Satyagraha in Champaran
Presented on: Thursday, July 21, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
Gandhi
Presentation 3 of 13
Satyagraha in Champaran:
The Truth Holding Methodology Enters India, 1917
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, July 21, 1983
Transcript:
This is the third lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir on Gandhi. Tonight's lecture is entitled: Satyagraha in Champaran: The Truth Holding Method Enters India in 1917. The date is July 21st, 1983.
It's difficult for us because of the formed habits of our minds. And because of the cultural inclinations of our upbringing. And because of the stars of regulated purpose that often guide us, to appreciate a universal phenomenon. A world-class person is a different phenomenon from any other person. And so, it is difficult for all peoples to recognize the outstanding world-class individual. It takes a long time for that difference to manifest itself. For the influences to be felt. And very often Gandhi would say, please don't look at my life I'm really an average person. And I'm doing the best I can. But look at the influence, look at the effect that my life has on others. And look to the truth that I'm trying to manifest because it is there that the important is. And many times, he would say of himself that he was capable of not only errors but occasionally of Himalayan blunders. So that he rarely would hold himself up to be the example that should be followed. But rather that he was the average man attempting assiduously, without fail to manifest an indication. And it was to that indication that we should all look. And the only way to ascertain what was being indicated was to practice in our own selves, attempt to manifest in our own lives what was happening. In other words, instead of looking at the images that are given in phenomenal time-space, to look to the current, to look to the energy wave that is allowing those images to be produced.
And so, there was constantly a karma yogic activity going on with Gandhiji to catch and hold, like a masterful teacher would, the questions and the answers that so often are mistaken for learning and knowing and understanding. And showing how together they present unified images. And that the reality behind all of these pairs of questions and answers is a life form force manifesting itself in terms of the wholeness of the universe. And that man is forever engendering a cloud of dust of questions and answers. And only when that cloud of dust is settled can he then look to see where they all came from. Where in his own being, his own life the questions and the answers came from. And only upon discovering that ground, that universal ground, could an individual then appreciate what was real and what was true.
So that any conflict, in fact the sharper the conflict the better, but any conflict was an opportunity for human beings to exercise their honing of perception. To see that the problem and the solution, whatever they might be, however complex they might be, were only images of a universal process of truth. And that the only condition that men really need observe to discover the truth, through whatever form whatever process it might reveal itself, was to take an absolutely irrevocable vow of non-violence. Because it was only violence, only the indication of wanting to force a viewpoint or force a solution. Even if it seemed like the right one to everyone. If it was forced it would also force a reaction to itself automatically, spontaneously, subconsciously without intending it. so that any kind of a forcefulness engendered its opposites, its polarities. Even if the best it's complementarities. And we would then be again in that same dull round of the dust cloud of questions and answers. Therefore, he sought ways in which this process of letting the dust of controversy settle so that all parties involved could at the same time have the same view of the situation as it really was. Without questions and without answers.
And for this we need this week to consider Gandhi in the light of another great world class individual Rabindranath Tagore. And just like last week we saw Gandhi linked up with Leo Tolstoy, this week we'll see how Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore formed a poignant stage of developed. And I think just to catch up with what we did last week, I'll bring Tolstoy back onto the stage for just a minute or two. And then we'll move immediately to, to Tagore and Gandhi.
Tolstoy, if you recall last week, had gone through a great change of heart. He had gone from being the greatest living literary artist in Europe. Through the experiences of taking the census in slums of Moscow and having a total revulsion arise in him, suicidal tendencies. And finally, Tolstoy made this tremendous shift. He ended up wearing the peasant moujik costume plowing the fields, hiding the guns in his home, hiding the knives. And writing a new kind of literature, the spiritual parable. And I pointed to The Death of Ivan Ilyich as one of the great works of the mature Tolstoy. He also wrote a great novel called Resurrection. Resurrection which is a poignant spiritual classic.
Tolstoy in forming this change about himself was also very careful to say I am not a holy man. I am not even a good man in my own eyes. But what I see and what I would like to stand for are true. And if you will only look through me and around me and beyond me to see what I am trying to manifest in my life is that which I would wish you to know. And it is that which I would wish you to carry on. In fact, he says and one of his later writings, he says, "I am a horrid creature and deserve blame and contempt for not fulfilling these expectations. But yet not so much in justification as in explanation of my inconsistency. I say, consider my former life and my present one and you will see that I try to fulfill them. I do not fulfill a ten thousandth part it is true. And I am to blame for that. But it is not because I do not wish to fulfill them that I fail but because I do not know how to."
And so, Tolstoy constantly in his religious writings towards the latter part of his life. Revealing again and again, you find the refrain until it almost becomes like the refrain of a cosmic litany. I would live better. I know I should live better. But I do not know how. So that at the root, Tolstoy, with great humility and uncanny accuracy, placed his finger exactly on the problem as it emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. That we are afloat in an ocean of ignorance. And that the only way that we will ever reach the shore is to learn how to navigate this ocean of ignorance. And if you recall at the end of his life in his great correspondence sequence with Gandhi, he felt that the experiments in the actions that Gandhi had undertaken in South Africa were the best indication of learning how to negotiate this ocean of ignorance in the 20th century.
