Scan barcode
A review by greden
Gandhi an Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi
2.0
Gandhi worshipped Truth from a young age. The subtitle of his autobiography, “My experiments with truth” and I couldn't wait to read it. My faith in truth, both in what it is itself and what it can bring about in the world is what I've chosen to believe in to escape nihilism. When you care about the truth, it would be worth the time to examine what it is. That is a harder thing than it first seems. And it seems to me that Gandhi and I have different views of what truth is.
Gandhi had an impressive moral intuition from a young age, and he understood that deception can happen by omitting the truth, “sin of omission,” rather than only the “Sin of commission,” actively telling a lie. It was not entirely clear to me where Gandhi got his devotion to truth from, but it seems to me he got it from Indian mythology ... plays and whatnot.
Gandhi says his shyness and introvertness have helped him live in truth. His speech is carefully calculated. He reserves his word in case it may be faulty. He thinks before he speaks and says little. This is a very literal form of truth, as a sort of mathematical correctness of sharing one’s experience. I am more inclined to believe that truth, virtue, and beauty are deeply intertwined. And to live according to these three third is regarded as “Being Good,” “Living in Tao” or “Walking with God.”
Gandhi has chosen Truth to be the supreme moral compass, to have virtue and beauty result from it. However, I think Gandhi is a bit extreme in his emphasis on truth, not giving enough credit to the two other sides of the three-dimensional coin.
As a result of his lack of emphasis on virtue and beauty, Gandhi would say that being introverted, delaying one’s words, and saying less would increase one’s ability to be true. This is where I have to disagree. Truth is more like shooting a basketball into a basket or playing a piano piece beautifully rather than a mathematical description of the physics that would allow such a thing to happen.
Living in truth is more about living in such a way that would enable you to admit to anyone your thought processes, intentions, and actions without a trace of anxiety, guilt, or shame. I feel that this is a better north star rather than an obsession with a literal truth and devotion to the Word.
For example, I have no problem saying false statements if it lubricates the social situation - given that if someone really wanted to know if I was truthful, I would be able to tell them "no" with just as much hesitation as I would saying what time it is.
My point is that to speak the truth is only scratching the surface. One can, for example, be deceitful if what one says is literally true, but their timing is off. To wait 10 years, 1 minute or 5 seconds may be detrimental to how the message is true. Also, the way it is delivered by way of tonality, body language may be deceitful. What makes it so extremely difficult is the problem with sin of omission. You cannot guarantee a life of truth if you decide to not speak. And to know when to speak, when not to speak, and how to articulate truth require not only a dedication to truth but moral wisdom.
Actions may be a form of deception, even if it’s non-verbal. Actually, every action to the most subtle can be a lie, or in truth. The battle between truth and deception goes down to the subatomic level of your being, and when this is understood, you can see how beauty and virtue are inseparable from truth.
I do understand Gandhi’s dedication to truth. I have chosen truth as my northern star myself, it’s an unbelievably helpful and underrated ideal to strive for to align oneself for a good life. If one truly has an attitude of telling the truth, they would not do anything that they could not live up to. Of course, sinning is inevitable, because life happens fast, and it is often a matter of imprecision, not ill-will, that often constitutes the actions that we cannot live up to. However, by preparing oneself to live up to one’s own inevitable mistakes, and actually doing it, one transcends oneself through retrospective moral action, which sets oneself free from the lower level paradigm one was operating on in the ill moment. “The truth will set you free.”
At some point, however, Truth as a concept and ideal to strive for, has to eventually be discarded, when one is wise and brave enough to handle enough ambiguity without falling into nihilism.
As I said before, however, is that Gandhi’s emphasis on truth is a rigid one. Telling the truth is not simply a matter of saying what’s correct, as Gandhi himself was early aware of. I’m afraid that Gandhi would be unaware that the subtitle “My experiments with truth” could be “My experiments with virtue,” for they are ultimately inseparable.
My reason for pushing back on this is that I believe a philosophical justification for, say, social ineptness is unuseful for the mass of people looking up to Gandhi as a role model.
Nevertheless, Gandhi serves as a moral example to millions, myself included and is practically a universal father figure for Indians, and God knows how much the world has been improved by him, and what he’s done in particular for peace between religious groups in India and bringing the Christian values into India and pushing for the eradication of the caste system.
Given that Gandhi’s background is completely different from mine, he was not at all times very relatable. For instance, I don’t understand why Gandhi thought riding third class is more “truthful” than riding first class in public transport. Here, I suppose there is a friction between a Christian sense of truth and a Hinduistic sense of the word. An important concept in Hinduism is “Maya,” that all material things are ultimately an illusion, and therefore any material luxury is a deviation from the truth.
