My Faith -7 Swami(SB)

VISITATIONS OF GOD This earthly existence of ours is more brittle than the glass bangles that ladies wear. You can keep glass bangles for thousands of years if you treasure them in a chest and let them remain untouched. But this earthly existence is so fickle that it may be wiped out in the twinkling of an eye. Therefore, whilst we have yet breathing time, let us get rid of the distinctions of high and low, purify our hearts and be ready to face our Maker when an earthquake or some natural calamity or death in the ordinary course overtakes us. Harijan, 2-2-1934, p.5 I share the belief with the whole world - civilized and uncivilized - that calamities (such as the Bihar earthquake of 1934) come to mankind as chastisement for their sins. When that conviction comes from the heart, people pray, repent and purify themselves….I have but a limited knowledge of His purpose. Such calamities are not a mere caprice of the Deity or Nature. They obey fixed laws as surely as the planets move in obedience to laws governing their movement. Only we do not know the laws governing these events and, therefore, call them calamities or disturbances. Harijan, 2-2-1934, p.1 There is a divine purpose behind every physical calamity. That perfected science will one day be able to tell us beforehand when earthquakes will one day be able to tell us beforehand when earthquakes will occur, as it tells us today of eclipses, is quite possible. It will be another triumph of the human mind. But such triumphs even indefinitely multiplied can bring about no purification of self without which nothing is of any value. Harijan, 8-6-1935, p.132.

PATHWAYS TO GOD Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal? In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals. Hind Swaraj, (1946), pp. 36, 35 All faiths are a gift of God, but partake of human imperfection, as they pass through the medium of himanity. God-given religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men put it into such language as they can command, and their words are interpreted by other men equally imperfect. Whose interpretation must be held to be the right one? Every one is right from his own standpoint, but it is not impossible that every one is wrong. Hence the necessity for tolerance, which does not mean indifference towards one’s own faith, but a more intelligent and purer love for it. Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. True knowledge of religion breaks down the barriers between faith and faith and gives rise to tolerance. Cultivation of tolerance for other faiths will import to us a truer understanding of our own. Young India, (Bulletin), 2-10-1930, p. 2 For me the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect. Harijan, 30-1-1937, p. 407

SERVICE OF GOD I cannot imagine nobler or more national than that for, say, one hour in the day, we should all do the labour that the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them with all mankind. I cannot imagine better worship of God than that in His name I should labour for the poor even as they do. Young India, 20-10-1921, p.329 Religion is service of the helpless. God manifests Himself to us in the form of the helpless and the stricken. Young India, 14-8-1924, p. 267 Daridranarayana is one of the millions of names by which humanity known God who is unnameable, and unfathomable by human understanding, and it menans of God of the poor, God appearing in the hearts of the poor. Young India, 4-4-99 And no one can see God face to face who has aught of the I in him. He must become a cypher if he would see God. Who shall dare say in this storm-tossed universe, ‘I have won’? God triumphs in us, never, we. Young India, 25-6-1925, p. 223