So that for Gandhi also, he was concerned with whether or not he was going to have a universal applicability to his methodology. He was concerned that what he was developing might be true for Indians. It might even be true simply for Indians in South Africa. And so, his concern more and more in his experiments was to ascertain for himself is this a viable methodology for as broad a spread of humanity as can be. And the difficulty for him was with the Christian religion. He had read the Old Testament and had been stymied. He said he had a difficulty in finding where the religion was. Because he was used to a different kind of approach. He was impressed by the life of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, but he had a great difficulty with Christianity because he felt that somehow Christianity and Hinduism were the two great religious forces alive in the 20th century. Especially for himself. And he wanted to find some interface between them. Tolstoy became for him the clue, the indication. That what was wrong with Christianity was that it suffered from the same thing that Hinduism suffered from. a doctrinaire history that had left layer upon layer of approach, an example. And had squeezed out the actual living of the religious life for many people. And with Tolstoy he saw that the viability of Christianity was still alive, still available for a genuinely religious individual to tap through to its core and its essence. And bring it back into manifestation in the individual. So that the correspondence with Tolstoy was extremely important for Gandhi. Because it confirmed for him that the activities that he was dealing with were truly on a universal scale.
And so, the tremendous letter from Tolstoy to Gandhi telling him that the baton of experimenting with life in a serious way to discover again the old religious practices which had once made man great, and capable of deserving an honorable place in the universe. And that somehow this place had been covered up for thousands of years by layers called civilization. Now at this time there were great many individuals on the world scene who were delivering scathing attacks against civilization. Edward Carpenter, whose books sold in the hundreds of thousands, wrote a great classic called Civilization: Its Cause and Its Cure. Walt Whitman's great Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself - in them was this tremendous release of the person to the cosmic stepping completely outside of all frames of reference that might have civilized him to the point of muffling his universal voice. "Do I contradict myself," Whitman said, "Before I contradict myself. I am Universal, vast, I continue multitudes."
This literature was characteristic of the breaking shell of European civilization around the years 1870 to about 1910. There was a tremendous proliferation. And at the time that this proliferation was coming out, this perception around the world by various individuals that there was an incredible capacity in man to penetrate by an honest vision of himself through to the very core of the structure of reality. Just as that was becoming heard and repeated and finding its parallel reverberation. We saw the phenomenon of the rebirth and the re-emergence of the great Indian classics. In particular and special The Bhagavad-Gita. Sir Edward Arnold's translation of The Bhagavad-Gita became an instant classic. It was read around the world. And was promoted as being an indication that in fact ancient wisdom from Asia could be of service and of help to every man including Western man. So that the whole idea of the brown or black Asian being a coolie was shattered once and for all. By the perception that a timeless wisdom applicable at the moment, even by Western man, was finally available. And in this of course this tremendous tandem of the form of Western civilization opening up like an egg shape which the time to hatch had come. And the perception that Asia offered an insight, the lightning, with which to break this shell and to start afresh, saw of course the great rise of the Theosophical Society.
And this tremendous impetus of organizing a select population, a self-elected, select population around the world to reform the conscious capacity of man by reminding himself of the glorious wisdom past. Which all men had, and which seemed to come into a reverberation of focused integrity. And so, around 1910 to about 1915, at the time when the First World War was shredding Europe. In the sense of this incredible stalemate of the Maginot Line. It was like a physical worldwide image of the old way having reached a stalemate. And that there was no doubt and no question anymore. But what conscientious people should turn their backs on this kind of a stalemate, this kind of a worldview, and proceed at least in the directly opposite way to explore and discover.
And it was in this world frame of mind that Gandhi came back to India. He was 45 years old. And when he came back to India, he had sent his family and his ashram, his Phoenix Ashram community. The same people that had done all the experiments in diet and health and education reform at the Tolstoy Farm outside of Johannesburg. The same group that had been at the Phoenix Ashram outside of Durban. He sent them to India ahead while he went to England. And where did they go in India? They went to Rabindranath Tagore's ashram at Santiniketan, which was about 93 miles north from Calcutta. There is a small town there called Ballavpur. Not so very small anymore. And there in 1901 Rabindranath Tagore's father [Debendranath Tagore] who had been a Maharishi. A rishi is a sage. And a maharishi is a great sage. Debendranath Tagore had founded Santiniketan. Shanti means peace. Place of peace - Santiniketan.
The grandfather of Tagore had been a Prince in Bengal. And his son, Debendranath had become a rishi - sage. And the young boy Tagore, Rabindranath when he was just a boy was taken by his father on many pilgrimages. He was taught the method of tapas, performing austerities. And that there is a science of performing tapas. And just as one can compute with mathematical figures, one can also compute with austerities. That there are sciences of discipline. And that they have been refined extraordinarily in classical India. That The Bhagavad-Gita or Patanjali's Yoga aphorisms or any one of a dozen texts offer the schooling textbooks of the science of the soul.
And so, the young Rabindranath Tagore would be taken sometimes - he would be ten years old and taken up to the Himalayas to set in the ice-cold streams and hold a yogic posture for hours on end. Or he'd be told stories of the old ancient Rishi's and how they brought into manifestation through language the greatness of the spirit. He was told the wonderful stories of the great poet sage Valmiki, who had written the original Ramayana. How Valmiki had been meditating by the side of a stream and was listening to a little bird sing a beautiful song. And some hunter had come and shot with an arrow, the bird, and killed it. And when it fell to the forest floor Valmiki had uttered a curse to the man. And then holding that curse in his mind he went back into meditation and tried to think where did this come from. And meditated upon the form of the curse. And realized it come out in a two-line form called the sloka. That the classical Indian epic form was the sloka. And it was based on this spontaneous emotive outbreak. And that by linking these outbreaks together so that they could be seen in the structure was the way in which an epic in the language could instruct us into the disciplining of our feelings. How Valmiki had sat so long in meditation upon the nature of language that the ants around him had built an anthill up over him, and that his name Valmiki means, the sage of the anthill.'
