An International Orphan: Gandhi, 1947
Presented on: Thursday, September 1, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
Gandhi
Presentation 9 of 13
An International Orphan: Gandhi, 1947
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, September 1, 1983
Transcript:
The date is September the 1st, 1973. This is the ninth lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir on the subject of Gandhi. Tonights lecture is entitled: An International Orphan: Gandhi, 1947.
This is the PRS copy of the Quran. And the Quran, the glorious Quran, is divided up into surahs. And in the structure of the Quran, as it has been developed in this edition here, there is on page 329, in a section given the title in Arabic of Al-Araf - the elevated places [Surah 7 / Chapter 7]. And in here the Prophet, blessed be his name, gives a revelation to begin the section. and then the second section begins right away to introduce the primordial difficulty that man has in the universe. And that is the devils opposition to Adam. In the Quran, specifically, and ingeniously isolates for us here at this section of the Quran, why it is that man has a difficulty with the devil - the devil is named Iblees in Arabic. And we read, And certainly We created you, then We fashioned you. Then We said to the Angels, make obeisance to Adam; so, they did obeisance, except Iblees. He was not of those who did obeisance. He said, What hindered you so that you did not make obeisance when I commanded you? He said, I am better than he. Thou hast created me of fire while him thou didst create of dust. He said, Then get forth from this for it does not befit you to behave proudly therein. Go forth; therefore, surely you are the abject one.
And so, we have in the Quran at this section, the revelation that the angelic orders were made to serve man. Man is made in the image of God, of Allah, the most merciful, compassionate. And that gives him sovereignty over all that is, including the angelic orders. That it was exactly this delegation of capacity to man that produced the expulsion of the arrogant one, Iblees, the devil. The demonic aspect in the universe is a rebel, not so much against God, and not so much even against Gods order, but against man in whose hands Gods order was placed. So, the problem is one of innuendo in paradox for man. And he must learn that God is not his enemy. And that the devil is not a superior metaphysical force. And that the angelic hierarchies are not a place of transcendental attainment far beyond his capacities. He has to realize that his place in the cosmos is one of great dignity; of weightiness; of responsibility. But the difficulty always is that those aspects of man that are reactive tend to be patterned upon the fight with the devil - the proud one, the rejected one. So that man needs to discipline himself, most poignantly, to hold in himself an equanimity which is his naturally, which belongs to him from design, which is his without stretching any part of himself out to grasp because it is his essential nature.
So, in the Bhagavad Gita when this problem of evil is brought up, the Indian mind as opposed to the Islamic mind. The Islamic mind looking for the purity of the revelation; the purity of the descent of Gods Word. The Hindu mind is looking for the purity of the receptacle to mirror and manifest Gods Word. So, in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna talking to Krishna finally brings the question down to a fulcrum and hes able to ask. This is from chapter five in the Bhagavad Gita.
Arjuna said: Renunciation of actions Krishna, and again discipline thou approvist, which one is the better of these two? Tell me definitely. And the Blessed One said: Renunciation and discipline of action both lead to supreme welfare. But of these two rather than renunciation of action, discipline of action is superior. This is so because men need not reject any part of the intrinsic cosmological structure that is given to him. What is best for him is to pattern those powers and energies so that they work properly and he achieves his natural domain. One who is able to name the angelic orders. One for whom evil comes as a bad servant chastised to redeem itself through honest effort.
And so, man is the master of evil and the energies that would detain him are exactly those energies which are harnessed to the plow and made to work for him. And so, the old phrase, old by thousands of years, was that the secret was to yoke the energies, and from this, was developed the concept of yoga. The yogic viewpoint as we have seen was the only viewpoint that Gandhi held. It was as real to him as this river rock in my hand. And as long as that talisman of authenticity was intact in Gandhi, he felt that working out of himself, even though he was always experimenting. He was experimenting in the right way with the right methodology for the right purposes. He tried to train, for over 20 years, a large population of people to do likewise. And as we have seen by 1938, 1939, certainly by 1940, he realized that it had not happened. that instead of having a yogic viewpoint most of the coming power structure in India was to have a politic mind. And the political mind always looks for a way to centralize authority. And then those structures which bring authority to one to commandeer them in such a way that they discipline those who do not cooperate and reward those who do cooperate. So that we get the political machine. And thus, a political party becomes a political machine.
The last document that Gandhi wrote in his life - he wrote it the day before he was assassinated; it was published two days after he was assassinated; called in India, His Last Will and Testament - was an open, direct appeal to the Congress as the political party in India, to disband itself as a political instrument. And to this end Gandhi rewrote personally the entire Constitution of the Congress Party and would have delivered the speech the next day from his assassination. And the point that he made in his last will and testament was that we cannot any longer have a politics. That mans history has energized itself to a point where there can be no political government anymore. There needs to be a yogic understanding of this point. And therefore, in his last will and testament as well see, he urged Congress to restructure itself as a service brotherhood for man rather than as a political party. And he stated specifically that unless this is done, these cycles and epicycles of violence will increase because of their nature, because power breeds more authority and authority ever fortifies itself against encroachment. And with the exactness of technological society dawning upon man he will be able to make airtight seemingly governments. To raise authority to such heights of power that change will perhaps be impossible for man.
Towards this end, Gandhi, at Independence, 1947 August 15th, turned away from the celebrations and said, I cannot celebrate this India. This is not the India that I worked for. These are not the conditions under which we could thrive. We have just displaced one tyranny by another. We have learned nothing. Therefore, I must start over again. And in doing so he wrote off 25 years of effort.
