Autobiography of a Yogi
victor in a thousand legal, social, and political battles. No other
leader in the world has attained the secure niche in the hearts of
his people that Gandhi occupies for India’s unlettered millions.
Their spontaneous tribute is his famous title-MAHATMA, “great
soul.” {FN44-1} For them alone Gandhi confines his attire to the
widely-cartooned loincloth, symbol of his oneness with the downtrodden
masses who can afford no more.
“The ashram residents are wholly at your disposal; please call on
them for any service.” With characteristic courtesy, the Mahatma
handed me this hastily-written note as Mr. Desai led our party from
the writing room toward the guest house.
Our guide led us through orchards and flowering fields to
a tile-roofed building with latticed windows. A front-yard well,
twenty-five feet across, was used, Mr. Desai said, for watering
stock; near-by stood a revolving cement wheel for threshing rice.
Each of our small bedrooms proved to contain only the irreducible
minimum-a bed, handmade of rope. The whitewashed kitchen boasted a
faucet in one corner and a fire pit for cooking in another. Simple
Arcadian sounds reached our ears-the cries of crows and sparrows,
the lowing of cattle, and the rap of chisels being used to chip
stones.
Observing Mr. Wright’s travel diary, Mr. Desai opened a page and
wrote on it a list of SATYAGRAHA {FN44-2} vows taken by all the
Mahatma’s strict followers (SATYAGRAHIS):
“Nonviolence; Truth; Non-Stealing; Celibacy; Non-Possession;
Body-Labor; Control of the Palate; Fearlessness; Equal Respect for
all Religions; SWADESHI (use of home manufactures); Freedom from
Untouchability. These eleven should be observed as vows in a spirit
of humility.”
(Gandhi himself signed this page on the following day, giving the
date also-August 27, 1935.)
Two hours after our arrival my companions and I were summoned
to lunch. The Mahatma was already seated under the arcade of the
ashram porch, across the courtyard from his study. About twenty-five
barefooted SATYAGRAHIS were squatting before brass cups and plates.
A community chorus of prayer; then a meal served from large brass
pots containing CHAPATIS (whole-wheat unleavened bread) sprinkled
with GHEE; TALSARI (boiled and diced vegetables), and a lemon jam.
The Mahatma ate CHAPATIS, boiled beets, some raw vegetables, and
oranges. On the side of his plate was a large lump of very bitter
NEEM leaves, a notable blood cleanser. With his spoon he separated
a portion and placed it on my dish. I bolted it down with water,
remembering childhood days when Mother had forced me to swallow the
disagreeable dose. Gandhi, however, bit by bit was eating the NEEM
paste with as much relish as if it had been a delicious sweetmeat.
In this trifling incident I noted the Mahatma’s ability to detach
his mind from the senses at will. I recalled the famous appendectomy
performed on him some years ago. Refusing anesthetics, the saint
had chatted cheerfully with his disciples throughout the operation,
his infectious smile revealing his unawareness of pain.
The afternoon brought an opportunity for a chat with Gandhi’s noted
disciple, daughter of an English admiral, Miss Madeleine Slade, now
called Mirabai. {FN44-3} Her strong, calm face lit with enthusiasm
as she told me, in flawless Hindi, of her daily activities.
“Rural reconstruction work is rewarding! A group of us go every
morning at five o’clock to serve the near-by villagers and teach
them simple hygiene. We make it a point to clean their latrines and
their mud-thatched huts. The villagers are illiterate; they cannot
be educated except by example!” She laughed gaily.
I looked in admiration at this highborn Englishwoman whose true
Christian humility enables her to do the scavengering work usually
performed only by “untouchables.”
“I came to India in 1925,” she told me. “In this land I feel that
I have ‘come back home.’ Now I would never be willing to return to
my old life and old interests.”
We discussed America for awhile. “I am always pleased and amazed,”
she said, “to see the deep interest in spiritual subjects exhibited
by the many Americans who visit India.” {FN44-4}
Mirabai’s hands were soon busy at the CHARKA (spinning wheel),
omnipresent in all the ashram rooms and, indeed, due to the Mahatma,
omnipresent throughout rural India.
Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the
revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical
repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles,
the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life!
Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily
with practical details and harsh realities in the political world,
have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and
humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle.
Our trio enjoyed a six o’clock supper as guests of Babasaheb Deshmukh.
The 7:00 P.M. prayer hour found us back at the MAGANVADI ashram,
climbing to the roof where thirty SATYAGRAHIS were grouped in
a semicircle around Gandhi. He was squatting on a straw mat, an
ancient pocket watch propped up before him. The fading sun cast
a last gleam over the palms and banyans; the hum of night and the
crickets had started. The atmosphere was serenity itself; I was
enraptured.
A solemn chant led by Mr. Desai, with responses from the group; then
a GITA reading. The Mahatma motioned to me to give the concluding
prayer. Such divine unison of thought and aspiration! A memory
forever: the Wardha roof top meditation under the early stars.
Punctually at eight o’clock Gandhi ended his silence. The herculean
labors of his life require him to apportion his time minutely.
