Synopsis of the Story of My Experiments with Truth, To Gandhiji, civilization, in the real sense of the term, consisted “not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary restriction of wants.” 3 He always upheld the sublime aim of “simple living and high thinking”. While he strained every nerve to provide gainful employment to the hungry millions of India through various constructive activities, he underscored the imperative need for raising the ‘standard of life’ of the people, including the ethical and moral aspects.
The Story of My Experiments with Truth Summary By Mahatma Gandhi
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
The Story of My Experiments with Truth Summary
Throughout the world, almost all nations will be celebrating from October 2 this year the birth centenary of Mahatma Gandhi who is now universally recognised as the glorious symbol of truth and non-violence. Gandhiji was not only a great national leader who liberated India from foreign domination through a peaceful and bloodless struggle, but also a profound thinker who placed before the world certain eternal principles for the guidance of human relationship and international behavior. He laid the greatest stress on the purity of the means for the achievement of noble ends. “The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree.”
The Mahatma never compromised his adherence to this ideal even for the attainment of Swaraj for India. He was convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that this method of righteousness was, “ultimately, the shortest, although it may appear to be long, perhaps too long.
There is an erroneous notion that Gandhiji was against the use of modern science and technology and favoured out-dated technniques for some spiritual or sentimental reasons. “I would price every invention made for the benefit of all,” remarked Gandhiji. “Mechanisation is good when the hands are too few for the work intended to be accomplished. It is an evil when there are more hands than required for the work, as is the case in India.” 6 Gandhiji was, thus, not against machinery as such, but objected to the ‘craze’ for machinery and its ‘indiscriminate multiplication’. In place of ‘mass production’ he advocated a system of ‘production by the masses’. He clearly envisaged that in a developing country like India, with scarce capital and abundant labour, the physical energies of the masses could be converted into a vast constructive force under a democratic frame-work, which Professor Mumford, in a somewhat different context, terms a ‘megamachine’.
Mahatma Gandhiji was a firm believer in the democratic way of life. He maintained that true democracy could be evolved only through non-violence and spontaneous cooperation. “The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without; it has to come from within.”10 He envisioned a ‘world federation’ raised on the foundations of integrity and mutual respect in international affairs. While he laboured ceaselessly for India’s freedom and renaissance, he was averse to ‘isolated independence’. He wanted each nation to imbibe the good qualities of others, without losing her own soul or genius. To quote his own classical expression, “I do not want my house to be walled in or all sides and my windows to be stuffed; I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible; but I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
My Experiments with Truth Short Summary
Purpose
Mahatma Gandhi often said : ” Truth is God”; his lifelong striving was for perfect truth in thought, speech and act. Throughout the ages the ideal of Satya ( truth ) has permeated Hindu society.
The Purpose of Gandhi life is to achieve Self-realization. As Gandhiji says what I want to achieve – what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years – is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha. I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal. All that I do by way of speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are directed to this same end. But as I have all along believed that what is possible for one is possible for all, my experiments have not been conducted in the closet, but in the open; and I do not think that this fact detracts from their spiritual value. There are some things which are known only to oneself and one’s Maker.
As Gandhiji says there are innumerable definitions of God, because His manifestations are innumerable. They overwhelm me with wonder and awe and for a moment stun me. But I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. I am prepared to sacrifice the things dearest to me in pursuit of this quest. Even if the sacrifice demanded be my very life, I hope I may be prepared to give it. But as long as I have not realized this Absolute Truth, so long must I hold by the relative truth as I have conceived it. That relative truth must, meanwhile, be my beacon, my shield and buckler. Though this path is straight and narrow and sharp as the razor’s edge, for me it has been the quickest and easiest.
Even my Himalayan blunders have seemed trifling to me because I have kept strictly to this path. For the path has saved me from coming to grief, and I have gone forward according to my light. Often in my progress I have had faint glimpses of the Absolute Truth, God, and daily the conviction is growing upon me that He alone is real and all else is unreal. Let those, who wish, realize how the conviction has grown upon me; let them share my experiments and share also my conviction if they can.
The further conviction has been growing upon me that whatever is possible for me is possible even for a child, and I have sound reasons for saying so. The instruments for the quest of truth are as simple as they are difficult. They may appear quite impossible to an arrogant person, and quite impossible to an innocent child. The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.
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