God. I am therefore
humble enough to recognize evil as such. And I call God long-suffering and
patient precisely because He permits evil in the world. I know that He has no
evil in Him, and yet if there is evil, He is the author of it and yet untouched
by it.
I know too that I shall never know God if I do not
wrestle with and against evil even at the cost of life itself. I am fortified
in the belief by my own humble and limited experience. The purer I try to
become, the nearer I feel to he to God. How much more should I be, when my
faith is not a mere apology as it is today but has become as immovable as the
Himalayas and as white and bright as the snows on their peaks? Meanwhile I
invite the correspondent to pray with Newman who sang from experience:
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on;
The night is dark and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on;
Keep Thou my feet, I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
Young India, 11-10-1928
The above text was recorded on October 20, 1931, by
the Columbia Broadcasting Company, London, during Gandhi’s stay in Kingsley
Hall excluding the last part and the well
known stanza from Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890). This text was written in answering
the question raised by a correspondent which is given below:
Question of the Correspondent
I read your Young India of May 12, 1927, p. 149,
where you write, “I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world,
where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty.”
Young India, p. 152: “God is long-suffering and
patient. He lets the tyrant dig his own grave, only issuing grave warnings at
stated intervals.”
I humbly beg
to say that God is not a certainty. His goal ought to be to spread truth all
round. Why does He allow the world to be populated by bad people of various
shades? Bad people with their unscrupulousness flourish all round and they
spread contagion and thus transmit immorality and dishonesty to posterity.
Should not God, omniscient and omnipotent as He is,
know where wickedness is by His omniscience and kill wickedness by His
omnipotence there and then and nip all rascality in the bud and not allow
wicked people to flourish?
Why should God be long-suffering and be patient?
What influence can He wield if He be so? The world goes on with all its
rascality and dishonesty and tyranny.
If God allows a tyrant to dig his own grave, why
should He not weed out a tyrant before his tyranny oppresses the poor? Why
allow full play to tyranny and then allow a tyrant, after his tyranny has
ruined and demoralized thousands of people, to go to his grave?
The world continues to be as bad as it ever was. Why
have faith in that God who does not use His powers to change the world and make
it a world of good and righteous men?
I know vicious men with their vices living long and
healthy lives. Why’ should not vicious men die early as a result of their
vices?
I wish to believe in God but there is no foundation
for my faith. Kindly enlighten me through Young India and change my disbelief
into belief.
Young
India, 11-10-1928
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