He moved to the southern part of Bengal known today as Bangladesh - down along the gulf of the Bay of Bengal in the swampy jungle areas called Noakhali. And in Noakhali, Gandhi began a pilgrimage and the account of it is recorded, day by day, hour by hour by a grandniece Manuben Gandhi. She was to be his companion and another relative of hers was also there. So, these two young girls became his living crutches. And they took care of him. They gave him the massages twice a day. They prepared his food. And as you will see, I will try to give you as accurate a picture as possible of the actions and events which are leading up to the Last Will and Testament.
In here, in The Lonely Pilgrim, and this was published in 1964 in an edition of 3,000 copies - so there are not many copies - Gandhi asks her at the beginning to keep a diary. He says this is going to be a brand-new start. I am beginning all over again. And I need to have a record as a scientist of the actions that Im going through now. I have a lot of experience and I think I have a better idea, he said, of what we need to do. Now his focus had changed from satyagraha to sarvodaya. That is to say in the early days, truth-holding was seen as a talisman which you kept intact, and from that veracity flowed a direct line of what he called non-violence. That is, it was an action which was truth founded. So, he gave it a positive name because it was a definite positive energy. It is like electromagnetism. It is like magnetism. it is an energy force which man is the prism through which it operates, manifests. From satyagraha flows then ahimsa, non-violence, which is an energy, an activeness. If it comes out, if that energy comes out, in violence it produces a structural change so that it doesnt flow from satya, from truth, but flows from illusion. So that whenever man participates in violence, he is converting a universal energy into an illusion. Thus, in order to fix this relational directness, this geometry of truthful energy, Gandhi towards the end of his life changed the whole way in which that could be manifested. It had originally founded itself on brahmacharya, on chastity, on purity, which was the rationale for going through the fasts - to reinstate the purity, to bring back the chastity, to enforce the reverberations of this purity. He saw by the 1940s that this was not an effective way to assure the clean flow from truth to ahimsa. So that he shifted from an emphasis upon personal purity in an ascetic turn to its contrapositive, which is the purity of the society. And this was fortified in the term sarvodaya, service to all. Service to all. And if the integrity of a sarvodaya society is kept in order then the flow of truth energy through that comes out naturally as ahimsa. It comes out as non-violence. Thus, Gandhi changed the whole structure of the way in which truth manifests itself in the universe for man.
So that it was up to man to build the machinery for converting this universe, this world, this life form, to is purposeful end. And pursuant to that, man then would structure small societies. They would start with villages, no more than 50 people, hundred people at the most, and as each village purified its sarvodaya, its ecology of healthful living. The basic forces of truth would begin to manifest themselves in that village, in that area, and roving sarvodaya workers could keep in contact with the various, as they called them panchayat rajas, village empires, village sarvodaya units. As those social cells came into being the sarvodayan Gandhian workers would begin to relate those cells together and build larger organisms of purified society.
And the first sarvodaya worker was Gandhi in 1947. He was all alone. That is to say he had helpers but there was no one else who understood what he was doing. It was a mystery to everyone else. They thought of him as the grand old man who just couldnt fit into the new conditions and so went back to the sort of thing that he always loved, the asceticness and poverty and village people. They thought it was his form of retirement. He was visited by all the political leaders, Nehru and so forth. Shown great respect. But as Louis Fischer points out in his book on Mahatma Gandhi, while they reverenced the shell, they trampled the essence. They had no idea of what he was doing. And of course, he realized - and it could have been a tragic mode for him. He passed many sleepless mornings. He would get up at 1:30, 2:30 in the morning and it would occur to him that he had failed. That it was all wrong. Nothing was going right. And then it would occur to him that he had understood truth. He had understood the flaw of ahimsa from that. He had participated. He had seen in his life occasional instances where it actually worked. He was like Benjamin Franklin harnessing electricity. He had seen the fact that the electricity comes down and registers. And that you can use that energy to build. He knew that it was real. And he knew that man had a destiny to harness that energy of truth.
So, he began working as a sarvodaya worker. The very first one in 1947. And he chose the most impoverished area on earth - it still is. The population of Bangladesh today is about 90 million people. In a little jungle area. And whenever they have tidal waves or storms five or ten thousand people die because its so heavily populated. And just every little thing registers in death and misery beyond compare. But he went there specifically because these poor were Muslims. It was the most massive poor Muslim population that he could get to. And when he began his pilgrimage, he was ignored. They were indifferent to him. He would come by, the old man with his staff, at about 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning. Leaning on one of his grandnieces. Hoping to make in an hour and a half the next little village that would be about six or seven miles down the way. And people would be getting up or theyd be working in the fields. And he would wave and theyd ignore him. And hed come into the village and then they would see the blackened buildings and the bloodstains still on the trees, and the torn clothing in the bushes and the children crying. And they realized that partition which had shredded India had pulverized Noakhali. And every single little village had its atrocities. And tales of rape, tales of murder. The avalanche of rumor about pillage was just everywhere in the air. But as he went through this community by community, village by village he began to manifest what he was carrying, which was an energy wavelength of truthfulness. Which is real. It is not made up by the mind. The mind has nothing whatsoever to do with a manifestation of truth. It can only in retrospect understand the forms which have manifested. But the truth vibration which he carried with him began to work its wonder. And within a couple of weeks he would come into a village and they would finally come and gather around him. And towards the end of a month, even in a raining downpour no one would leave because they were being healed in a real primordial way being with him. They were experiencing his practice of ahimsa. Because ahimsa has an energy form. Its perceptible. It has the feeling of an ocean of loving kindness coming to play exactly for you. And this tone was picked up and understood by the villagers increasingly. So that after seven or eight months of this work the whole district of Noakhali began to be calmed. And it was then that Gandhi heard of the savagery in the city of Calcutta. And it was having regained his certainty in Noakhali that he went to the city of Calcutta, and also there went through the epic fast until death. Which healed the city of Calcutta - a city of some three, four million people at the time. Which was just an ocean of savagery. The general populace was maiming and killing each other throughout every district of the city. And after less than a week Gandhi had brought all of that under control. It was called the miracle of Calcutta. There is a fact- in fact a little booklet called The Miracle of Calcutta. I have all these bound in a book called Gandhi: The Last Years. I had this bound in Canada. And The Miracle of Calcutta is also by Manuben Gandhi. It is also a day-by-day reconstruction of exactly what happened.
