my faith - 6 Swami(SB)

OICE OF GOD Having made a ceaseless effort to attain self-purification, I have developed some little capacity to hear correctly and clearly the ‘still small Voice within’. The Epic Fast, (1933), p. 34 My claim, to hear the voice of God is no new claim. Unfortunately there is no way that I know of proving the claim except through results. God will not be God if He allowed Himself to be an object of proof by His creatures. But He does give His willing slave the power to pass through the fieriest of ordeals. I have been a willing slave to this most exacting Master for more than half a century. His voice has been increasingly audible as years have rolled by. He has saved me often against myself and left me not a vestige of independence. The greater the surrender to Him, the greater has been my joy. Harijan, 6-5-1933, p.4 For me the Voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voice or ‘the still small Voice’ mean one and the same thing. I saw no form. I have never tried, for I have always believed God to be without form. But what I did hear was like a Voice from afar and yet quite near. It was as unmistakable as some human voice definitely speaking to me, and irresistible. I was not dreaming at the time I heard the Voice. The hearing of the Voice was preceded by a terrific struggle within me. Suddenly the Voice came upon me. I listened, made certain that it was the Voice, and the struggle ceased. I was calm. The determination was made accordingly, the date and the hour of the fast were fixed. Joy came over me. This was between 11 and 12 midnigh. I felt refreshed and began to write the note about it which the reader must have seen. Could I give any further evidence that it was truly the Voice that I heard and that it was not an echo of my own heated imagination? I have no further evidence to convince the sceptic. He is free to say that it was all self-delusion or hallucination. It may well have been so. I can offer no proof to the contrary. But I can say this - that not the unanimous verdict of whole world against me could shake me from the belief that what I heard was the true Voice of God. But some think that God Himself is a creation of our own imagination. If that view holds good, then nothing is real, everything is of our own imagination. Even so, whilst my imagination dominates me, I can only act under its spell. Realest things are only relatively so. For me the Voice was more real than my own existence. It has never failed me, and for that matter, any one else. And every one who wills can hear the Voice. It is within every one. But like everything else, it requires previous and definite preparation. Harijan, 8-7-1933, p.4

LAWS OF GOD God’s laws are eternal and unalterable and not separable form God Himself. It is an indispensable condition of His very perfection. Young India, 24-11-1927, p. 393 God Himself has reserved no right of revision of His own laws nor is there any need for Him for any such revision. He is all-powerful, all-knowing. He knows at the same time and without any effort the past, the present and the future. He has therefore nothing to reconsider, nothing to revise, nothing to alter and nothing to amend. Young India, 25-11-1926, 415

GOD AND EVIL In a strictly scientific sense God is at the bottom of both good and evil. He directs the assassin’s dagger no less than the surgeon’s knife. But all that good and evil are, for human purpose, from each other distinct and incompatible, being symbolical of light and darkness, God and Satan. Harijan, 20-2-1937, p.9 I do not regard God as a person. Truth for me is God, and God’s Law and God not different things or facts, in the sense that an earthly king and his law are different. Because God is an Idea, Law Himself. Therefore, it is impossible to conceive God as breaking the Law. He, therefore, does not rule out actions and withdraw Himself. When we way He rules our actions, we are simply using human language and we try to limit Him. Otherwise He and His Law abide everywhere and govern everything. Therefore, I do not think that He answers in every detail every request of ours, but there is no doubt that He rules our action, and I literally believe that not a blade of grass grows or moves without His will. The free will we enjoy is less than that of a passenger on a crowded deck. “Do you feel a sense of freedom in your communion with God?” I do. I do not feel cramped as I would on a boat full of passengers. Although I know that my freedom is less than that of a passenger, I appreciate that freedom as I have imbided through and through the central teaching of the Gita that man is the maker of his own destiny in the sense that he has freedom of choice as to the manner in which he uses that freedom. But he is no controller of results. The moment he thinks he is, he comes to grief. Harijan, 23-3-1940, p.55