Satyagraha in South Africa
Presented on: Thursday, July 14, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
Gandhi
Presentation 2 of 13
Satyagraha in South Africa:
Truth Holding as the Only Interior Balance that is Real
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, July 14, 1983
Transcript:
The date is July 14, 1983. This is the second lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir on Gandhi. Tonight's lecture is entitled: Satyagraha in South Africa: Truth Holding as the Only Interior Balance That is Real.
I'll give you a quotation from Gandhi's last secretary Pyarelal. He records and he uses the term JI as an appendage to the name Gandhi. So, it comes out Gandhi ji. Ji is simply a term of endearment in India. So that a name very often will have modifications by love ability and excellence. And so, they called him Gandhiji.
"Gandhiji once observed that even if all the scriptures of the Hindu religion were to perish, one mantra, one phrase of the Isha Upanishad on would be enough to declare the essence of Hinduism. But even that verse would be of no avail if there were no one to live it." And that's really the core of the experience which Gandhi made public and visible worldwide. The world had had in every culture and in almost every time great sages who did attain to what we would style as miraculous powers, clear insights, and great capacities. The difference for Gandhi was that he was able to make it public. And this observation of Gandhiji provides a criterion by which to assess what Tolstoy did in respect to Christ's teachings. It's been a physical essence; the teaching of Christ was not essentially different from the truths of all the great teachers of the world before him. From Buddha, Confucius, Socrates onward had an unmistaken term enunciated.
And I bring in Tolstoy because he's the key figure in this phase of Gandhi's development - Tolstoy and the Bhagavad-Gita.
Now Tolstoy of course is well known to us as one of the world's great novelists. War and Peace and Anna Karenina will always stand he has great literary triumphs. We have some vague idea that Tolstoy had written some philosophy, had written some commentary on religion. But what we don't understand is that Tolstoy had become the conscience of the world by the time of his death in November 1910. He had begun to have a change in his life. When in the grandeur of his world fame as a great novelist and as the proprietor of Yasnaya Polyana, the great country estate. The Tolstoy family heritage. His fame. And then he'd become involved with census-taking in Moscow towards the latter part of the 19th century. Moscow had an inordinate spread of slums. More than any other European city of its time. And Count Tolstoy was in charge of counting the inhabitants of the slums of Moscow. And the count began to take its toll upon his conscience. And the images of the countless tens of thousands of faces of these human wrecks began week after week and month after month to mount up into a massive indigestible image base.
And Tolstoy had a complete in antia dromio as Jung calls it in his analytical psychology. His whole psychic structure turned right over on top of itself. And so, every impulse that was life-sustaining previously became life-threatening. Every source of comfort that had appealed to him before became totally repulsive. And Tolstoy recounts in his private diary that he began hiding all the guns in the house because every time he saw one, he had this uncontrollable urge to end it all. He began hiding the knives and making sure that the dinners were served with plenty of people. And even then, he couldn't eat. He began to pace and walk the grounds of the Yasnaya Polyana and when he would look at the roots of the trees, they would suddenly become masses of the wrinkles of the starving faces that he had seen close at hand. And for several years Count Tolstoy began sinking in the eyes of his family and compatriots. His wife was a wonderful individual except she was convinced that he should be the grand man of literature. And she couldn't understand a great man crumbling like this, so she thought.
He began to divest himself of the clothes of his class and began wearing the peasant moujik outfit. And in order to find some stability in his life, because everywhere he stepped, he felt he was going to fall through. Every thought that came to him he felt was going to compel him to one of these great anxiety attacks. And so, in this vertical(?) he began to plow the fields like a peasant with his pipe in his mouth and his hands clutched to the old plow and a horse pulling him. And after months of this therapy of plowing these furrows and mother earth, Tolstoy found a way to anchor himself. And from that time on he began to recuperate. And in reconstructing himself, rebuilding himself, he found that the only reality there is of the Spirit. That there are no guidelines in time-space that can service - we must go out.
His literature after this period all of there the types of titles which are indicative of core problem ideals which stick in the mind of man. What then must we do? And the great volume, Reason and Religion, The Kingdom of God is Within You. All of these volumes speak of Tolstoy's preoccupation with the religious theme. And then when he returned to writing instead of taking up the old grand issues which he had taken up in War and Peace so excellently done or the character of Anna. He began writing pithy short stories which were religious parables of the highest quality. And one of the greatest stories of all time - Thomas Mons comment on it, "When I read this story by Tolstoy, I realized that my Nobel Prize is of no use. And I am but a mouse next to the lion." The Death of Ivan Ilyich is one of the great spiritual treasures of mankind. And Tolstoy wrote it in 1896. About the time that Gandhi was finding his feet and his life work in South Africa.
And in The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ivan Ilyich is an old judge, one of the most influential men in Moscow and he is dying. He is old and is dying. And he is afraid of what death brings to him. And in his bitterness and cynicism he realizes that where the world was open to him and he could go anywhere before, he is confined to his home and progressively to his own room. And then as old age sets in, he realizes that he will never leave the bed. And finally, he is left in his own body and perishing. And the dreams that come to him again and again give him the image that he is being pushed into a black hole of oblivion. And he is fearful of going there. And in this welter of shrinking world, he is able to hear clearer and clearer, with great objectivity, the conversations that go on around the great house. The pettiness of them. The concern with who is going to inherit what. With who's reading the paper about who's gaining in favor of who else. and in this crisscross of the world of labyrinthian innuendo and power and authority and the shrinking actuality of his own imminent death. Just at the moment when they cross, and he becomes existentially aware that he must do something about himself. That he is left alone, a little boy, a grandson comes into the room. and put some flowers in and gives grandpa a kiss and tells him that he loves him. And the old man weeping tears of joyfulness that there is at least in the young a pristine honesty of relationality, realizes that the quality of life is in that transcendental unity of all. And that there is no death. and he joyfully gives up his spirit at the end of the story.