Now in all this Gandhi kept telling Manuben that man should live 125 years. That given a healthful life pattern the lifespan of man naturally is a hundred and twenty-five years. But he began to tell her that because he had to strain himself so much to start over again that he was cutting his lifespan down. And that he might not live beyond the age of eighty - when he was assassinated, he was 78 years old. But in trying to explain to her he was also trying to explain to all of posterity because he felt that if this eighteen- or nineteen-year-old girl could understand by keeping a diary of what was going on. That through her he could bring the information, bring the experience, into a proportion where almost anyone could understand it if they would devote themselves with a little bit of assiduousness to the situation. And of course, after the miracle of Calcutta he then went up to Delhi and his prayer speeches of the last few months of his life are collected in Delhi Diary. And it was in Delhi that he was assassinated in January of 1948.
This tremendous change is almost unknown. There are libraries full of books on Gandhi and its still almost unknown. Almost thirty-five years later youre hard-pressed to find anyone who understands what went on, and what was at stake, and what was affected. One of the few, a man named Pyarelal, who was still alive, wears thick black glasses, wears a dark cinnamon red robe. Looks like an ancient monk or an ancient rishi. Old now. Extremely learned and literate - exquisite language. He wrote a series of books on Mahatma Gandhi and this is one, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase. And of course, in it you get the poignant endpapers which capsulize the lonely pilgrim. The yogic master of the millions whos gone off by himself. And an excerpt from his work is called Towards New Horizons. And in Towards New Horizons, Pyarelal is attempting to deliver enough of the background so that someone with intelligence could read this and see the pattern that Ive given you unfolding and coming through.
I want to give you a few excerpts from it so that you have the opportunity, not one in a million people ever sees this, and not one in 10,000 who sees it ever reads it. It was a first edition of 3,000 copies. So, there arent many copies at all. He writes,
One thing, however, must be conceded. Gandhijis system of economy will not enable us to build a mighty war potential. The nature of modern war is such that it cannot be successfully waged by any nation which does not possess a highly developed system of capital goods industry supplemented by mass-producing consumer goods industry, which can be quickly converted for wartime needs in armaments and other war material. Again, modern war cannot be waged successfully except by nations that can mobilize their entire manpower in military or industrial conscription. And the universal conscription of population, as well as conscription of wealth in the form of heavy wartime taxation can be best enforced when large numbers of people are dependent for their livelihood upon large-scale, private employers and corporations, or that biggest of corporations - the State. Cottage industries cannot finance a growing war machine.
And this is where Iblees comes in. This is where the demonic aspect of modern civilization comes to the fore because only by this gearing up towards a profit motivated centralization of authority on a massive scale can there be war at all. And the correct way to peace is to granulate that capacity into small republics. Not republics of hundreds of millions of people, but republics of fifty or a hundred people. And by having hundreds of thousands of such republics it is impossible to have a war machine; it is impossible to have an authoritarian state; it is impossible to have war. And if they are understandably in position of holding sarvodaya as a social forum accurately, eventually violence of any form will become increasingly impossible. So, the Gandhian techniques were seen, intuitively, as being a danger to the state - as being a danger to large-scale world empires. As being a danger to in fact any power group whatsoever. And increasingly as this was seen romantic sentimental portraits of Gandhi were painted to make him seem as if he were a dated Saint, as if he were someone who belonged to the ages. How nice to have known that his kind could have been around. Its a great disservice. Its an absolute travesty. Because he was a scientist, a yogic master experimenting. And again, and again towards the end he says I know that Im not capable. I am not right. There are others who will come after me who will it make improvements what that will make me seem like a junior partner. In fact, he says in several parts here. He says... I guess I should give you this before I before I go into it. He insisted. He insisted that it was necessary, in the sarvodaya mentality, it was necessary for men to banish the idea of the capture of power. He said tersely,
There is no such thing as seizing power. That is to say there is no such thing as good men in an honest way seizing power. That that whole idea has wrapped up and folded up in it all the errors and flaws. The demonic aspect doesnt care who is seeking power as long as theyre seeking power. Its totally immoral, amoral, in that sense. It doesnt favor any group whatsoever but favors all groups who will attempt to seize power.
So, he insisted it was necessary to banish the idea of the capture of power and then you will be able to guide power and keep it on the right path. How do you guide power? Because if it has to flow through a sarvodaya social form the satyagraha manifests itself in the ahimsa energy form in a pure way and one doesnt have to keep track of it; one doesnt have to keep score; one doesnt have to plan indefinitely all the labyrinthian committee meetings and so forth are just indicative of a false mentality.
There is no other way of removing the corruption that threatened to strangle our independence at its very birth. By being outside the government one could check and counteract and influence it. Inside one could not.
But Gandhi wanted to attract the intellectuals away from the idea world, away from the political realms of scheming to the constructive program. Because in the constructive program was the sarvodaya work. And there are large volumes available. Usually some of the large university libraries will have copies. The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi and Sarvodaya. Again, these are editions of just several thousand volumes, copyright by the author, published in Agra - a very out-of-the-way city. Most people have no idea that they even exist - even in India. These are fabled conditions, fabled ideas in India. So, he says,
I must warn you against carrying the impression on with you that mine is the final word on non-violence. I know my own limitations. I am but a humble seeker after truth. And all I claim is that every experiment of mine has deepened my faith in non-violence as the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.
