Back to the subject of India (and you thought I was finished)!
I visited Gandhi's Ashram, located just outside Ahmedabad and now a national monument. It was a very moving experience to walk through the "My Life is My Message" Gallery, consisting of paintings, photographs and text of historic events in Gandhi's life.
Gandhi's Visitor Room
"There is an indefinable, mysterious power, that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses, but it is possible to reason out the existence of God to a limited extent. Even in ordinary affairs we know that people do not know who rules or why and how he rules and yet they know that there is a power that certainly rules. That informing power or spirit is God, and since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, he alone is. And is this power, benevolent or malevolent? I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see that in the midst of death, life persists; in the midst of untruth, truth persists; in the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, truth, light. He is love, he is the supreme good. But he is no God who merely satisfies the intellect if he ever does. God, to be God, must rule the heart and transform it. He must express himself in every smallest act of his votary. This can only be done through a definite realization more real than the five senses can ever produce. Sense perceptions can be, and often are, false and deceptive however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses, it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence, but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within."
--- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
I visited Gandhi's Ashram, located just outside Ahmedabad and now a national monument. It was a very moving experience to walk through the "My Life is My Message" Gallery, consisting of paintings, photographs and text of historic events in Gandhi's life.
Gandhi's Visitor Room
"There is an indefinable, mysterious power, that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses, but it is possible to reason out the existence of God to a limited extent. Even in ordinary affairs we know that people do not know who rules or why and how he rules and yet they know that there is a power that certainly rules. That informing power or spirit is God, and since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, he alone is. And is this power, benevolent or malevolent? I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see that in the midst of death, life persists; in the midst of untruth, truth persists; in the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, truth, light. He is love, he is the supreme good. But he is no God who merely satisfies the intellect if he ever does. God, to be God, must rule the heart and transform it. He must express himself in every smallest act of his votary. This can only be done through a definite realization more real than the five senses can ever produce. Sense perceptions can be, and often are, false and deceptive however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses, it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence, but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within."
--- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi