Evolution and Revolution

140. Q. Have you studied history and noted the progress of nations? Have you at all noted that progress is made by growth and gradual development; and not by revolution and destruction? Do you ever notice how God works through nature that the life of plants and animals grows by slow advance, by evolution, not revolution? Do you ever watch the sky and the movement of the stars? The suns and systems which continue through the ages can scarcely be seen to move at all. To ascend a mountain the climber has to take slow and painful steps one after another. To descend quickly he need only step over the precipice and he is at the bottom in a few seconds.

A. The nations have progressed both by evolution and revolution. The one is as necessary as the other. Death, which is an eternal verity, is revolution as birth and after is slow and steady evolution. Death is as necessary for man’s growth as life itself. God is the greatest Revolutionist the world has ever known or will know. He seconds deluges. He sends storms where a moment ago there was calm. He levels down mountains which. He builds with exquisite care and infinite patience. I do watch the sky and it fills me with awe and wonder. In the serene blue sky, both of India and England, I have seen clouds gathering and bursting with a fury which has struck me dumb. History is more a record of wonderful revolutions than the so-called ordered progress no history more so than the English. And I beg to inform the correspondent that I have seen people trudging slowly up mountains and have also seen men shooting up the air through great heights. –YI, 2-2-22, 78.

Inward Freedom and Outward Expression

141. The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is the correct view of freedom, our, chief energy must be concentrated upon achieving reform from within. –YI, 1-11-28, 363.

142. The Devil succeeds only by receiving help from his fellows. He always takes advantage of the weakest spots in our natures in order to gain mastery over us. Even so does the Government retain control over us through our weaknesses or vices. And if we could render ourselves proof against its machinations, we must remove our weaknesses. It is for that reason that I have called Non-co-operation a process of purification. As soon as that process is completed, this Government must fall to pieces for want of the necessary environment, Just as mosquitoes cease to haunt a place whose cesspools are filled up and dried. YI, 19-1-21, 21.

The Nature of Swaraj and the Meaning of Freedom

143. The first step to Swaraj lies in the individual. The great truth: ‘As with the individual so with the universe’, is applicable here as elsewhere.

–Nat, 409.

144. Government over self is the truest Swaraj, it is synonymous with mocha or salvation.
–YI, 8-12-20, Tagore, 1099.

145. Swaraj of a people means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals. –H, 25-3-39, 64.

146. Self-government depends entirely upon our own internal strength, upon our ability to fight against the heaviest odds. Indeed, self-government which does not require that continuous striving to attain it and to sustain it, is not worth the name. I have therefore endeavoured to show both in word and deed, that political self-government-that is self-government for a large number of men and women,-is no better than individual self-government. And therefore, it is to be attained by precisely the same means that are required for individual self-government or self-rule.

147. Evolution is always experimental. All progress is gained through mistakes and their rectification. No good comes fully fashioned, out of God’s hand, but has to be carved out through repeated experiments and repeated failures by ourselves. This is the law of individual growth. The same law controls social and political evolution also. The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universalcondition of all progress. –Ganesh (1921), 245.