Tolstoy after 1900 became the conscience of the world. The spokesman who as an internationally known figure was the great man of his time. And towards the end of his life, the last couple of years, he entered in upon a correspondence with Gandhi. And we will get to the circumstances that allowed that. But in this correspondence Tolstoy found as Ivan Ilyich did in the young boy, the person who was not only listening to what he was listening to in terms of the ethical structure of the universe, but someone who was actually living it. Someone for whom that short verse that the Upanishad was a life rule. And so, Tolstoy wrote him a series of letters. And I'll read extensively from one later on when we get to it. But two months before Tolstoy died
And incidentally the way that he died, he realized that all of his life the one thing that he had not done with great integrity was to actually leave his estate, leave his comfort, leave his wife, who in her unknowingness of the depth of the situation prodding him was actually very shallow and holding on to the image of what he had been. And so, accompanied by one of his daughters Tolstoy fled. And he fled by train. And he was going to go to a monastery in the Urals. He didn't make it. He got to the railroad station. I think it was at a Astapova and he died there. And within hours the news was around the world that the great man had died.
Two months before that happened, he wrote his last letter to Gandhi. And he said in it,
The more I live - and especially now that I am approaching death - the more I feel inclined to express to others the feelings which so strongly move my being. And which according to my opinion are of great importance. That is what one calls non-resistance is in reality nothing else, but the discipline of love undeformed by false interpretation. Love is the aspiration for communion in solidarity with other souls. And that aspiration always liberates the source of noble activities. That love is the supreme and unique law of human life which everyone feels in the depths of his own soul. We find it most manifested clearly in the soul of the infants. Man feels it so long as he has not blinded by the false doctrines of the world.
Tolstoy figures extremely important in the development.
And last week we saw how Gandhi moved from India. And his interesting intercultural but yet parochial world of Gujarat, the city of Porbander, and Rajkot, and a little bit of exposure in Bombay and went to London and tried his hand at becoming an English gentleman. And tried his hand at food reform. And at living reform. And finally became barrister and went back to India, only to find that his shyness and speaking out before people completely quashed his law possibilities. And in great humility and shame he was packed up by the family and sent off to South Africa.
Now in his autobiography which we have here in the library, The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Half of this book is dedicated to the development in South Africa. And yet, and yet, this particular version of the story is incomplete. Because fitting into it almost like the key that holds it together is a second book called Satyagraha in South Africa. And this is the book that I will give most of tonight from. Because you can read the autobiography. Many of you have. But very few people ever look at this volume. And Satyagraha in South Africa is the key to understanding it. And at the apex of this magic mountain of discovery and discipline, the highlight of Gandhiji's life was the experiments at a ranch called Tolstoy Farm. And it was there at Tolstoy Farm that Gandhi for the first time saw all the elements of his life come together. And he understood what a spiritual pattern is.
We're convinced when we are younger or more naïve that there is a law of causality in the world. That things are caused, and they link together. And that arguments are to be understood, offered. But it's only later in maturity that we realize that there are whole patterns, gestalts, that manifests their wholeness together. And that instead of a line of development, life offers us a bouquet of manifestation. And that there are rare moments when we have a glimpse, as if raised up on a pinnacle of vision, and are able to understand how it all fits. If just for a moment. and we see that the fullness and the wholeness of what reality presents requires from us but our willing assent to love it all and endorse it all. And not to try to pick out the parts that we feel are indigestible.
So, in Satyagraha in South Africa we see Gandhiji rising up to this vision. And for the first time in his life not only overcoming the shyness, which he had, but understanding the prideful roots that were there. The incredibly subtle, sly way in which the ego tries finally one last time to net us. John Bunyan called it in Pilgrims Progress the vanity fair.' After the sloth despond and we think that we have conquered it all and gone through it all. And when we're joyous it's then, then that we're caught in the worst of all lies. Our own confidence that since we're all right then everyone is alright.
In Satyagraha in South Africa Gandhiji gives the story of how he arrived in Durban. And it was 1893. He was to go inland. And he was met in Durban by a number of Indians who cautioned him now that he was not in India, and he was not in England. And he would have to get used to the fact that there were certain laws and rules. Prejudice against the colored peoples and even more rules against the black peoples. He tried to travel first-class in train on his way inland. He was going to Pretoria and Pietermaritzburg. For his sass, he was thrown off the train for insisting that he had the right to travel first class. And of course, this was one of the great turning points in his life. He realized that this insult to him as a person left him smarting in every aspect of his being. It wasn't just his face had been slapped or his pride that had been slapped. But that all of his being had been insulted by this action. And the converse of that was to realize that if he were to change anything, he would have to change it all. And the seed of that flash intuition stuck. And it began to grow in him as these things will do. He realized that if you are
have to change anything then you have to change it all; that all of the pieces must be fitted.