So, he was told this and he was presented this. And it was presented as a living reality as a heritage that had belonged to his people for thousands of years. And that was now his heritage to claim. And so, the young Rabindranath Tagore, who had received this extraordinary education, when he was sent to England to become a lawyer - to become a barrister - he didn't stay very long because to him it was a matter of going back to his roots, back to India, back to this great tradition which he felt coursing in himself. And when he returned to India he began to write, many languages especially in Bengali. And Bengali as an enormously literate language.
I have a very good Bengali friend a man named Ravi Sinha from Patna. And he is the archetypal Bengali. He will charm you for days on end without sleep. With just talking and giving stories. They are happy-go-lucky. They tend to run to a little plumpness and excellence. And a Bengali as a friend is the world's greatest treasure. They cannot do enough for you.
So, Tagore raised this spirit of the Bengali to a cosmic flowering that all of mankind needed this kind of care. And the best kind of care was to make the bouquets of spiritual meaning out of language. And so, Tagore trained himself and all of his life created these tremendous gardens of meaning through language, through poetry, plays, songs. There are folk singers in India who sing only Tagore songs. He has thousands of songs. And maybe sometime we can get an album and play some of these for you. The Tagore songs are extraordinarily lovely. The tunes, the words, the method of performance. All of it like veils of chiffon blowing in the wind. Not too obscure anything but to show that the wind blows beautifully. This sort of activity.
And so, Gandhi coming back from South Africa had sent his family and his people on ahead to Tagore's ashram at Santiniketan. This was 1915 - January of 1915. And Gandhi himself, when he first landed in India, was over on the other side from Calcutta - on the Bombay side - and he conferred with Gokhale, his political guru. And he realized then that Tagore and Gokhale together had been watching his activities for years in South Africa. That it was Gokhale and Tagore together who had sent in Charles Freer Adams.... Charles Freer Andrews to Gandhi in South Africa to be his helper. And Andrews was the wonderful Christian minister who shared with Gandhi many of his experiences and development. And who wrote three books upon Gandhi's life. And they're just excellent to read.
So, he discovered that Gokhale, who was the great professorial intellectual genius who was the center of the Friends of India Society, who was the moving architect of the whole independence movement in India and had been for some time, told Gandhi to go out and experience India. And where best to start that to find a welcoming home by going to Santiniketan. And so, he went there.
And on February 6, 1915, Gandhi arrived there. Tagore was absent at the time. But Gandhi felt as he said many times throughout his life that it was his second home. And he was there just a week when news came that Gokhale had died. So, he left Santiniketan went back, attempted to gain entry into the Friends of India Society and then realized that not everyone was giving their assent to him. They were in fact split upon whether to admit him or not. And he says in his autobiography that it was poignantly clear to him that those who opposed his entry, opposed it on very good grounds. They disagreed with his methods in South Africa. They disagreed with his satyagraha plans. They disagreed with his living like a common man. In fact, like a beggar, in many aspects indistinguishable from a beggar. They disagreed with many of the aspects of Gandhi's life. And so, Gandhi said his first great political compromise was to withdraw his application to join the Friends of India. And everyone seemed to welcome him then as an ex-officio member. And he said it was his first indication of Indian politics.
He went back to Santiniketan. And when he was there Tagore had returned. And Gandhi who was like the wheat field compared to Tagore like the rose garden, looked at all these servants who were making the food and doing the cleaning. And the professors looking very grand and teaching elegant songs and dance to the rich young students who were ignoring the help and learning the song. And Gandhi couldn't stand it. So, he went to Tagore, and he said I'd like to make some changes, I'd like to experiment. And Tagore who always claimed not to be an administrator, that he was a singer he said, gave him permission. And so, Gandhi began to work on the population of Santiniketan. And the first thing was that the faculty and the students would have to cook their food together. And they would have to wash the dishes together. And they would have to of course sweep and clean together. And so, he turned the whole ashram upside down. And all the distinguished elegant teachers and the gurus were out there sweeping along with the lowest, newest students. And in time of course there was a great change of pace at Santiniketan.
In his volume My Experiments with Truth he says, "But it was not too much to expect the hundred and twenty-five boys with their teachers to take to this work of physical labor like ducks to water. There used to be daily discussions. Some began early to show fatigue. But it was not the person to be tired. One would always find me with a smiling face doing something or other about the kitchen. And various people then took it upon themselves to clean the various utensils. A party of students would play on their sitar before the cleaning party in order to beguile the tedium of the operation. All alike took the thing up with zest and Santiniketan became a busy hive." And so, Gandhi began to do this work.
He really wanted to have some ashram for himself. And he thought in his mind that the best place for him to foot down his roots would be in his native state of Gujarat. All the way back across India, north of Bombay. And so, he decided to open an ashram across from the very large industrial textile city of Ahmedabad. And there is a river there called the Sabarmati River which runs into the Indian Ocean. And he set up his own ashram there and called it from the name of the river, the Sabarmati Ashram. But his experiments at Santiniketan set up a resonance with Tagore. And it was Tagore then who gave him the title of Mahatma. And I think it's interesting to review just a few lines from Tagore, before we go, into his reasons for calling Gandhi a Mahatma.
