Essays – Gandhi on Truth
Posted by Joshua on Jan.19, 2010, in the Essays section.
In the selected excerpts from the works of Gandhi, a very personal view of God is shared with us. Through the articles, Gandhi writes that God is Truth, and Truth is God. He goes on to explain the distinction between the two and why he feels on is more accurate than the other. The essays state that God is an idea of Mankind, an “indefinable something which we all feel but which we do not know.” We do not exist, for only He truly does.
We should not regard God as a person, for He is formless, ageless, speechless and so forth. Therefore, as human we can not use our limited language to define something that is limitless. God is the knowledge inside us at the moment of birth, the breath of the respiratory system and the beat of our heart. God is the will of nature to grow and flourish. God is all of that, and more than we can ever know. Consequently, truth is God.
This is not to say that everything we know and do has been predetermined. We enjoy a limited free will, within the confines of our limited existence and the laws of civilization. Man will still be in control of his own destiny, but only as far as he is allowed by God. For destiny can only take you so far, and man cannot control the results of his actions. Thus the actions are controlled by truth; the truth of nature, the truth of physics and all the other truths that hold this world together. Therefore, Truth being God controls our fate.
I have believe for many years of my life that destiny and fate are different things, limited in the concepts which language allows, but still very different aspects. To me, fate is the outcome, the end result; the sum of our actions and our destiny. If this is true, and applied to the model set forth by Gandhi, then God is destiny, and destiny is Truth.