He was able to spend the year in South Africa that he had contracted for. And at the end of the year, he had done fairly well as a barrister in this law case for chef Abdullah. He was going to return to his home. And by this time the Indian community had really taken a liking to the honesty and the learning of the young man. He had read Roman Law in Latin. He was able to acquit himself quite well in writing in English. He was fearless as an individual. And so, the community beseeched him to stay a month and help them with some of the problems that were coming up in terms of the prejudice suffered by the community. And so Gandhiji decided to stay. And he stayed for a month and then it occurred to him that by trying to take on one issue all of the other issues became relevant. And he began to see that in fact he was going to have to spend some time in South Africa. So, he took a trip back to India to get his family. And he came back to South Africa, and he would stay for six years.
And in those six years Gandhi as the outstanding honest voice of the Indian population in South Africa, became perhaps the most successful lawyer in that whole area of the world. His income at one time was 30,000 pounds a year. An enormous sum in the 1890s. He was also the first Asian, non-white, to employ a white woman as a secretary. A Scottish woman who upon being asked if she minded working for a colored man she said, not in slightest, as long as it's honest work and I have sufficient pay. And so, during this time Gandhi matured as individual in the sense that he was able to conduct himself as a lawyer, as a barrister. And he divided half of his time for public work and half for legal work to sustain himself. And as he did this, he realized that keeping accurate account books, which had been so necessary a lesson to learn, was becoming more and more impossible to keep separate in the public work from the legal work. They kept overflowing.
And again, the perception that if you change one thing, if you take on one issue and you do that honestly it leads everywhere. There's no escaping this. And so again the seed of wholeness. The realization that it is true, that thinking that it is not true is what is illusionary. That there is a wholeness in life kept reoccurring to him.
At the end of six years, he felt that he should take his talents back to India. And so, he made a compromise with the Indian community in South Africa. He said I will move back to India, going to move to Bombay and set up a law practice. If you ever need me, you may call me. So, in 1902 he did go back to India. He began a law practice. And within two months he received a call that there was an unbelievable crisis brewing. And he came back to South Africa. And what he found was that a series of legislations had been proposed which were to destroy the very fabric of the Indian life.
Now when Gandhiji came back at the end of 1902, he came back as someone who had earned the right of respect from the white government of South Africa. He had acquitted himself in the six years that he was there - seven years actually total - as to have been an impeccable man of great honesty. And he came into international renown during the Boer War. Which was in 1899/1900 and went on to 1901 in some areas. And what he did during the Boer War.
The Boers of the Dutch under a man named [Paul] Kruger got wind of an invasion force who were going to take over Johannesburg. A number of trained troops, under a man named [Leander Starr] Jameson, who had been hired along with mercenaries by a lot of the gold mine owners in South Africa to try and quickly take over the city of Johannesburg and set up a government on their own terms and their own basis. Kruger, who is an extremely able, intelligent man, assembled very quietly his troops. He brought in the Dutch farmers who were extremely able. They would remind one of the Concord Minutemen in the American Revolutionary War. Able to leave their farms in a moment's notice. And sharpshooters, tremendously courageous. And they netted Jameson and his troops before they even got close to Johannesburg. And then of course they were tried immediately. They were sentenced. And then because Kruger understood human nature they were pardoned, and they were let go. And it bought some time. But the smart of defeat worked very hard on the British. After all they were the British Empire. And any Englishman represented the power and the might of the British Empire. And so, conditions finally deteriorated, and the Boer War came out.
Not to be caught on either side Gandhi organized an ambulance corps that took care of the wounded. And they acquitted themselves extremely well. Some 400 Indians. 37 of them received medals from the government. Actually, participated right on the lines of fire sometimes. Not a single Indian was wounded. But it proved the courageousness in a time of great need of the Indian as a person. And of course, the leader of them, Gandhi became well known and quite well respected among many white citizens of South Africa. He was seen as an excellent man.
So, when he returned during this time of great crisis at the end of 1902, the Chief of Police of Durban helped him to get a pass to enter into the Transvaal. That province where Johannesburg is and Pretoria. And when he arrived there the officials of the transport government who were in the process of trying to corral bylaws all of the non-white population. And all in fact of the non-British population in the Transvaal. And slowly picked out the unwanted people and send them away; banish them. They were surprised that Gandhi had gotten a pass because conditions were very difficult. But he arrived. And when he arrived, he realized that the issue that was at stake here was not simply a law of discrimination but reverberate it down to the root of human dignity. That in fact if the kinds of prejudicial circumstance which were allowed in the laws. And one of them was that an official of the government could enter anyone's house at will and demand of each individual there are certain papers, certificates, and if they did not have them, they were liable to be fined or imprisoned or even deported on the spot. And this along with many other aspects of these laws made them known as the black acts - the black ordinances.
What Gandhiji saw in this of course was another example of his vision of the whole. That these kinds of restrictions were not simply limited to being imposed upon the Indian population, or the colored population, or the black population, but that they in effect also reverted back upon those who impose those laws. That in order to impose them and make them effective they would have to blind themselves to certain qualities of human nature. The essential individual dignity of the person. And the support of law to give protection to that dignity rather than be hedging and chopping away portions of it for whatever reasons. The upshot was if we allow others to encroach upon our
the sanctity of our individuality in personal dignity in any way, for any reason then there are millions of reasons and millions of ways. And no one is safe. The end product of that is to granulate mankind into a compartmentalization of an ultimate separation of everyone from everyone else. This was seen.