In Tagore's use of language, he was attempting to bring into manifestation qualities which would scintillate. So that the person hearing this language would have feeling for it and would experience a relationality with the meaning of the language. And that in between this charm, the scintillation, this relation there would occur to the person a flash, an insight. We see a very similar way in the Japanese mode. The great haiku poet Basho creating the flash of insight in a short seventeen syllable poem. Very much the same form but done in an Indian way - in a Bengali way. In large generous dollops of language rather than the Japanese terse haiku.
In one of his collections of poems... and he incidentally won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. His great friend W.B. Yeats, the greatest English poet of his time, nominated Tagore and to go receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. In The Crescent Moon he has a poem called "When and Why." And here's an example of Tagore's creation of insight by poetry.
When I bring you colored toys, my child, I understand why there is such a play of colors on clouds on water, and why flowers are painting in tints - when I give colored toys to you, my child.
When I sing to make you dance, I truly know why there is music in leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of the listening earth - when I sing to make you dance.
When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands, I know why there is honey in the cup of the flower, and why fruits are secretly filled with sweet juice - when I bring sweet things to your hands.
When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I understand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light, and what delight the summer breeze brings to my body - when I kiss you to make you smile.
So that is a beginning type of poem characteristic of Tagore. And here is a poem from Gitanjali, which shows you how that method, that way of poetry, is raised to a universal height.
When my play was with thee, I never questioned who you wert. I knew nor shyness nor fear, my life was boisterous.
In the early morning thou wouldst call me from my sleep, like my own comrade and lead me running from glade to glade.
On those days I never cared to know the meaning of songs thou sangest to me. Only my voice took up the tunes, and my heart danced in their cadence.
Now, when the playtime is over, what is this sudden sight that is come upon me? The world with eyes bent upon thy stands in awe with all its silent stars.
Just an example of the way in which Tagore sought to bring language into this quality of creating a moment of transparency between the reader and the writer. Through which some kind of communion could happen. And if it was true - that there was a yoga to language, and poetry is the highest form - and India one of the great heritages of practicing this, then Tagore felt himself to be a religious poet-sage in the old tradition.
Now he also had traveled to many places. He was well received in Japan and in Europe. And he also went to the United States. And when he was in New York City he wrote a letter back to Santiniketan and this is how he described the Americans. "Civilization in the West is a magnifying glass. It makes the most ordinary things hugely big. its buildings, business, amusements are exaggerations. The spirit of the West loves its high-heeled boots. Whose heels are much bigger than itself. Since I came to this continent my arithmetic has become absurdly bloated. It refuses to be compressed within decent limits. But I can assure you that to carry such a burden, even in my imagination, is wearisome."
Then he says it later in his letter that he feels that somehow in all this there's still a saving grace. And he quotes from his great friend and compatriot W. B. Yeats, from the great poem... "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Where he says, "I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree. And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made. Nine bean rows will I have there. A hive for the honeybee. And live alone in the be loud glade."
And he says in the modern age with all its facilities of communication the access to industry has become most difficult. Central Africa opens its secret to the inquisitive man and the North and the South Pole. But the road to Innisfree lies in an in to eternal mystery. Yet I belong to that Isle of Innisfree and its true name is Santiniketan. But when I leave it and cross over to the western shore, I feel occasionally frightened lest I should lose my path back to it.
So, it was at this time that the populations of Asia and the world, seeking to understand the conditions of the modern age were very glad to discover that there was an American who made a pilgrimage to that inner Innisfree. And his name was Henry David Thoreau. And he had gone to build himself a little cabin next to Walden Pond. We have a book on the Gandhian era down in our library here that's dedicated to the sage of North America, Henry David Thoreau. And Thoreau's Walden was read. But even more so his journals because in the great 20 volumes of his journals you find the universal surveyor of snowstorms, who says that there need be, occasionally, someone to stand and watch. And be here with nature in its movements. So that they are seen and noted and known.
In this capacity Tagore felt that language raised to a structure was indeed a key to man's discovery of himself. And that if language were put to music that there was a possibility of transforming human nature. And he wrote this in a great book called The Religion of Man. It's called "The Music Maker" and here's the paragraph that ends the chapter on the music maker: "The realism in Man is the animal in him, whose life is a mere duration of time; the human in him is the reality which has life everlasting for its background. Rocks and crystals being complete definitely in what they are, can keep as mute insensate things' a kind of dumb dignity in their stolidly limited realism; while human facts grow unseemly and diseased, breeding germs of death, when divested of their creative ideal - the ideal of Man the divine. The difference between the notes as mere facts of sound and music as a truth of expression is immense. For music though it comprehends a limited number of notes yet represents the infinite. It is for man to produce the music of the spirit with all the notes which he has in his psychology and which, through inattention or perversity, can easily be translated into a frightful noise. In music man is revealed and not in a noise."
And so, you begin to grasp the enormity of the intelligence and the courage at work here. Because you take somebody like Tolstoy and someone like Tagore and someone like Gandhi. And you realize that the spirit of the planet had suddenly risen. That there was a grandeur of understanding that had suddenly risen. That the comfortable plush velvet of Victorian railroad coach had suddenly given way in precedent to the thinking man walking and wondering what am I that I should wonder what is it on this planet, at this time that I should suddenly wake to find others like myself also asking.
And so, one more paragraph from The Religion of Man. The chapter on spiritual freedom. "Spiritual Freedom."
"According to these singers, truth is in unity, and therefore freedom is in its realization..."
Not freedom of choice that's deceptive. But freedom is in the realization of the unity. Therefore, if someone undertakes a satyagraha to establish the truth of a situation which all can see, one is seeking to lay bare the unity below it all - the music instead of the noise, the clarity instead of the dust of the questions and answers.
"According to these singers, truth is in unity, and therefore freedom is in its realization. The texts of our daily worship wait and in the cumulative penetration what is the unity underlying all of these vicissitudes of which I myself am an indelible part."
And so, the tuning of man's spiritual consciousness in the second decade of the 20th century took a quantum jump in capacity. And in this Tagore and Gandhi became the two representatives in the Indian mind. And extensively and increasingly for the world watching its own breaking shell under the lightning discovery of Asian wisdom, the fact that there was in fact phenomenon, a noumenon, known as soul consciousness, and as the Gita says when man is in his darkest hour. When he has given up all hope, it is then that God sends the helper. It is then that he comes. So that Tagore in Sadhana gives us a paragraph in the chapter called "Soul Consciousness" to this point: "We have seen that it was the aspiration of ancient India to live and move and have its joy in Brahma, the all-conscious and all-pervading Spirit, by extending its field of consciousness over all the world."
That the divine manifests in a person to extend itself into relationally to the world. But that it may be urged it is an impossible task for a man to achieve. He means to say here we are in the 20th century; this was in ancient times with... when things were simpler when man was perhaps more naïve. Can we still do that? "If this extension of consciousness," writes Tagore, "be an outward process then it is endless. It is like attempting to cross the ocean after ladling out its water. By beginning to try to realize all one has to end by realizing nothing."
And so, the great conundrum - the search for a system - a search for a way for men to understand that he must turn away from his habituation, his addiction to phenomenal forms as his measurement of truth. To turn away from the belief that in some kind of a synthesis or dance of problem and answer there lies a synthesis which would give him an understanding. He has to learn to detach himself from these expectations, from these habituations. And school himself to realize that perhaps the unity of the all is not perceivable as a phenomenon. It's a thing. Perhaps it has to occur in such a blinding totality that it occurs to him in his habituated things that it was nothing at all. But that only by living the life of integrity he learns to see that that nothing at all has an incredible effect. That he progressively in this yoga of addressing himself constantly to just working, doing the good tasks, keeping at improving little by little. That there is a soul force that rises in him that has no name but has every effect.
Well, we're going to take a little break and then we'll come back to the naming of the Mahatma by Tagore.
I discovered a long time ago that they - the best teachers - are the ones that leave their students working. And provide situations that allow for the students to realize that the education is theirs to have. And that they acquire it really and physically by proceeding with it. And one indication of my failure so far in this particular series is to enthuse you to go by the PRS bookstore and those Gandhi books that we've ordered from India. We've got a lot of things. There are some of them are as cheap as forty cents. And when they're all sold then I'll know that I have done some justice to it. There aren't that many. Handbook for Satyagrahas was published in 1980 and distributed by The Movement for a New Society in Philadelphia. A Manual for Volunteers of Total Revolution [subtitle to Handbook for Satyagrahas]. And it comes as a shock to politicos and organizers that under Gandhian scrutinies, their revisions of society and their revisions of history and their understandings of human nature turn out to be very partial and very shallow. And engenders as many problems as they would solve if not this year, in a hundred years. If not this generation, in a dozen generations. So, the Gandhians are very precise and careful about the fact that if we do it once right, we're not going to have to do it again. But if we don't, we have to do it over and over again until we get it right. So, we might as well do it right and get it done.
The legacy from Tolstoy is best symbolized and codified in a phrase called bread labor.' Bread labor. The gospel of work. That if you're not doing something to work for your living daily then something is wrong. It's the first indication. If you find yourself gliding along on the work of others then as Tagore says in one of his writings, you're a parasite. The definition of a parasite is that a parasite lives off its host and has ceased to remember how to live off nature; is unable to live on its own in nature. It has to depend upon a middle agent. And trouble with human ignorance is that we can have infinite middlemen between us and nature. We can become so crippled, spiritually, that to call us a basket case would be a kindness.
There are lots of these little Gandhian pamphlets, dozens, and dozens of them, I think we have maybe 20 different kinds in the bookstore. This one's just called Bread Labor. And on the cover is a symbol of a sheaf of wheat and a loaf of bread behind it resting on some waves of water. Water and wheat to make bread. It's a perfect symbol of the essential simplicity of life. That there are basic ingredients and ways to put them together. And that they will produce sustenance for life. And you can complicate that. You can make it as dandified as you like, as elegant as you like, but it's all variations in a very simple theme. That there are basic processes and there are recipes for the process of making life livable. And when we are not making life livable in a natural cooperative sense, we're contributing to the observations that builds and builds into those landslides of histories that are known as wars, rebellions, infractions, injustices. And all of this together is that ocean of ignorance that we would like to cross.
The Essence of Democracy; Democracy: Real and Deceptive, another little pamphlet. Democracy must in essence mean the art and science of mobilizing the entire physical economic and spiritual resources of all the various sections of the people in the service of the common good of all. The average individual's soul force is any day the most important thing, any day. The political form is but a concrete expression of that soul force. I do not conceive the average individual soul force as distinguished and existing apart from the political form of government. Hence, I believe that after all the people has a government which it deserves. Which it deserves by the way in which it conducts itself. So, we have exactly what we have prepared. That freedom in reality is that we get exactly what we have prepared for. We need to school ourselves in order to find out that we could modify what we are doing and get closer to what we would actually like. That we are not rudderless babies but in fact very mobile, insightful unities. Capable of working together and producing, as Gandhi says in other words, self-government can only come through self-effort. There is no other way. There is no other way.
And so, from time to time when Gandhi would be put upon to philosophize, he would literally introduce them to what he was doing that day. Because the implications were all there, every day. There were a few times when he was thrown into his university. The prisons, he called them his university. Where he would be forced to read and write. And he would give little things like discourses on the Gita. Simple little writings. In this one he says, "The Lord said oh king I will tell you how a man devotes his whole mind to me. Takes refuge in me. And practices karma yoga. Can have perfect knowledge of me free from the shadow of a doubt. I will declare to you this knowledge based on experience. Which having been known nothing more here remains to be known. Hardly one from a thousand strives to acquire this knowledge. And perhaps one only of these strivers makes a success of it."
Thus, it is rare. It is rare to find someone who will strive to attain some position of truth. And of all those who do strive however few there may be. It is so rare that perhaps only one will actually see it. But again, and again the emphasis was that, so it is difficult, but the alternatives are also difficult. To go on killing and maiming each other throughout all eternity is that not difficult.
So that there came to be about this time of Gandhi's arrival in India, going to Santiniketan, starting his own ashram, realizing that his political guru Gokhale had died. And now he had to be grown up. There comes a time when your teachers are gone. And a situation is there you have to perform. You have to do it. You have to teach. There's no longer anyone to ask. There's no one to whom you have to go to apply for permission. The situation cries out. So that in this situation there is then the development of the perception, as Gandhi would manifest it, as the Karma Yoga. That by constantly doing, by unremitting effort every second of every minute of every day of every year. if there is a constancy of trying to reveal the truth of the moment. Satyagraha, holding on to truth. And a prohibition against violence. And give it a positive name instead of calling it non-violence call it ahimsa. Ahimsa, that is a positive quality. The refusal to let any reactive forcing and compulsion to manifests itself. In yourself, in your relationship with others, in the situation. If you hold to an ahimsa and satyagraha eventually a stability will realize itself, manifest itself. increasingly in your life. Increasingly in the life form that you participate in. In the social pattern that that life form invigorates. And that manifestation has a name and it's called sarvodaya - the welfare of all. Not ninety-nine out of a hundred. A hundred out of a hundred. Of all. That the truth of the universe is life and sustenance for all. For the entirety. The unanimity of the many. Because the sustenance will have found its way to the one.
The perception...the perception of that is what made Gandhi the Mahatma, about 1916. And it was Rabindranath Tagore who gave him this title, the Mahatma. And he says in one of his writings entitled Who is a Mahatma, he says, "What then is the true meaning of all this sacrifice. It means that for human beings the life of the body is not the best life but the life of the soul. The material world which we share with animals is not the only world. We have higher needs because we have a deeper and a higher life hidden within us. That hidden life is immortal. Our physical life must bear the burden of its finality. But the spiritual life has its immortality. Only those human beings who can get rid of the sheath of self can reach that immortality. They must lose their separate self in order to realize the infinite. They must become twice born. Born of the spirit. Born into the light. They who realize the infinite and themselves become immortal. And it is this teacher of this that brings out in the heart and mind this dedication to the service of all, who is a universal man. To be one with this all is a great soul, a mahatma. To realize one's spiritual unity with all beings. Our discipline, [writes Tagore,] of self-sacrifice is to attain this goal. It is to be emancipated from the confined life of self. And attain the true freedom of the spiritual life. It is for this great end that men are required to live the life of sacrifice. [And he goes on with this and says] This man is the Mahatma."
And of course, Tagore and many others had points of disagreement with Gandhi - Tagore liked songs; Gandhi would have cared less if people hummed - but the basic fact was that in his movement as a life wave formation Gandhi began to attract, in his own way, a kind of order in yoga of people around him. So that after he was in India for about a year, he had set up the Sabarmati Ashram. He had actually begun to participate in political conventions. He was in Lucknow in north-central India for a conference. And there was a peasant there named Raj Kumar Shukla. And this white-bearded, ragged old man dogged Gandhi all the way through this conference, constantly asking him, "Come with me and help our people. Come and help us. We have need of you." And constantly Gandhi was not thrusting him away but also not fully responding. And increasingly he began to realize that this individual was a sign for him. A... an indication for him that he had come of age. That here he was looking to these political conferences. Even as perceptive as he was, he was living in the world of Tagore - Tagore's. And he was unable fully to focus in upon this peasant. And it was this peasant that was the message from the infinite to him. "Come with me. My people need you. We need you. Not this convention. Not this world press. We need you and we need you now." And after going back to his ashram at Sabarmati he was astounded to find the peasant there also. And so finally he agreed. He said I'm going to be in a certain conference in Calcutta such and such a date if you were there then I will accompany you. And months later when he went to Calcutta, there he was sitting outside the door waiting. And so, Gandhi began to realize that he had in fact, through the freedom of the Spirit, created exactly the medium of opportunity and the threshold of realization which he had all his life worked for. And that the invitation didn't come from the conventions or the educated. But it came from an illiterate peasant who had only heard that he was a good honest man and that he didn't give up. And that's who he wanted.