Now he is talking as a physicist and not as a sentimental, ideational swinging sort of an individual who would just have good ideas. Hes talking as a scientist, saying this energy is real. This energy flow is measurable in terms of its ability to manifest. and all we need to do is build the technology to harness it. And what is the technology? The integrity of societies in these small units where everybody lives in a truthful ecology together. Once we have these - these are our bevatrons, these are our high-energy physics instruments - and when we can experiment with a few villages on this level. Or a few communities or neighborhoods and urban cities anywhere in the world. Once we have a few areas like this we will have a chance to understand how we can work. And of course, this ties Gandhi into the time-honored setting-up of religious communities. Its the same program that Pythagoras was after in Crotona; that Plato was trying to design in his Republic; Thomas Mores Utopia; Francis Bacons New Atlantis. Time and time again, man has tried to experiment with this and time and time again, he has tried to understand how the social action is linked up with the spiritual realization. But Gandhi is really a man of our time, putting it in terms which we could grasp quite easily. We dont have to stretch ourselves very much. If the ecology of any human group living together were made pure and then truth-holding and non-violent force was brought into play in that context. He says that would be seen around the world. And all the time we are looking for a leader - were looking for some one expert; we are looking for a messiah or a Buddha to lead us - when in fact, we have to let go of that whole expectation and create that portion of the good society that we can. And then he says, All I claim is that every experiment of mine has deepened my faith in non-violence as the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. He said,
The utmost that can be said against me is that I am an incompetent teacher of ahimsa. If such be the case let us pray that my successor will be much more competent and successful. I am not vain enough to think that the divine purpose can only be fulfilled through me. It is as likely as not that a fitter instrument will be used to carry it out. And that I was good enough to represent a weak nation not a strong one. May it not be that a man purer, more courageous, more farseeing is wanted for the final purpose.
So, Gandhi had a very interesting view of himself, and this is towards the end of his life. And in order to carry on his work, he brought in the idea that sarvodaya as a social form needs to have a few concepts at the beginning of transition. And one of the concepts was trusteeship -trusteeship. And Pyarelal gives to us, he says, Gandhiji based his trusteeship doctrine on a celebrated verse in the ancient Hindu philosophical scripture the Isha Upanishad.
If you recall the Isha Upanishad is the shortest of all the Upanishads - its only 18 verses, it can be written in one page. It could be memorized and you could recite it in one minute. Very, very short. But each verse is a step level in a cycle of understanding. So that all of them together make a waveform wholeness. So, in the Isha Upanishad theres the verse that says,
All that is in the universe is pervaded by God. Renounce first therefore in order to enjoy. Covet not anybodys riches. If the divine is in fact manifest everywhere in all things, not as a thing itself but as the manifesting. Then the bringing together of things into a form which discloses that is the correct way to operate.
In what form discloses best? The openness of a circle almost closed. So that what is apparent is not only that it is organized towards a circle but that it is open. And it is open because the center is what counts. So that a sarvodaya society has its openness exactly, not at a place where the huts dont quite come together, not at a place where the crops and the supplies and so forth dont quite come together in the ledger - that would be misunderstanding it - the openness in the circle of the sarvodaya ecology is the willingness to let ahimsa flow as the controlling factor.
Perhaps an easier metaphor for us is like the Navajo blanket which always has one thread that goes off the border as a sign that the work is not complete but God the Great Spirit has a hand in the design. The same way that if one uses non-violence, not just not doing violence, but non-violence as a definite positive force - an energy of comprehension - it is an intuition operative flux which actually operates. Its like the dance of life is choreographed by ahimsa. And it flows from a recognition, a realization, that does not leave truth. And as long as that recognition is intact. as long as that realization is happening then the force that flows from it is pure. The sarvodaya society form is open, just like a magnetic bottle in a nuclear physics lab holds the charge in circulation. Theres no Thing there, its just an energy force converted into a shape. And so, man converts the shape of his spiritual understanding into an alchemical crucible which is able to transform the reality in which he finds himself. All of this goes back and can be founded on very simple origins. The Gita that I read to you, the Isha Upanishad, the Quran. He also had a conversation with Gandhiji. And he says, Pyarelal says to Gandhiji,
You say that conversion must precede reform. Whose conversion? If you mean the conversion of the people, they are ready even today. If on the other hand you mean that of the owning class we may wait until the end of time. Gandhiji says I mean the conversion of both. Noting the look of surprise in my face he preceded, you see if the owning class does not accept the trusteeship basis voluntarily its conversion must come under the pressure of public opinion. For that public opinion is not sufficiently organized.
And also, he would go on to say that this would be a form of violence, as a form of coercion. There is a process when you have a force and an object. In geology its called endomorphosis - that the force that comes in to change the composition of a strata gets translated in terms of the structure of the strata and the force translates itself into a new strata structure. So that endomorphosis applied to social ethics means that if you have a sarvodaya society operating under the law of ahimsa any conqueror coming in to contact with that sarvodaya society would be translated into the energy form of that society as long as it held its integrity. So that the basic arguments against Gandhi is that if you have non-violent society and you have an army invading, they will simply crush you. And he said,
Yes, let them crush us. Let them kill every man, woman and child. If we hold the integrity of that community, which is real. It isnt illusory. It isnt just temporary. It isnt man-made. It is as real as anything in this universe becomes. It will change the nature of the invading force. It will be a pill which they cannot swallow and still remain a violent invading force. And that eventually it will change the nature of the invading force.
And then he used an interesting metaphor. He said its like, its like a disease in health. If the body is healthy any amount of disease can approach it. If the body maintains its health the disease cannot invade. There is no sickness, because the healthy body reprocesses, restructures biochemically the diseased manifestations coming in and converts it to healthfulness. The same way with the sarvodaya society if it maintains its integrity.