And so, Gandhi began to try in every way possible to negotiate a settlement. Realizing that there was going to be no response really to him. But that it was such an important issue. And what he had in mind in combating it was so serious a turn for him. That he felt that only after exhausting every other possibility could he suggest the action that he had in mind. And after two years of exhausting all these possibilities, it finally came down to a meeting in a Jewish temple in Johannesburg. The Empire Theatre was also in the building. And Gandhi before a meeting of several thousand individuals out of a total population of 13,000. So, you had quite a representation there. Had them all understand the repercussions for man as a spiritual being. As an ethical individual. As a citizen of civilization. What was happening in terms of these acts and that the resistance to their imposition should be taken even to the point of where they might all have to offer up their lives. All have to suffer martyrdom to protest. And protect not only themselves but their adversaries against this imposition.
Now it's very important to understand the fact that the adversaries were not seen as enemies. But as deluded brothers who also needed to be saved. Saved in a sense as to be enlightened and reminded about the integrity of human nature. About the purpose of law in civilization to protect the individual, to foster the mobility of that individual and not to portion him out. So that before they all took the solemn oath before God to offer themselves in this struggle, in terms of estate, in terms even of life. Gandhiji made sure that the understanding was is that there are no enemies in this kind of campaign. That this was a process of moral discovery which was open to all. And they search for a name for this. At first, he called it passive resistance. But it wasn't right. It was a negative way of describing in the English language a phenomenon which was a positive reality. A process which was identifiable in terms of the old classic, the Bhagavad-Gita. And of course, it is found also in Upanishads. The Gita is often called the Upanishad of Upanishads.'
The principal finally was named in a contest. The newspaper contest
Gandhi had a newspaper called Indian Opinion. And a distant relative of his came up with the name of satyagraha. And Gandhi changed it to Satyagraha. Graha comes from the same root as grass. Raha means to have firmly - to know, to understand. Sat, the root of that is to sit. sat is, literally refers to sitting at the feet of someone who tells you directly and that you know that is true because you have sat at their feet and heard it directly. You've seen who says it. How they say it. And you know that it is so not because of arguments analyzed but because of the reality passed from one to another. Like from a teacher to a student. So that satya means actually truth. In the sense of a truth which one knows with all of one's being. And the grasping of that is satyagraha. And his name for the process meant that all of the parties, however many factions there were, however many individuals there were, should all be satisfied of the truth of the situation. And that only when there was unanimity between all parties and all individuals, in understanding the truth of the situation was that situation grasped and the problem alleviated. Not the sense of an answer given for a problem but in the sense of the wholeness of the issue being understood by all. And that the faith was that if a human being understands a situation, himself personally knows what is about he will not voluntarily do evil. He will not be able to force himself into an assumed illusion. That we are eluded in our thinking processes only because ignorance prevails before. That once we do know and do understand we cannot sustain a mistake upon our conscience. That there is no human being who can do this.
So, the principle of satyagraha was to limit itself to an issue, usually a single issue, which was the core of whole net of problems. And that it wasn't just a protest against the imposition of these black acts. But it was to hold an open court of discovery for all. That the truth of the imposition of those black acts was a destruction of a spiritual potential and the human dignity and the political sovereignty of all. Of the whites as well as the colored. Of everyone.
And so, this issue then was called by Gandhi, Satyagraha. And in his book Satyagraha in South Africa, he records it this way. The advent of satyagraha,
I know that pledges and vows are and should be taken on rare occasions. A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble. But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges. That crisis is surely now. There is wisdom and taking serious steps with great caution and hesitation. But caution and hesitation have their limits. And we have now passed them. The government has taken leave of all sense of decency. We would only be betraying our unworthiness and cowardice if we cannot stake our all in the face of the conflagration which envelops us and sits watching it with folded hands.
And it's quite interesting here because the corollary to everything that he is writing, is that if there is in the world one honest individual there will always be satyagraha. That it takes only the single perception of truth by a single person. And there is an inevitable movement, a natural law, towards sharing that discovery of truth with all.
We're reminded in the accounts the early accounts of the Buddha after enlightenment. Wandering in himself should he propagate this great discovery to other people. And realizing that, how could he? Where was there a transition in language that allowed any expression to even approach what he had discovered. And then the arrival of two travelers coming upon him. And he immediately began to engage conversation with them. And immediately went into the teaching mode. And then realized that there was no decision to make. There never was a question. That truth has its sharingness because it involves the perception of wholeness. That others are not different from us at all in a fundamental way. And that the wholeness of discovery includes everyone. And so, there cannot be by structural realization and design itself the fitness of nature. We, we have to share it. There is no other way. There never was a decision.
So, he says, "A word about my personal responsibility. If I am warning you of the risks attendant upon the pledge. I am at the same time inviting you to pledge yourselves. And I am fully conscious of my responsibility in the matter." You see his talking this way of fullness. And if a reader hasn't the insight and the background one could read over these phrases very lightly. But now you can see that each one of them just rings clear and true. And this is the way the writings and why he was called the Mahatma, the great soul. Because they're in the perception of the expression as the fullness of realizing what he is saying. What he is asking.
It is possible that a majority of those present here may take the pledge in a fit of enthusiasm or indignation. But may weaken under the ordeal. And only a handful may be left to face the final test. Even then there is only one course open to someone like me. To die but not to submit to this unjust law is quite likely. But even if everyone else flinches, leaving me alone to face the music. I am confident that I would never violate my pledge. Please do not misunderstand me. I am NOT saying this out of vanity. But I wish to put you, especially the leaders, upon the platform on your guard. I wish respectfully to suggest it to you, that if you have not the will or the ability to stand that you take yourselves away. And in fact, that you make a declaration of opposition to this pledge now. That you are morally responsible now to try and dissuade as many people as possible from this. All of your arguments must be held and made public and known.
