The Gita according to Gandhi 117

The Gita according to Gandhi -Mahadev Desai

THE WORLD AND THE REALITY (Discourses 13-15) Purusha and Prakriti and Knowledge For knowledge to which one may claim to have leaped without having used or practised the means must be a travesty, and the means employed with the conscious end of unification with the Lord presupposes knowledge. Since it means final deliverance, the definition starts with deliverance from the little ills that the reason and the mind of man is heir-to. At the top of the means is freedom from pride, which is likely to survive the extinction of all other ills like passion and attachment. 'Pride is a sin of the temper,' Henry Drummond used to say, 'and is often found with the purest moral character.' It is thus a dead weight and hence the man who aspires after true knowledge must begin by "pouring contempt on all his pride." The rest of the virtues are of course there homage to the teachers, external and internal purity, inoffensiveness, uprightness, detachment from ties that bind one to the world, inclination to solitude and a perception of the true meaning of spiritul knowledge. It includes, too, an exclusive and "unfornicating" devotion to the Lord (to use an expression of St.