And then of course you saw last week that he even simplified it further. He said all you need is one, one person to maintain their integrity. And if that happens, if he does maintain his integrity there is nothing that can happen to him. He will eventually, like a radiated sliver will restructure re-radiate the whole. That there is no way that this cannot happen because it is a universal force. This is the physics of spiritual energy and there is no way to controvert it. Man cannot. Not only can man not but the demonic forces cannot either. Nor can the angelic forces. That there is nothing available anywhere on any level of the universe that can convert... controvert this. So that, he talks in here about creating, instead of Congress as a political party trying to structure the people, to change the composition of Congress to a service society for the people so that Congress would become the first national sarvodaya unit. That they would work without taking salaries. They would be given whatever they need to operate - foodstuffs and clothing and shelter - but that they would not be politicians anymore. There would be sarvodaya workers serving man and that their only purpose for having control of doing certain things - manufacturing, any of the social elements, medicine, so forth - would all be under the understanding of the aegis that this was a service society forming a large sarvodaya unit above the village level, on a national level and eventually he saw it as being applicable to the world. That there would not be such a thing as a world government needing a world army, but that there might come to pass an idea of mankind in structuring around the planet some organization of social workers for the universal aspect of man.
And so, in this Last Will and Testament, which Ill turn to now. Im having to skip a lot of material but Ill turn to it now. The last portion of the preamble to the Last Will and Testament referred to the impending struggle for ascendancy between the civil and the military power. He saw it coming down to this. That there will be this struggle of the civil and the military. That it will be on a worldwide scale. That if the civil has a sarvodaya structure it will win. If it does not it will lose and man himself will disappear in this grand illusion.
The Lok Sewak Sangh (The Peoples Service Society). Lok, people. Seva, service. Sangh is like sangha, Buddhist Sangha - its a brotherhood. Lok Sewak Sangh would affiliate the various existing constructive work organizations. Like the khadi workers and the charkha workers, the village industries, and the National Basic Education.
The struggle for the ascendency of the civil over the military power is bound to take place... [The Congress must therefore] be kept out of unhealthy competition with political parties in communal bodies.
Why? Because as soon as it goes into competitiveness it sets up a polarized infrastructure that manifests itself and that makes the energy flow tending more and more towards violence. India had an unbroken tradition of non-violence from times immemorial. But at no time in her ancient history had she complete non-violence in action pervading the whole land. That is there always have been sages who understood this, who were able to have ashrams that manifested this. But there never was a translation of this to the whole of mankind - to everyone, everywhere. And this is what he says,
It seemed testing time had arrived at last. It was for those who had faith in the method of non-violence to reaffirm their faith. To keep the lamp of non-violence burning bright. Even if a few remain true to their light in the midst of the impenetrable darkness, all would be well.
The metaphor for it has always been light. The image in the tarot deck of the hermit walking with his lantern is the image of the questor even at night having his light lit with the hermetic star bright in it.
The truth of a few will count. The untruth of millions will vanish like the chaff before the whiff of wind. And this is why old mythological prototypes always come down to the image that the evil forces seem indomitable. They seem to be in their millions unassailable. And it is exactly at the moment where they roar loudest and seem like a tidal wave to take over that they vanish. Because they are unable to, in fact, in reality obtain any hold on manifestation. They are like clouds of illusion that never were. And are permitted to be only by the ignorance and mis-integrity of others. That in the face of ... intellect therefore till it can be realized through experience, must it be accepted in faith. But like a great yogic scientist he wanted very much for there to be some way that it could manifest in fact. Because he knew that the badgered character of 20th century man, whether on the village level or the urban level, is so besieged by labyrinthian falsehoods that it is almost impossible for him to conjure up the energy of faith anymore. So, he wanted there to be manifest somewhere exacting experiments, manifestations of little Panchayati Rajas where individuals could be taken from the big cities, from other countries, from nearby villages, and be taken into the village and shown how human beings live together in the new, old ancient way.
He was assassinated. The article appeared in Harijan and was quickly buried in shelves in the libraries. It wasnt until ten years later that Pyarelal dug them out to write the biography. But before he did this there was one individual, who after three years of wondering what to do, finally woke up to the sarvodaya structure. And in deep meditation while he was walking - they called him Indias Walking Saint - he had no idea of what to do and so he began finally after several years of just waiting and meditating, he began walking. He walked from the center of India in Wardha south. And he got as far as near Bangalore, which is many hundreds of miles south. And he entered into a village which was torn apart by two brothers. And the two brothers owned about ninety percent of the town. And because the brothers had gotten into a scuffle with each other and into a tiff, theyd put everybody in the village out of work. And so, people were starving to death because of the arrogance of these two feuding brothers. And so, when this Gandhian sarvodaya social worker - the second one in history - came into the village and the villagers brought the problem to him, he sat down with the two brothers, and they revered him. Hes a famous... named Vinoba. He said the only thing I can think of is that I want you both to adopt me into your family and I want you to give me my share of the inheritance now, today, as a family member. You can keep your share. You can do what you want with it. You can fight with each other. But I want you to make me a member of your family and give me my share today. And they did. And then he went out to the villagers and he said I own a third of this village and Im gonna hold it in trusteeship. And youre all going to be able to participate in this third. And as long as you participate in it, I will hold it for you so that your integrity and my integrity are part of an indissoluble bond and as long as you hold your part of the form together, I will hold my trusteeship. And that was the first independent Panchayati Raj in India. And Vinoba walked out of that village and he knew that that was what to do, step by step. And so, all the way until September of 1982 when he died is a very, very old man thats what he did. And well take a look at the next month and see how Vinoba made thousands and tens of thousands of independent Gandhian villages. Where you can go and you can see what man looks like when hes socially healthy.
Well lets take a break. Ill be down on the street corner selling my cassettes. And then well go down to the library after the break.