And you see already he is initiating satyagraha. Even at that very moment. Even at that very moment. That the whole strategy is to disclose the complete truth of the situation to everyone. So that at any moment in the development of the situation as it occurs historically anyone who wishes to assess where they have gone
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seen to be the only way that human beings will ever govern themselves. Because as they increase in their capacities as sophisticated civilized beings, we become capable of the range of feelings and thoughts of whole tribes of people in the past. And with the proliferation of technology a single human being becomes more powerful than whole nations of people used to be. So that the individual and the sophisticated civilized development become so powerful and complex that we become like little kingdoms unto ourselves. And the only way that we're going to get along is for all of us to have those moments of understanding that if we don't all get along, none of us will. that there are always great issues coming to divide us. There are always great temptations to take as many friends with us on this side and polarize the other. But that that time of play at life is over. We may no longer play at life; now we must be conscious. And in being conscious we must be able to discover the interrelationality of the all in every action that we do. In particular in solving social and political issues. That to think that there is a secular world different from a religious world is the worst condition of ignorance of all. That they never were separated. They never were.
So, in his volume he goes through the tremendous development then of the satyagraha movement. And the fact that he felt that increasingly he was finding even in the most mundane personages when they participated in the movement. Just by doing it they began to intuit and to understand. Almost by a kind of osmosis of the human capacity. The truth of the matter. They began to understand what we were doing. And though they could not have put it into words, perhaps, almost all of the individuals began to feel an affinity with the others in the movement. They began to realize that whether one was a street sweeper or a lawyer it made no difference whatsoever. Because on this interchangeability of understanding they were forming a family. They were becoming a family. And this phrase rings again and again in Gandhi's writings. That the structure that holds in civilization is that of the family. And that the family is the template of design. And that the interrelation of the family is the way in which we grow in our religious apperception of the social realities.
At this time the leader in South Africa was young - [Jan] Christiaan Smuts. General Smuts a tremendously intelligent individual - courageous in his own right - but determined to hold the trust of the white minority in South Africa. And we know because it's in the news today that that situation has held even up to 1983. And increasingly jeopardized by the stubbornness involved. But at this time there was a resolution. And Gandhi called off the satyagraha. Thinking that he had made the point clear that Smuts had joined in the understanding of the situation. And even though there had been thousands placed in prison he was now let go. And he recounts very humorously of the fact of being let go very late in the evening. It was about seven o'clock and he hadn't any money. And he had to borrow from Smuts' secretary fare to get home. But Smuts went back on his word. And so, Gandhi had the problem going to the Indian community in reviving satyagraha. And then of course came this tremendous resentment among the people. How dare you come to us again? We told you not to trust him and you did. You are so naïve. You think because you can do it, we can do it. Or even if we could do it with you what about our families? What about our livelihood? All of these poignant criticisms. And Gandhi honest to the last wit, records all of the objections. The incredibleness of the situation. And how he was completely taken aback by the fact that perhaps he had been naïve. Perhaps, but then he resolved to take the issue to England. And twice in a few years he went to England with deputations.
And the first time he felt that he had gained the confidence of Lord Elgin. And was celebrating on the boat on the way back. And then when they got back to South Africa, they realized that Lord Elgin had had a very good laugh upon them. He had agreed that the British Empire would not enforce any of these black acts. But then he knew that the government of Transvaal was going to declare an independent state. And that the government of Transvaal that would enact these. And so technically it wasn't the British Raj at all but the local government at the Transvaal. This of course was a great dishonor upon Lord Elgin's integrity.
But the second time, the second deputation that was there. A man named Lord Ampthill, a very interesting individual, was able to impress Gandhi with the fact that there should be some way in which the Indian community could sustain themselves for a long struggle. And it became apparent to Gandhi that there was wisdom in the suggestion. That in fact they had limited themselves somewhat in their capacities to struggle. Not understanding the fact that there may be a long-protracted issue. And that in fact they would have to make possibilities for them perhaps to spend the rest of their lives struggling. And one of the possibilities that would allow that would be to have some stable community root. So, they began to look for an area. Now they had published Indian Opinion at their Phoenix farm but that was about 300 miles and 30 days
30 hours by train away.
A German architect named Hermann Kallenbach offered to Gandhiji, the use of an 1,100-acre farm, a ranch. It was in a primitive state that it was covered with fruit trees of various kinds. It had a small house on it. And so, Gandhi with about 70 or 80 other Indians moved 23 miles outside of Johannesburg to Tolstoy Farm. And it was about this time that Gandhi and Tolstoy were having their correspondence.
Kallenbach was one of these exquisite Europeans who arrives upon the scene almost like a guardian angel to make sure that whatever can be done to foster and sustain situation will be done. And Kallenbach, what a mysterious figure. It's hard to discover what actually became of him later on. He spent years and years with Gandhi. At the end of the course, I'll be showing slides. And I'll show you a very interesting slide of Kallenbach and Gandhi together. Both of them with their hair cut very short, almost like shaved heads. Both of them dressed in plain white garments with large cloth bags. And it looks like for all the world a picture of Buddhists from 2,000 years ago talking to each other. It's just a photograph caught this European and this Asian in a conversation mode which is indelible. It's a timeless interchange between two fearless cosmic warriors in the battle against evil. And it's timeless. And yet you look at later photographs or earlier photographs of Kallenbach. There he is, he is a wonderful, portly, worldly, determined architect. obviously at home in the world of luxuries and in the world of worldliness. And yet when the time came, there he was almost like a guardian angel.