So, he took Gandhi to the northern part of India up near the Himalayas, up near Nepal, in fact the old country of King Janaka. The old land contiguous to where the Buddha had grown and had his day and sustenance. Up to Champaran. But Champaran in the early 20th century was a malarial ridden low-lying swampy area. A hot climate almost impossible for men to live healthily. Goiter problems are there in about 90 percent of the population. But even with all that, there were still people living there by the tens of thousands. And they had been planters. And because of the conditions of growth there, they had been contacted by the British planters very early on to grow a certain percentage of their crop. About fifteen percent in indigo, which is a vegetable dye, dark blue. all this had been going on and conditions had grown worse because of this little crutch of the fifteen percent had been exploited and been extended in many ways. Through social leverage. Through economic leverage. Until it had spread a net of lethargy and dullness of the physicality and the mentality of the entire population of the region. So that the phrase, "dumb as a man from Champaran," was almost a saying.
So, Gandhi went there with the peasant Raj Kumar Shukla. And when the trains began to come into the Champaran region more and more there were crowds at the station. Word-of-mouth, the sensing that something was going to happen. The spreading of the word that some great sage had come to help the people of Champaran.
And Gandhi as he came into the situation more and more realized that his place in this movement was the pristine example for himself of what his life was to be. That there was the key. In this endeavor in Champaran, the satyagraha in Champaran, the turning point for Gandhi as he says in his own book and in the book called Satyagraha in Champaran by Rajendra Prasad. Who was one of the first presidents of India, who lived there in that area, that district. The turning point came when Gandhi, talking to the rich lawyers who had taken cases for the people, charged them big fees, had decided when he asked them if I am thrown in jail what will you do. And after great deliberation, after days of deliberation and searching themselves, they finally declared to him, if you were willing to go to jail for these people who are not related to you. Then we who come from these people, even though we're educated, we will follow you to jail and go with you where you lead.
And he said the Battle of Champaran is won. There is now no doubt whatever of the outcome. Whatever time it takes. Whatever circumstance it takes. We have now won. Because the problem was the hiatus, the gulf, the abbyss between the wealthy and the educated of their own people and the dumb masses. They had treated their own people like undeserving animals. And when they had realized that they were a people and that regardless of circumstance they would face it as a people. That's where Gandhi pointed and said this, this was the whole battle. This was exactly the issue.
And so, Rajendra Prasad when he writes of this in Satyagraha in Champaran in the section called "The Advent of the Mahatma" he says - and they call dear friends Bapu in this area of India - "Bapu's Dharandar(sp?) and Rummel(?) Navi(?) Prasad on the other hand reached certain little town at about 3 p.m. And after the recording of some statements of some men they returned back to Motihari." The central capital of the region. "And learned about the notice under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Mahatmaji gave them a copy of the directions he had prepared. And explained to them in detail how the work would have to be conducted after his imprisonment. He also told them that if they followed him to jail then his mission will be successful in no time at all."
And in this procedure Gandhi had come into the region and had been told that he was unwelcome. Threatened by many levels of the bureaucracy that he should not interfere. That he was a trouble causer. And his contention was that he had no solutions in mind whatsoever. That he had no clear idea of what the problems were whatsoever. That what he was after was to establish the truth of the situation whatever it might be. And that because it was so complex and had gone on for such a long time that he would have to stay put for some months. And in fact, would have to have helpers coming in. And what they were going to do was the simple act of taking testimony, life histories. Which they did by the tens of thousands. And they recorded meticulously the life stories of the peasants of Champaran. And in doing so began to amass an incredible mountain, a map of evidence of the psychological and emotional, spiritual trampling of the population. And that the core of the leverage of all this was fear. Usually somewhere at the bottom of ignorance is an image of fearfulness. Some specter. Some dragon. Some tiger. That one would rather live the life of humiliation than face this fearsomeness.
And so, it was that the Mahatma came in to dissipate this fear, by example and by process. Because in getting them to tell their life stories by the thousands it was like a mass psychotherapy of the population. And by noting down the details and amassing so that they could know that their life story had been heard by somebody who understood it. And that everybody maybe in their village had also done this. That somehow everything was coming clean. That the process of inquiry was washing out the fearfulness in the situation. And they could see that the authorities, which they feared would pound them or kill them or impoverished them further, were enable, unwilling to pursue any of those courses. That Gandhi himself working there month by month by month. And also bringing in to help him all these highfalutin people who had ignored this population for generations were now turning around a hundred percent and coming in to help in this work were reestablishing contact with their own people. They also were being purified by this process of infinitesimal inquiry.
And so, the satyagraha was really a training of the population to work together. To speak together. And in that act alone was producing in the British landlords, the overlord situation, the perception that they were no longer able to move a lever of advantage on a few and terrorized the many that in fact the population was becoming educated not in the sense of learning ideas. but educated in the simplest of all tasks, learning to accept that one has a dignity as an individual which is recognizable, communicable, and shareable. just that.