I have ummm... I have obviously had to leave a lot out. I left out almost all the information that normally you would find in the history book. And Ive left out the obvious, usual personages. The talk of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Talked about any number of individuals and events. And I had to do this because of the exigencies of the time element. But also, because Ive been trying to create, for you, a cycle of learning which transcends the subject matter. Even vast though it may be. So that the cassette series of this would be able to be played in sequence and reconstruct a line of development of an idea, which is... its time has come. Thats all there is to it. We are going to mature as a species in our time. Its just simply going to happen. So, I have left out a lot of information. If youre interested to get the story as it usually is told, The Life of Muhammad Gandhi by Louis Fischer is the best small biography - very, very excellent biography. Its in paperback and easy to read and understand. Fischers trustworthy. He was a journalist but quite a fine individual.
The other documents - we have copies at the PRS bookstore of some of these little books - The End of an Epoch is one of them, and I think it sells for about a dollar or something like that. And, first edition, 1962, 5000 copies. This is a personal account of the last few hours of his life.
That afternoon Sadar Patel was to see Bapuji to discuss important matters in private. On the next day on the 31st the entire cabinet was scheduled to meet Bapuji to discuss matters of importance. My father was also expected to arrive in Delhi on the 31st. After prayers I brought Bapuji into the room and covered his legs with a warm blanket. He began correcting his draft of the new Congress Constitution.
Thats The Last Will and Testament of Gandhi - that was the one urging Congress not to be a political party anymore, but to be a peoples service society - thats what he was working on. He began correcting the draft of the new Congress Constitution which he had drafted last night. It is now known as His Last Will and Testament to the nation. At a quarter to five in the morning he had some warm water with honey and lime juice.
He loved to have a glass of warm water with honey dissolved in it. And occasionally he just had the warm water. And he had to have that early in the morning. Then after he had been up and had gone through his morning prayers. And had gone through some writing. And had had perhaps a little bit of exercise. He would have breakfast and sometimes when he could chew it, he would have barley with a little bit of vegetable and a grapefruit. And then about two or three hours later he would have a glass of coconut water. Not the coconut milk but the coconut water. And so, he would eat little niggling parts of food throughout the day. And in between he would articulate it either with exercise or with massage. And occasionally when he felt that the massage and the catnapping and the food all in little portions was not doing a full job then he would have the mud pack - the cold earth remedy applied to him to draw out the soreness or the kink or whatever it was. Linking all of this activity together - little parcels of food, little parcels of exercise, little parcels of sleep - linking all that together was his spinning. He spun every day on the charkha. Even at the last day of his life he spun a hundred and sixty rounds in an hour. Which is a lot. The spinning was the thread of discipline linking it all together. And not just that, but the khadi, the handmade cloth that came out of that experience of spinning, carries with it all the tone. All the vibration as we say today that you would ever want to have in an intuitive flash of what it was all about. That the integrity of a handmade society would have the feeling of loveliness of that handmade cloth. And when you, when you meet Gandhians theyre... theyre gentle in a way which is profound.
So, He had some warm water with honey and lime juice. At a quarter to six he had his daily glass of orange juice. He had not fully got over the weakness that followed his fast. That was the fast in Delhi - in Calcutta. Therefore, while writing he got exhausted and fell asleep. Hes old. Hes an old man. We then massage his aching limbs. I had wished to add a line or two to Bapujis letter. And so, I asked him whether I could do it or whether we were leaving for Sevagram on the second. In which case we would be seeing that person in a day or two. To this Bapuji said, who knows about the future. If we come to decision regarding Sevagram I shall announce it at the evening prayer meeting. It will then be relayed on the radio at night. While he was having his stroll, Nehru came and joined him. This is Rajan Nehru not Jawaharlal. I was not meant to join them but Bapuji persuaded me to stroll along with them. About 8:00 a.m. Bapuji had his massage and bath. During the massage he read the newspapers and practiced his Bengali exercise. At the end of his life he was learning Bengali. He was always learning languages and he would write out the alphabets late at night and pronounce them and then early in the morning when he was brushing what few teeth he had, he would try and remember them. So, he was learning Bengali. Before going in for his bath he said to Pyarelal. Pyarelal was the great author of this magnificent biography of Gandhi still coming out. He said to him, Please go through the draft I have prepared on the new Congress Constitution for publication in Harijan.
Remember the harijans were the untouchables and harijan meant children of God and the Harijan was the newspaper. Hed given up the newspaper Young India. Hed given up on that whole echelon of understanding and was working on Harijan. So, this was going to be published in Harijan - the new Congress Constitution. It was a revolutionary Constitution. It was unraveling the political party thread of the organization and re-weaving it into a people service brotherhood. So, then he goes out into Pyarelal and he says, Fill any gaps that you find in my thinking. I have worked on it under heavy strain. While I was giving him his bath, he asked me whether I had exercised my hands. I said I did not like it. And so, he said, I do not like this. I had asked you to do hand exercises and so you should have been doing them. I am pained to note that youre not gaining any weight and your health is not showing signs of improvement. If your physical condition is unsatisfactory, I am the one who will feel the maximum pain. Then he goes on talking to her. And she says several times in her writing that Gandhi had become her mother. And its poignant. He said, Why can I not be your mother. You see me as a man - as a male - but I have transformed myself. He says I am no longer just a male. I am fully capable of being your mother. And so, I will be your mother. I will train you as a mother would train you. So, you see theres an alchemical ambivalence here. Which is not the same as the kind of psychological androgen thats so popular of recent years. This is a... this is that universal person that Plato talks about in The Symposium. The spherical person who is everyone. The person that Wallace Stevens wrote about in one of his great poems, Asides on the Oboe where he said, There is still the impossible possible philosophers man. Platos the philosopher. The impossible possible philosophers man who in a million diamonds sums us up. And who when we find ourselves transforming, we will find him chanting in the blood of the past the matter for the new. So he was that.