In fact, he helped Gandhi to go through many of the experiments in diet and in health reform and in social living. That were to be the core of his development later in India. And Gandhi records again and again that whenever he would come up with a plan or a dream or an idea for a further experiment, Kallenbach was always there to go with him. If he wanted to eliminate almost everything from his diet, Kallenbach would go along. If they wanted to try to learn about nature cure, he was always there. If they wish to build something or plant something, he was always there. So, he was the great companion for Gandhi in South Africa.
When he came back from England in the second deputation, he wrote on the boat a book which was called Hind Swaraj. Raj meaning rule. Swaraj meaning free rule. And hind from Hindu meaning India. And Hind Swaraj is a little pamphlet, it's about 30 pages - 20 or 30 pages - was translated into Indian Home Rule. And Gandhi sent a copy of this to Count Tolstoy. And sending him his pamphlet initiated this correspondence. And increasingly as Tolstoy Farm took shape the correspondence with Tolstoy took shape. And the experiments with Kallenbach came to the fore.
And Gandhi in the period of about one year from the summer of 1909 to the summer of 1910 changed. And in this sea change became the Mahatma. And he went from being a lawyer public-spirited with great understanding and perception. A wisemen of the world trying to do good to becoming a cosmic man of all time moving with surety. And we'll see a little bit of that transmutation in the correspondence.
We better take a break though before we get to that.
The Bhagavad-Gita is very close to Gandhi's ideal. And I think that you're probably all somewhat familiar with it.
It is said in the sixth Parvin of the epic The Mahabharata, the great Indian war composed traditionally ascribed to Bhagavan Vyasa, the gate(?) of probably about 250 BC. And the great family armies have gathered in the field of Kuruksetra outside of modern Delhi and there in the pause just before they are to clash the greatest warrior of the day Arjuna regally, confidently has his charioteer take him out, Alexander the Great style, to the space in between the armies to survey the event. And the pride of his warrior capacity and its then at the pinnacle of his energizing of the moment that he has a failure of confidence. A failure of nerve. And Toynbee in his study of history says that every civilization has failed because of a failure of nerve. That it is the breaking point of humanity. And that if we can't pass the test, if we suffer a failure of nerve there is no way to put it back together without going through the entirety the whole situation and changing everything.
So that Arjuna then is engaged by his charioteer who of course is an incarnation of Krishna. Krishna, the loving guiding spirit who turns and looks over his shoulder and has a dialogue with Arjuna. And it all takes place in a flash, in the moment. But in the Gita, it's laid out. The flash for us is resolved in the meditative eye of the holder, a blind seer who is with teacher Rashtra, the king. And the blind seer sees in his meditative eye, just as deep Samadhi resolves a single image into all of its refractive capacities. And he describes this involved conversation between our dear(?) Krishna that's all unfolded in the flash of historic time. But displayed and unfolded in the spectrum of yogic penetration. And in this conversation Arjuna, young, clever, but now scared to death, hairs on the nape of his neck standing up, offers again and again reasons why he will not kill - why he's decided not to fight: These are my relatives; these are people I've grown up with; it's wrong to kill. And he offers dozens of reasons. And each time Krishna like a master netting the objection isn't saying yes these are true. These are very good, but they are not the reason why you are afraid now. All of these excuses, all of these are reasons and rationales there's something else. There's not these, not these. Something else that you do not want to perceive. And in showing for the perception, you have the flight of death on your breath. And every word that you speak is a lie in terms of that presence. And slowly maneuvers Arjuna so that he has no more excuses open. And that cul-de-sac of impossible escape Arjuna must sink into the realization but why it is that he is afraid. And having seen that once and for all can sit and decide never again, in any time-space to be bothered by it.
But Krishna in the third chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita tells Arjuna that there are two traditional ways by which men free themselves from themselves. One of them is he says, the sannyas way. Which is from the spool of wisdom which prescribes the way by which reason helps man eliminate himself an escape. The other is the yoga, the yogi's way. Which bids men to attain by meditation spiritually. You can either go inward or you can express outward. It's a double process. It's like the communitive process of writing and reading. Those two that go together.
And incidentally that's why I'm teaching those classes on Saturday morning about writing and reading. Because it's, see it is the primordial yin and yang of expression. It's a primordial yoga of realization. You need nothing else except to have experience in analyzing and understanding these processes.
And like in the Bhagavad-Gita it becomes clearer that both the reason and the meditation come together. And in this focus of the two, one is able finally to see but that is it. There that there was a point. There was a flash. no matter how minute, there was a flash. And it was that flash that we didn't want to see. We felt that somehow hidden behind that unwanted insight was the destruction of ourselves. And of course, this was the key to it all. In order to make this apparent to the people around him, Gandhi, who was not a philosopher, set up living conditions which were the reasoned arguments. Experiments with living which were the varying discourses that he was offering. And the discussion of them together in the evenings was the meditative yogi part.
And so, at Tolstoy Farm everyone who was there learned how to be together, not just as a commune or as a community, or even as a family after a while, but learned how to apply the principle of satyagraha to their living conditions. That ignorance itself can be overcome by this collective interacting through increasing the loving-kindness. And the loving-kindness and wisdom together are the two eyes that focus finally and see clear.