“Welcome, Swamiji!” The Mahatma’s greeting this time was not via
paper. We had just descended from the roof to his writing room,
simply furnished with square mats (no chairs), a low desk with books,
papers, and a few ordinary pens (not fountain pens); a nondescript
clock ticked in a corner. An all-pervasive aura of peace and
devotion. Gandhi was bestowing one of his captivating, cavernous,
almost toothless smiles.
“Years ago,” he explained, “I started my weekly observance
of a day of silence as a means for gaining time to look after my
correspondence. But now those twenty-four hours have become a vital
spiritual need. A periodical decree of silence is not a torture
but a blessing.”
I agreed wholeheartedly. {FN44-5} The Mahatma questioned me about
America and Europe; we discussed India and world conditions.
“Mahadev,” Gandhi said as Mr. Desai entered the room, “please
make arrangements at Town Hall for Swamiji to speak there on yoga
tomorrow night.”
As I was bidding the Mahatma good night, he considerately handed
me a bottle of citronella oil.
“The Wardha mosquitoes don’t know a thing about AHIMSA, {FN44-6}
Swamiji!” he said, laughing.
The following morning our little group breakfasted early on a tasty
wheat porridge with molasses and milk. At ten-thirty we were called
to the ashram porch for lunch with Gandhi and the SATYAGRAHIS.
Today the menu included brown rice, a new selection of vegetables,
and cardamom seeds.
Noon found me strolling about the ashram grounds, on to the grazing
land of a few imperturbable cows. The protection of cows is a
passion with Gandhi.
“The cow to me means the entire sub-human world, extending man’s
sympathies beyond his own species,” the Mahatma has explained. “Man
through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that
lives. Why the ancient rishis selected the cow for apotheosis is
obvious to me. The cow in India was the best comparison; she was
the giver of plenty. Not only did she give milk, but she also made
agriculture possible. The cow is a poem of pity; one reads pity in
the gentle animal. She is the second mother to millions of mankind.
Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation
of God. The appeal of the lower order of creation is all the more
forceful because it is speechless.”
Three daily rituals are enjoined on the orthodox Hindu. One is BHUTA
YAJNA, an offering of food to the animal kingdom. This ceremony
symbolizes man’s realization of his obligations to less evolved
forms of creation, instinctively tied to bodily identifications which
also corrode human life, but lacking in that quality of liberating
reason which is peculiar to humanity. BHUTA YAJNA thus reinforces
man’s readiness to succor the weak, as he in turn is comforted by
countless solicitudes of higher unseen beings. Man is also under
bond for rejuvenating gifts of nature, prodigal in earth, sea, and
sky. The evolutionary barrier of incommunicability among nature,
animals, man, and astral angels is thus overcome by offices of
silent love.
The other two daily YAJNAS are PITRI and NRI. PITRI YAJNA is an offering
of oblations to ancestors, as a symbol of man’s acknowledgment of
his debt to the past, essence of whose wisdom illumines humanity
today. NRI YAJNA is an offering of food to strangers or the poor,
symbol of the present responsibilities of man, his duties to
contemporaries.
In the early afternoon I fulfilled a neighborly NRI YAJNA by a
visit to Gandhi’s ashram for little girls. Mr. Wright accompanied
me on the ten-minute drive. Tiny young flowerlike faces atop the
long-stemmed colorful SARIS! At the end of a brief talk in Hindi
{FN44-7} which I was giving outdoors, the skies unloosed a sudden
downpour. Laughing, Mr. Wright and I climbed aboard the car and
sped back to MAGANVADI amidst sheets of driving silver. Such tropical
intensity and splash!
Reentering the guest house I was struck anew by the stark simplicity
and evidences of self-sacrifice which are everywhere present.
The Gandhi vow of non-possession came early in his married life.
Renouncing an extensive legal practice which had been yielding him
an annual income of more than $20,000, the Mahatma dispersed all
his wealth to the poor.
Sri Yukteswar used to poke gentle fun at the commonly inadequate
conceptions of renunciation.
“A beggar cannot renounce wealth,” Master would say. “If a man laments:
‘My business has failed; my wife has left me; I will renounce all
and enter a monastery,’ to what worldly sacrifice is he referring?
He did not renounce wealth and love; they renounced him!”
Saints like Gandhi, on the other hand, have made not only tangible
material sacrifices, but also the more difficult renunciation of
selfish motive and private goal, merging their inmost being in the
stream of humanity as a whole.
The Mahatma’s remarkable wife, Kasturabai, did not object when he
failed to set aside any part of his wealth for the use of herself
and their children. Married in early youth, Gandhi and his wife
took the vow of celibacy after the birth of several sons. {FN44-8}
A tranquil heroine in the intense drama that has been their life
together, Kasturabai has followed her husband to prison, shared
his three-week fasts, and fully borne her share of his endless
responsibilities. She has paid Gandhi the following tribute:
I thank you for having had the privilege of being your lifelong
companion and helpmate. I thank you for the most perfect marriage
in the world, based on BRAHMACHARYA (self-control) and not on sex.
I thank you for having considered me your equal in your life work
for India. I thank you for not being one of those husbands who spend
their time in gambling, racing, women, wine, and song, tiring of
their wives and children as the little boy quickly tires of his
childhood toys. How thankful I am that you were not one of those
husbands who devote their time to growing rich on the exploitation
of the labor of others.
How thankful I am that you put God and country before bribes, that