Who and where is God – Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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Who and where is God – Mahatma Gandhi

 

 I have defined brahmacharya as the way of life which leads to Brahman. The knowledge that Brahman is God does not help us to know what His real nature is. So if we have true knowledge about God we can know the correct path that leads to Him. God is not a human being. Therefore to say that He incarnates Himself in the form of a human being is also not the whole truth. We can only say that God incarnated in the form of a man only means that that man has more godliness in him than other men. As God is omnipresent, He is everywhere and dwells within every human being and all may therefore be said to be incarnations of Him. But this leads us nowhere. We call Rama and Krishna incarnations of God because people saw divinity in them. In truth Krishna and others exist in man’s imagination they are creations of his imagination. Whether they were historical figures or not has nothing to do with man’s imagination. Sometimes we tread a dangerous path in believing that Rama and Krishna were historical entities and are compelled to take recourse to all manner of arguments to prove that. The truth is that God is the force. He is the essence of life.

He is pure consciousness. He is omnipresent. In spite of that all do not get benefit from or shelter in Him or say everyone is not able to secure shelter under him. Electricity is a great force but all cannot benefit from it. There are certain laws for generating it and therefore we can get electricity only if we abide by those laws. Electricity is a lifeless force. Men, the living beings, have to labour hard to acquire the knowledge of its laws. Similarly there are laws for knowing the great living force which we call God. But it is self-evident that it requires hard labour to find out those laws. That law in short is termed brahmacharya. I can say from my experience that the simplest way to cultivate brahmacharya is Ramanama. Devotees and sages like Tulsidas have shown us this path. No one need give undue importance to my experience. Perhaps I realized it only at Uruli-Kanchan that Ramanama was the panacea for all ills. Very little work remains to be done by a person who knows how to make full use of it, and yet his work would be most impressive. There are numerous aids to brahmacharya. But the true and eternal one is Ramanama. Only when Rama descends from the lips into the heart can one know His real power. The eleven vows are certainly there to achieve this infallible means. The ends should be such that it should become difficult to differentiate between the ends and the means. Take only truth from among the eleven vows. We can well ask whether Truth is the end and Rama is the means or vice versa. But let me come to the point. The current meaning of brahmacharya is complete control over the sex organs. The golden means to attain that end is Ramanama. For proving the efficacy of Ramanama there are undoubtedly certain rules. They have been discussed once. Even so we shall dwell on them again.  

 

Reference:

Harijan, 22-6-1947