At 12:30 on the fateful date, Bapuji talked about securing a building for Dr. Bhargavas nursing home and orphanage. He was very keen on this. He wanted to be reminded about it when the local Muslims were with him. But when the Muslims came and I reminded Bapu of the matter he brushed it aside saying better not touch on that subject now. During the afternoon Bapu attended his post, dictated letters. At 2:00 p.m. he had his mud pack treatment. He rested a while as I pressed his tired legs. Then he got up some of us got permission from him to go and see relatives of ours in the city. And they returned about 4 p.m. Like every other day I picked up his pen, then his spittoon, spectacle case.
He didnt have many things. There was a famous photograph of his possessions. And I think it was a pair of sandals and spectacles, a watch, just a bowl - a few things. So, she picked up also her notebook and the Holy mala beads - Japamala beads - and joined Bapuji as he set up for the prayer ground. Reflecting on the ten minutes delay Bapuji said, you are my timekeepers. And then added, when you are there why should I consult a watch. These days Bapuji had literally stopped consulting his watch.
You see he was always the teacher. He was, in large letters, THE TEACHER. So, what he was doing he was intuitive, as a master yogi would, the completion of the form. He experienced the completion of the form before it happened in phenomenon time-space. And so, he knew that things were coming to pass. So, he was not only a spherical person, he could be the mother of this girl. But he was timeless also. It no longer had any relevance to him. This is why... for Vinoba took about three years to think about it because it was a mystery. They knew exactly what had happened. They couldnt figure out what... what is this then? Where should we go then, given this? A mystery.
These days Bapuji had literally stopped consulting his watch. We had been doing everything for him and were helping him all the time. He did not even have to wind his watch, even this we did for him. So, on the way to the prayer ground we told him Bapuji your watch must be feeling quite neglected. But Bapuji kept reiterating you are my watches, my timekeepers. Then after a pause he said, I do not like being late for the prayer meeting. To let todays delay is due to your negligence. It is a good nurses duty to see that her patients work is done in time. If the nurse does not attend to the patient regularly and in time, then the poor man will die. This is just like that. Even a minutes delay for the prayer causes me great discomfort.
You see he was teaching the waveform exactness of spiritual action. That it doesnt just happen by happenstance, but it happens in an energy waveform pattern, and that when it has its integrity it... it rings true. The colloquial phrase is accurate. It rings true. You know that that is so. But it has to be exact and kept exact in order for that to happen. Which is why architecture is a sacred art - it has to be exact; just so.
I was on Bapujis right, his hand resting on my right shoulder as we walked along. Just after we had ascended the few steps that led to the prayer dais, a well-built young man clad in khadi clothes tore through the crowd from the right. As he approached Bapuji he joined his palms as if in a reverent obeisance. That is namaste - I greet the God within you.
Bapuji had never liked the idea of people bowing before him or touching his feet. He had often said I am an ordinary human being why touch my feet? So, we used to tell people not to do such things. On this particular day moreover, we were already late for prayers and therefore did not want Bapuji to be further delayed on the way.
You see this is a handwritten personal testimony of the girl who was right next to him when all these events happened. This is exactly how it happened because he had trained her to be exact in her accounts. He read every page that she wrote every day at night and then he initialed and signed and dated it. Because he wanted her to learn veracity. And veracity is to see things just as they are. The yoga training someone for the sarvodaya society is first to see it everything as it is. Just as it is. And to be able to give out an account which is resonant with the actuality.
Brother, Bapuji is already late for prayers. Why are you bothering him? But the man pushed me away rudely. And the things in my hand, the notebook, the spittoon, the spectacle case and the mala fell on the ground. Do you see this. Its a symbol. Its an actual happening all of the possessions, the circle of things gathered up and they all fell first. Spilled on the ground. the whole pollen of activity in the phenomenal realm was just given then.
I did not try to immediately pick them up and kept arguing with the man. But as soon as the Holy mala dropped out of my hands, I stooped to pick it up. But before I could pick it up three deafening bullet shots rank the air. So, in that pause between her hand and the fallen mala that was the gap. That was the suture. That was the broken element.
The shots had been fired at point-blank range. There was sudden darkness and the air was filled with smoke. The crowd began to surge forward. At close range - Im not sure what caliber it was - but a handgun sends up quite... quite a cloud. It smells. And in the midst of this sudden darkness smoke and confusion Bapu fell. So that when he fell the artists portrayal of that event - very interesting here - the darkness sweeps up around Gandhi and the only thing visible of his face are the glasses. His face is not visible. Just the two glasses. You can see this later, up close. But the smoke from the gun he went up against him like a dark shadow you see. And in that dark shadow as he was falling the only thing that was visible off his face was the glint off the glasses. Off the spectacles. So that it was an eerie phantom macabre transformation. Just like that. He had been Gandhi and then he was dead, you see. So, he went out like that, like Gandhi had become a negative on an emulsion of phenomenal time space and then just a shriveled out. It was that mysterious quality. And then later on Vinoba will say, he just when hes meditating all of that would come up. And it would register because he was a master yogi himself but he didnt know what to do with that because the poignancy of that image in these events was mysterious. Very, very mysterious.
As he lost consciousness. As he fell through this darkness with only his glasses glinting mechanically, he called out the name of God. Hey Ram, Hey Ram. Bapuji had been deceived by the assassins false namaskar and in acknowledgment he had joined his own palms. And as he fell his palms remained joined as if pleading for forgiveness and mercy from the people. I think of the way that RFK fell, that his mouth was closed but not in a grimace and not in pain. The same sort of incredible happening almost as if the control of the posture was meant to show and display a metaphysical happening.
