The Story of My Experiments with Truth

I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth...as my life consists of nothing but those experiments.

The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Gujarati: Satya Na Prayogo athva Atmakatha, lit. 'Experiments of Truth or Autobiography') is the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi, covering his life from early childhood through to 1921. It was written in weekly installments and published in his journal Navjivan from 1925 to 1929. Its English translation also appeared in installments in his other journal Young India. It was initiated at the insistence of Swami Anand and other close co-workers of Gandhi, who encouraged him to explain the background of his public campaigns. In 1998, the book was designated as one of the "100 Best Spiritual Books of the 20th Century" by a committee of global spiritual and religious authorities.

Quotes

The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927), translated by Mahadev Desai, Navajivan Press, vol. I

The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1929), translated by Mahadev Desai, Navajivan Press, vol. II

• It is not my purpose to attempt a real autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth...as my life consists of nothing but those experiments.
  • Introduction, vol. I, p. 3

• I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him.
  • Introduction, vol. I, p. 7; also in All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections (2005) edited by Krishna Kripalani, p. 63

• In judging myself I shall try to be as harsh as truth, as I want others also to be. Measuring myself by that standard I must exclaim with Surdas: ' Where is there a wretch So wicked and loathsome as I? I have forsaken my Maker, So faithless have I been.' For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am. I know that it is the evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet I cannot get away from them.
  • Introduction, vol. I, p. 10

• Jealousy does not wait for reasons.
  • Part I, Chapter 4, Playing the Husband, vol. I, p. 35

• Nothing is impossible for pure love.
  • Part I, Chapter 4, Playing the Husband, vol. I, p. 39

• Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training.
  • Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School, vol. I, p. 43

• A man of truth must also be a man of care.
  • Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School, vol. I, p. 45

• I saw that bad handwriting should be regarded as a sign of an imperfect education.
  • Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School, vol. I, p. 46

• Every Hindu boy and girl should possess sound Sanskrit learning.
  • Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School, vol. I, p. 49

• It is now my opinion that in all Indian curricula of higher education there should be a place for Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English, besides of course the vernacular.
  • Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School, vol. I, p. 49

• About this time, I heard of a well known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the talk of the town that, when he was baptized, he had to eat beef and drink liquor, that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely, thought I, a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one's own clothes did not deserve the name. I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity.
  • Part I, Chapter 10, Glimpses of Religion, vol. I, p. 85

• I saw that the writers on vegetarianism had examined the question very minutely, attacking it in its religious, scientific, practical and medical aspects. Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man's supremacy over the lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man.
  • Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics, vol. I, p. 137

• One golden rule is to accept the interpretation honestly put on the pledge by the party administering it.
  • Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics, vol. I, 143

• A convert's enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born in it.
  • Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics, vol. I, p. 144

• Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.
  • Part I, Chapter 21, निर्बल के बल राम | (Nirbal Ke Bala Rama), vol. I, p. 175

• Selfishness is blind.
  • Part II, Chapter 4, The First Shock, vol. I, p. 232

• I am a Hindu by birth. And yet I do not know much of Hinduism, and I know less of other religions. In fact I do not know where I am, and what is and what should be my belief. I intend to make a careful study of my own religion and, as far as I can, of other religions as well.
  • Part II, Chapter 10, First Day in Pretoria, vol. I, p. 282

• My joy was boundless. I had learnt the true practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men's hearts. I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby - not even money, certainly not my soul.
  • Part II, Chapter 14, Preparation for the Case, vol. I, p. 314

• But all my life through, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.
  • Part II, Chapter 18, Colour Bar, vol. I, p. 346

• I had learnt at the onset not to carry on public work with borrowed money.
  • Part II, Chapter 19, Natal Indian Congress, vol. I, p. 351

• I was then re-reading Arnold's Light of Asia. Once we began to compare the life of Jesus with that of Buddha. 'Look at Gautama's compassion!' said I. 'It was not confined to mankind, it was extended to all living beings. Does not one's heart overflow with love to think of the lamb joyously perched on his shoulders? One fails to notice this love for all living beings in the life of Jesus.'
  • Part II, Chapter 22, Comparative Study of Religions, vol. I, p. 374, also quoted in Goel, S. R. (1986). Papacy: Its doctrine and history.

• To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
  • Part III, Chapter 18, A Month with Gokhale – II, vol. I, p. 547

• "Hate the sin and not the sinner" is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world... Man and his deed are two distinct things. It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking one-self. For we are all tarred with the same brush and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being, but with him, the whole world.
  • In reference to the Christian precept that God "hates sin but loves the sinner". Part IV, Chapter 9, A Tussle with Power, vol. II, pp. 53-54. Also quoted in The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas (2012), p. 83

• Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.
  • From a leaflet urging Indians to serve with the British Army in World War I, Part V, Chapter 27, Recruiting Campaign, vol. II, p. 457

• To describe truth, as it has appeared to me, and in the exact manner in which I have arrived at it, has been my ceaseless effort. The exercise has given me ineffable mental peace, because, it has been my fond hope that it might bring faith in Truth and Ahimsa to waverers.
  My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth. And if every page of these chapters does not proclaim to the reader that the only means for the realization of Truth is Ahimsa, I shall deem all my labour in writing these chapters to have been in vain. And, even though my efforts in this behalf may prove fruitless, let the readers know that the vehicle, not the great principle, is at fault. After all, however sincere my strivings after Ahimsa may have been, they have still been imperfect and inadequate. The little fleeting glimpses, therefore, that I have been able to have of Truth can hardly convey an idea of the indescribable lustre of Truth, a million times more intense than that of the sun we daily see with our eyes. In fact what I have caught is only the fainest glimmer of that mightly effulgence. But this much I can say with assurance, as a result of all my experiments, that a perfect vision of Truth can only follow a complete realization of Ahimsa.
  To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.
  Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings.
  But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India I have had experience of the dormant passions lying hidden with in me. The knowledge of them has made me feel humiliated though not defeated. The experiences and experiments have sustained me and given me great joy. But I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.
  • Farewell, vol II, p. 590