In this are also the seeds of Gandhi's constructive program which is almost never mentioned. And which as the course goes into its fourth and fifth and sixth week on through to the end of it, we'll discuss more and more. The positive constructive side. The experiments of how to make things work. How to make social structures that actually yield. And they're called sarvodaya. Sarvodaya. Service to all.' Sarvodaya. That there are ways to actually do it. There are methods. There were constructions. There are techniques that can be taught.
They moved in the summer of 1910 to Tolstoy Farm. And at that time Tolstoy wrote a large letter to Gandhi. And it is called A Letter to a Hindu. And it was written to him. Ummm, actually Tolstoy sent it you know towards the end of the 1908 period. But it matured at this time. And in A Letter to a Hindu Tolstoy says, "I have received your letter and two numbers of your periodical Indian Opinion. Both of which interest me extremely." And then he goes on to talk about how human oppression of majorities by minorities, of the slow by the fast, have been a condition that seems to have obtained back into the distant eras of time and history. And he says,
But to make my thoughts clear to you I must go further back. We do not, cannot, and I venture to say need not, know how man lived millions of years ago. Or even ten thousand years ago. But we do know positively that as far back as we could have any knowledge of mankind it has always lived in special groups of families, tribes, and nations.
Now these structures, these intuitions on man's part as a being is that we should live together. That there is a grouping by which we all survive. And that we need to have that interchange. That there are something primordial in that interchange. And bringing it to the fullest manifestation is our purpose. That individually whatever we might discover is bound up in the truth of the community. And that somehow this is characteristic of man, in all peoples, in all times, have understood this. The problem was always how to bring it together. How increasingly to affect this. And he says,
Thus, the truth that this life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis. Which manifests itself as love. And which is so natural to man. This truth in order to force a way to man's consciousness had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed. And the intentional and unintentional distortion surrounding it. But also, against deliberate violence. Which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.
And so, he puts, Tolstoy puts his finger on the very spot that Krishna made for Arjuna. That we have all kinds of scapegoats of why we fight. Why we don't get along. Why ultimately there needs to be violence. Why ultimately, we need to band together against them. None of these have any relevance whatsoever. They are all the clever gibberings of the blind bats of ego. None of them address themselves exactly to the issue that our nature is universal and not specific. And that we come together because we are together primarily, and we wish to manifest. That there are no other understandings of the courses of man or the courses of history that make any sense and have any relevance to us if we cannot perceive this. If we are bent upon not understanding it and not hearing it, we will forever go astray. That there is no ingenious combination of substitutes and surrogates that will ever work. And in fact, increasingly as Gandhi will show that we face a situation that makes it imperative upon us to understand this, because we now become powerful enough to destroy ourselves.
Tolstoy writes and in this A Letter to a Hindu, which takes up about 12 to 15 pages. Tolstoy is taking the moral baton of mankind and passing it on to Gandhi. He is saying you are the one. I can see what you're doing. I read what you are doing. I understand your integrity. And I am dying. I am old and this is for you. This next sprint in the race for integrity for man is your lap to run. He says for a long time now people have lived in this obvious contradiction without noticing it. that the contradiction is that they are spiritual manifestations and entities and not physical conglomerates of any ingenious or clever proportion. We're not jigsaw puzzles in any phenomenal sense. We are wholenesses in the numeral sense, and that key meaning cannot be lost, cannot be shirked. And when we own up to it then we discover that many of the so-called problems actually fade away. Because they have no energy to sustain themselves. For a long time, people have lived in this obvious contradiction without noticing it, but a time has arrived when this contradiction now becomes more and more evident to thinkers of various nations. And the old and simple truth that it is natural for man to help and love one another, but not to torture and kill one another becomes ever clearer. So that fewer and fewer people are able to believe the sophistries by which the distortion of the truth has been made so plausible. And he goes on to cite a number of instances and writings.
And about this time that Tolstoy is writing to Gandhi in 1908, 1909, 1910, we find around the world almost as if a kind of prophetic presage of the great war that was about to descend, writings that speak to this issue. We find William James delivering his great speech on the moral equivalent of war, in which he says we will always have war until men realize that we will have peace only if we work as hard for peace as we do for war. That we have to organize ourselves for peace. We have to have peace armies. And peace soldiers who are willing not to kill others but to give their lives. And only then when the peace armies are here will the violent armies cease to hold the day. And we'll see how these peace armies, the shanti senas of the Vinoba become a reality in the 1970s.
Tolstoy goes on, and in his letter, he says this, "people see more and more clearly. And now the majority see quite clearly the senselessness in immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves. When they are bidden to do what is contrary, not only to their own interests but also to their moral sense." That they move and sweep of history and circumstance. Unlike some blind cycle that just happens actually seems to have a pattern moving towards an apex. Towards a hub from which we see all the patterns flowing together.
And so, the beginnings of the 20th century we're seeing by Tolstoy and Gandhi and others at the time, that this century will see the pattern manifesting itself whole. And that in order to meet this there need to be conscientious pioneers who have trail blazed ways and means, skillful ways, skillful means, by which increasing populations of conscientious people can come together, stay together and work to produce the enlightened situation. For this, Gandhi, like a master craftsman, knew that there had to be a social anvil upon which all these issues could be hammered out.