Many people have attempted to save that Bapuji from falling but their efforts were in vain. He had already begun his eternal sleep in Mother Earths green lap. All this had happened within three or four minutes. The bullets had been fired so near me that for a while my ears were deaf and I could not hear a thing. It took me some moments before I could fully grasp the situation. You see shes young. Young. A teenager. So bewildered had I become it is almost impossible to express our mental condition at that moment. Bapujis white clothes were stained with streaks of blood. Its like the blood veins had gone from the person to the khadi. that kind of transmission. The Shroud of Turin in a, not just the face but into the whole cardiovascular circulation of blood had gone into the khadi itself.
According to Bapujis watch the time was 5:17 p.m. It took us 10 minutes to get him back to his room. Due to utter misfortune no doctor could be immediately found. Sushila Bahen [Sushila Nayyar] - thats a woman and a physician - Sushila Bahens first-aid box had no effective medicines in it. Bapuji had often said that Rama alone was his doctor. And now no one but Rama could help him. Hardly had Sardar Patel got back to his bungalow when he heard the sad news and came rushing back to Birla House. While we sobbed in the room and crowds throng the place Bapuji lay still. Whenever I had felt sad, he had tried to console me, but on this day no amount of wailing on my part could induce Bapuji to open his eyes. Sometimes afterwards we were told that the shots had been fired from the seven-chambered automatic pistol. The first bullet had entered the abdomen two and a half inches about the navel and three and a half inches to the right of the sternum. The second bullet had pierced the chest of a spot one inch to the right of the breastbone. The third bullet entered and remained enclosed in the right lung. While the first two bullets pierced him and came out the back. These bullets were removed from the prayer ground. Due to a heavy loss of blood Bapujis face had gone pale. Although it was quite obvious there was no life in Bapujis body, several people went on telephoning hospital after hospital. Its that kind of hysterical reflexive action. In fact, someone even went to a hospital in search of some help, but he had to turn back.
Someone asked me them to begin a Bhagavad Gita recitation. You see even though she was young Gandhi had her conduct the whole Bhagavad Gita to memory and then she would recite it. Sometimes the whole thing. There would be certainly prayer days when he would have her recite it and someone finally asked her to recite it. So, she says, I started it straightaway and was helped by Sri Kihambunchi (sp?). Who was a great professor and the founder of a great university, The Bharath [**inaudible 2 words**] At this juncture Dr. Bhargava came and examined Bapuji. At the very first glance he realized that it was all over. But as all doctors have the habit of postponing judgment until the last minute, Dr. Bhargava carried out a detailed examination. We felt a glimmer of hope that Dr. Bhargava would come and tell us it was still possible to save Bapuji. It was a fact that, one Nathuram [Vinayak] Godse had shot that Bapuji down, but the people still would not believe that the father of the nation was actually no more. The judgment finally came. He looked up, he said mangu child Bapuji is no more.
The room in which, till a few hours ago weve been joking and talking with Bapuji, had now become a scene of painful mourning. In a short while Devdas came along with his youngest son of Bapujis youngest grandson Gopu. They bent their heads over Bapujis body and mourned their bereavement. And Pandiji, he hid his face in Sardar Patels lap and sobbed like a child. Thats [Rajan] Nehru. The crowd of thousands of people had now swollen into a multitude of lakhs. That is probably half a million people. And Sardar Patel that iron man showed iron courage and gave solace to one and all. In the confusion that followed the assassination, Bapujis spectacles and chappals had vanished. That afternoon when he was talking to the Sadar, Bapuji had clipped his fingernails. Hed given these fingernails to me to throw away. But as I was busy talking to two people, I could not throw them away then and instead kept them aside to be thrown away later. But now that all this had happened, I carefully picked up these nails and as if they were precious jewels, I tucked them into my box. These fingernails, the last remains of Bapujis body, are still in my custody. So, you can see the transformation settling in.
And she ends, Bapuji is now no more with us. The anguish in peoples hearts became so acute that it seemed as if the earth itself shivered. So thats a first-hand account of the death. Of the assassination. But it doesnt end there. It was an event, but the event was a part of a whole cycle that brought a plateau to a close. But the waveform went on because it had been engendered. That is, when we bring something into manifestation in the right way it has an autonomy. It moves in a way in which it seems alive. When its mishandled and kept within the mind, it manifests psychologically as a complex, or some other pathological condition, or it takes its natural course and becomes the ego. The ego is but a fortified complex given autonomy like this which we mistake for ourselves continuously. But in this case Gandhi is a master yogi - karma yogi - had created the autonomous moving waveform in manifestation. In fact, in time-space. And of all the individuals who are able to perceive that Vinoba was the finest. He had spent all of his life from age twenty working with Gandhi. He was now nearing fifty. And had actually never done anything except he was brought out once as the first single satyagrahi against the Second World War. And well see for the next month of the course - the final month of the course - what he did when he finally understood what he was to do. And its a story thats almost never been told. I cant think of any course thats ever been delivered on Vinoba in this country.
The only person in this country who knows Vinobas work at least as well as I do is Vincent Browne. Who lives up in Healdsburg, California and runs the Nature Graft Press. And he worked with Vinoba for a number of years. And Vinoba then said to him your, your natures to go back, go back to California and open up a little publishing company and publish books on nature and the American Indian, because its the perception in America of the American Indian and of your own primordial nature - the trees, the flowers that life - in the American Indian Way. Thats the yogic key for wholeness in the United States. And so, Browne came back and has- has done that ever since.
But well see and I entitled the lecture of the stage returns because it was just like having Gandhi back again. And thats what Vinoba is so incredibly great for. That he has faced himself that he was not egotistically there. But he was receptive so that the Gandhian motion in its integrity came back. And it was just like having a Tibetan Vajrayana reincarnation of a great yogic master. Only instead of it coming to a small child it came to a fifty-year-old man who was mature and was able to manifest it whole again. So, we have in Vinoba some really magnificent new development in human capacity. So, well see him for the next month.
END OF RECORDING