My Religion

Chapter 21: God In My Experience

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. Bu' 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.

Harijan,
14-5-'38 p. 109

I learnt to rely consciously upon God before I was fifteen years old.

Harijan,
11-3-'39, p. 46

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.

Young India,
13-11 -'24, p. 378

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 Moksha1. 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.

From Introduction to Autobiography, pp. 4-5

It is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from Him, who, as I fully know, 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.

From Introduction to Autobiography, p. 8

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-'31, p. 247

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-'24, p. 427

Do not seek to protect me. The Most High is always there to protect us all. You may be sure that when my time is up, no one, not even the most renowned in the world, can stand between Him and me.

Young India,
2-4-'31, p. 54

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

God is the hardest taskmaster I have known on 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.

Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi,
4th ed., p. 1069

He (a votary of the Gita) takes note of things as they happen and reacts naturally to them, fulfilling his part as if propelled by the great Mechanic, even as a piece of machine in good order responds automatically to the call of the machinist. It is the most difficult thing for an intelligent being to be like a machine. And yet, if one is to become a zero, that is precisely what one desiring perfection has to become. The vital difference between the machine and the man is that the machine is inert, the man is all life and consciously becomes like a machine in the hands of the Master Mechanic. Krishna says in so many words that God moves all beings as if they were parts of a machine.

Bapu's Letters to Mira,
1949, pp. 238-39

I have been a willing slave to this most exacting Master for more than half a century. His voice has been increasingly audible as years have rolled by. He has never forsaken me even in my darkest hour. He has saved me often against myself and left me not a vestige of independence. The greater the surrender to Him, the greater has been my joy.

Harijan,
6-5-'33, p. 4

God is with us and looks after us as if He had no other care besides. How this happens I do not know. That it does happen I do know. Those who have faith have all their cares lifted from off their shoulders.

Bapu’s Letters to Mira
, 1949, p. 267

Defeat cannot dishearten me. It can only chasten me. I know that God will guide me.

Young India
, 3-7-'24, p. 218

There is not a moment when I do not feel that pres­ence of a Witness whose eye misses nothing and with whom I strive to keep in tune.
I cannot recall a moment in my life when I had a sense of desertion by God.

Harijan,
24-12-'38, p. 395

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-^'25, p. 272

As days pass I feel this Living Presence in every fibre of my veins. Without that feeling I should be demented. There are so many things that are calculated to disturb my peace of mind. So many events happen that would, without the realization of that Presence, shake me to the very foundation. But they pass me by leaving me practically untouched.

Bapu's Letters to Mira,
1949, p. 268

I believe it to be possible for every human being to attain that blessed and indescribable sinless state in which he feels within himself the presence of God to the exclusion of everything else.

Young India,
17-11-'21, p. 368

* Lit. freedom from birth and death. The nearest English equivalent is salvation.