And so, Tolstoy Farm became that place for him. The population had some stability. There were women and children who were almost always there. But the population of men was revolving. As they would be sent to prison or released from prison as it as they would be waiting bail. because a great satyagraha program against these black ordinances went into effect for eight years. And Tolstoy Farm became the clearing house, the round house where people could come. The men could get some respite. Get their feeling back for being together. The feeling for life of caring about things. And eventually out of the situation the toward they found that the satyagraha days actually became joyful at the combat. That prison no longer seemed a specter to them that they were even earning the respect of their jailers. That the judges were even letting them on their own recognizance come to various court appearances without bail. Because the absolute integrity of every single one of them over the years, thousands of them, began to impress everyone in South Africa. That this group does not lie. Does not cheat. And they do not give up. They are there. They've been there for years. They're going to be there for years. And each time they keep saying that we're talking about a specific issue, we're talking about this injustice, which is not an injustice against us alone but you also. We cannot permit it to obtain. It would destroy you as well as us. Therefore, we do not command a satyagraha campaign. But as Gandhi says we offer a satyagraha campaign for all to have a chance to see in this bowl of common understanding what we would all lose. And if we recognize it what we all stand to gain. That all of our human dignity stands to gain from this recognition together. And that without you we couldn't have it. And without us you cannot have it. Therefore, we are not polarized as enemies, but we were brought together as complementary in wholeness. And only that must be seen. Only that. There are no details to be spun out. There are no side issues that we wish to include now that we hadn't thought of before. There's only this. Only this.
And so, years went by, and the Tolstoy Farm experiments continue to pace. Gandhi tried all kinds of things. He became convinced at one point that nature cure using mud packs and fresh water and sunlight was a way to help people. He took on a 70-year-old asthmatic who came in and he worked on this man for several months. And by his own calculation and meditation he felt that he should have been cured. And the man still had a cough. And so, he asked him if he still smoked. And the man said no he didn't smoke. So, Gandhi waited up one night and when he saw the cigarette flash he went over, and he sat down next to the man and just sat there. The man and the puff of cigarette glare saw Gandhi and he broke into tears. And within three weeks he was cured of his asthma. Because he hadn't quit, not the smoking says Gandhi, but the self-deceit. The self-deceit which had kept him sick. And when he left, he said he could see in the robustness of his walk not a 70-year-old man but a human spirit who'd been made whole. And he said this was the understanding. This was it. And for Gandhi, when he saw that he knew, he said that he was on the right way. That there was never again in his life a doubt as to what the real problems were and what the real methods of solving them were.
Finally, the issue came together. And I have to skip over a lot of material I was going to give here. The issue came together when a man, his political guru as he said, named [Gopal Krishna] Gokhale came to the ashram. Gokhale was a learning professor. Quite
quite an interesting man. And he was elderly at this time. He came to the ashram and Gandhi said it was a great joy and travesty at the same time. He hadn't realized that there was a mile and a half walk from the nearest train station to the ashram. And it rained and Gokhale was chilled to the bone. And then when the old man found that he was the only one that had a cot laid out for him, that everyone else was sleeping on the floor he of course took his cot away. And when Gandhi and all the others seemed to protest that they wanted to take care of him, he said, "I will not let you indulge your pride. You think that you are revolutionaries. You are going to do me a favor even if I die, I will not accept these extras. We are not different." And Gandhi, of course, realized that he was speaking exactly to the issues that he had understood. And so, he said I was shamefully reminded that I was still capable of error. And still needing to experiment, still needing to learn.
Gokhale went back to India. And when he went back, he carried with him this iridescent image of not the perfect man, not the yogi, but the honest man who was trying and would never give up. and that was the image he took back to India.
In South Africa the satyagraha campaign, as all of them do, finally resolved all the issues closer and closer to a central hub of understanding. The issues always come down to the new(?). and there's always a moment of discovery in a satyagraha campaign. It always comes up. it may take years for it to come up. Sometimes just days. But always there is a moment of discovery. And in South Africa it was a great huge march. Gandhi took some 2,200 individuals - men, women, and children - and they physically crossed the border of Transvaal without permits. And this was the crowning blow. They would have had to have been arrested and some of them were. They would have had to have been continuously arrested. And finally, the government decided to breach some accord.
And in that test Gandhi also noticed that he had given up European dress. And from 1912, or so, 1913, he no longer dressed in European clothes. That in the heat of this last confrontation, what he discovered as a part of that satyagraha realization was that he was in fact not in any way a European gentleman. But he was an Indian. And in fact, he was an ordinary Indian. And discovering that was a great salvation for him. A great moment of discovery. That he was not a Maharajah. He was not an Arjuna. That he was a common ordinary Indian man. And that in this tenacity was the very nature of the starving down millions of India. And he discovered that about himself. And when he did, he could no longer stay in southern Africa.
He left for England in the summer of 1914 and in January of 1915 he was back in India. And he came back, and he told Gokhale, the first day was there, strolling one of these wonderful gardens of the wealthy. He said I don't know India at all. And Gokhale said, "you will know it, because I can see as you are that you already are India. You have to just discover the affinity which you have become with the hundreds of millions of your brothers and sisters. So, go on. Go and see her. Go and see India."
So next week we'll take a look at his discovery of India. The discovery that almost every starving dumb(?) million(?) that he saw, he saw himself they were no different from him. Absolutely none. And one of them would come to him and bring him the issue that finally made of him a world-famous figure. And the architect of universal political salvation. A starving, long-bearded man from the northern part of India. From Champaran. And in Champaran on the Indigo, growers had reached the ultimate point of having been milked dry. They no longer had any money. They no longer had any food. And so, Gandhi would go to Champaran to see what could be done for nothing. You will see that next week.
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