And as he went along with this inquiry Gandhi more and more, as they moved the point of inquiry around through Champaran, would set up various groups to teach personal hygiene. To teach the villagers how to take care of themselves better. To set up basic schools for the young. And in doing this Gandhi began pulling in people from all over India to help with this process. Bringing in the young from Bombay or Calcutta. and educating them to the fact that you don't have to go to England to get an education. The kind of education you can use in India is right here. You have to learn how to teach somebody to wash out your cooking utensils. How to dig your latrines and cover them up. Just the basic things about dignity and cleanliness. The basic rules. And then you can move on to something like language and maybe one in ten thousand might read a Tagore poem. But his basic contention was that this was the way to educate a country. So that he his satyagraha and ahimsa together produced that third, the sarvodaya. Which was the root core of the realization the welfare of all. That everybody learns everything about everything if they work together conscientiously, assiduously and don't give up. And don't give in. Don't create the separateness between them. Learn that they flow in between all, it can manifest for all - sarvodaya.
So, the great account is in Satyagraha in Champaran by the ex-bigshot lawyer Rajendra Prasad, who became a very great Gandhian worker. And eventually did become the President of India. In this process Gandhi became the Mahatma. He became the example of the tenacity of the honest individual who doesn't have the answers he is looking to promote the answers. He's looking to conduct the integrity of man spirit to whatever the truth of the situation might disclose. And in this capacity, he became known throughout the entire country. Almost overnight he became a household word. And of course, the name and the expectation, the confirmation of his greatness penetrated down to the villages. So that often in the Gandhian economic terms what's important are the villages' Panchayati raj, the rule of the villages, of the small penalties of man. Why? Because it's easier to see the truth of life in its fullness in the total pattern when you take smaller units of people. It's very difficult when you think of mankind as a whole, billions of people, thousands of years, to envision the truth. but if you take 40 or 50 people or a couple hundred people which you can know and you can see the interchanges in all the aspects of life. It's like taking a microscope of the inner mind and looking at what do we in fact do? What do we in fact need? How do we go about it? That it occurs to one that life is understandable. It is a mystery only because we are shying away from seeing its unity. And we build up aversions which collect into fearfulness. And pretty soon we are compulsively ignorant because we don't want to know. We can't stand to even think that we could know. It means we have to give up what we think we're enjoying and work. And there's no end to the work is there. And maybe that's the prideful slovenliness that holds us under the gun so often. If we knew and we would no longer be innocent. Then we would have to help. Where's the end of helping? Where is the end of helping?
So sometimes the pamphlets are called village industries. Because the best way is to learn how to work. How some of the basic qualities of life can be made by your own hands. In fact, the great symbol for Gandhi became the spinning wheel. That you spin, you take the natural cottons and fibers, and you make your own yarn and threads, and you make your own cloth, and you make your own clothing. And in doing so you have learned the ecology of clothing. You learned how clothing comes to be. What is involved in all of its aspects. And you've learned a complete cycle of life. You've learned the ecology of clothing. And you realize if you can do that then perhaps for food you can do the same thing. And who knows perhaps the spiritual life has its ecology and can be understood.
In all this Gandhi became increasingly outspoken. The shy barrister became someone who would be asked to sit down. He was at a conference that was chaired by Annie Besant in time that he was speaking out about the conditions of illusory images [39:04] in the minds of those who would be helping man. And who actually were actually doing nothing. And in this he was saying that whenever I hear of a great palace rising in any great city of India. Be it in British India or in the India rule by our great chiefs I become jealous at once and say oh it is the money that has come from the agriculture. There cannot be much spirit of self-government in this. And our salvation can only come through going back to basics. Neither the lawyers, nor the doctors, nor the rich landlords are going to secure it. No leaders who present us with beautiful ideas are going to secure it. There are no international societies, no matter how altruistic in the set up that can change the fact that we have to go and learn how to work and work together.
And as he was going on with this, in Louis Fisher's book The Life of Gandhi, "the audience was growing unruly. Arguments broke out in various of parts of the assembly. Gandhi uttered a few more sentences when Mrs. Besant who presided called out to him, please stop. Stop it. You're upsetting the applecart. Gandhi turned around to her and said I await your orders. If you consider that by my speaking as I am, I am not serving the country I shall certainly stop. Mrs. Besant coldly replied please explain your object. Gandhi said I am explaining my object. I simply...but he could not be heard above the din. Go on chum...some shouted. Sit down Gandhi, the others shouted. decorum restored. Gandhi defended Mrs. Besant. It is because she loves India so well, he says, and she considers that I am erring in my thinking audibly before you young men. But he preferred to speak frankly and turned the searchlight on again. It is well to understand he said ourselves for there the blame manifests itself most clearly.
And so, we find Gandhi coming into the national picture in India but also coming upon the world stage as a world-class warrior of the Spirit. And by the time that the First World War was over in 1918, Gandhi was already a household word. He already understood that his place in the ecology of the Spirit was to blend as perfectly as he could. As he said with the dung hundreds of millions of Indians. So that he could manifest in his own action, day by day, the tone of realization for an entire population of the planet.
So next week we'll take a look at Gandhi in the 1920s. When he turned this realization and this process into a worldwide example of non-cooperation, and we'll see how he was sentenced to six years imprisonment. And how he had brought the movement to a standstill because it had been suffered an infraction. And then against all political sagacity, all expectation from history, when he came out of prison, he was still the Mahatma. And he put it all back into orbit again. So, we'll see that next week.
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