Gandhi sought to eradicate his passion, lust, and desire by practically starving himself with the bare minimum of foods, reaching a point where he’d only eat fruits and nuts. Ironically, for an autobiography that’s obsessed with diet, and for someone who’s made a guide on healthy eating, there was plenty of description of sickness caused by malnutrition. He made a vow of vegetarianism and celibacy at a relatively early age. I believe the vow of celibacy was the motivation to practically starve the vitality of his body, to make celibacy easier. It seems to me that desire is fundamentally human, and in Gandhi’s quest to eradicate desire, he did so by depleting himself of energy, ultimately as an act of denying one’s own humanness.
Gandhi would say that to be a moral person is so difficult anyways that one needs to do every measure one can take to even stand a chance, and the libido is worth sacrificing. However, there seems to be a level of virtue in a different dimension when a strong libido is kept under control. Where an energetic, vital, viral body is forcing the character to keep up. And so it seems to me that the ultimate goal is to embrace bodily health and vitality while at the same time keeping the forces that accompany a vital being under one’s control, perhaps in the form of celibacy.
As for the book itself, and my poor rating, Gandhi’s devotion to the rigid truth was reflected in his writing; not very exciting. With his autobiography, he aimed at reflecting on his life in the most truthful way possible. His autobiography is not an exciting read, and from the second half of the book, I decided to skim until I saw something readable because there was a whirlwind of unfamiliar names, places, and institutions that would require a serious dedication or a background knowledge of the events to comprehend. Therefore, I cannot recommend the book to anyone that isn’t already embedded in Gandhi’s life and the political events surrounding him. On top of this, I find Gandhi's writing style very strange and unnecessarily convoluted. Perhaps due to his background in law and Latin?
As a final note, the book seemed to make an impression effect on me. While reading this book, when confronted with very difficult questions, I wondered what my life would be if it were too, an experiment with truth.
Gandhi had an impressive moral intuition from a young age, and he understood that deception can happen by omitting the truth, “sin of omission,” rather than only the “Sin of commission,” actively telling a lie. It was not entirely clear to me where Gandhi got his devotion to truth from, but it seems to me he got it from Indian mythology ... plays and whatnot.
Gandhi says his shyness and introvertness have helped him live in truth. His speech is carefully calculated. He reserves his word in case it may be faulty. He thinks before he speaks and says little. This is a very literal form of truth, as a sort of mathematical correctness of sharing one’s experience. I am more inclined to believe that truth, virtue, and beauty are deeply intertwined. And to live according to these three third is regarded as “Being Good,” “Living in Tao” or “Walking with God.”
Gandhi has chosen Truth to be the supreme moral compass, to have virtue and beauty result from it. However, I think Gandhi is a bit extreme in his emphasis on truth, not giving enough credit to the two other sides of the three-dimensional coin.
As a result of his lack of emphasis on virtue and beauty, Gandhi would say that being introverted, delaying one’s words, and saying less would increase one’s ability to be true. This is where I have to disagree. Truth is more like shooting a basketball into a basket or playing a piano piece beautifully rather than a mathematical description of the physics that would allow such a thing to happen.
Living in truth is more about living in such a way that would enable you to admit to anyone your thought processes, intentions, and actions without a trace of anxiety, guilt, or shame. I feel that this is a better north star rather than an obsession with a literal truth and devotion to the Word.
For example, I have no problem saying false statements if it lubricates the social situation - given that if someone really wanted to know if I was truthful, I would be able to tell them "no" with just as much hesitation as I would saying what time it is.
My point is that to speak the truth is only scratching the surface. One can, for example, be deceitful if what one says is literally true, but their timing is off. To wait 10 years, 1 minute or 5 seconds may be detrimental to how the message is true. Also, the way it is delivered by way of tonality, body language may be deceitful. What makes it so extremely difficult is the problem with sin of omission. You cannot guarantee a life of truth if you decide to not speak. And to know when to speak, when not to speak, and how to articulate truth require not only a dedication to truth but moral wisdom.
Actions may be a form of deception, even if it’s non-verbal. Actually, every action to the most subtle can be a lie, or in truth. The battle between truth and deception goes down to the subatomic level of your being, and when this is understood, you can see how beauty and virtue are inseparable from truth.
I do understand Gandhi’s dedication to truth. I have chosen truth as my northern star myself, it’s an unbelievably helpful and underrated ideal to strive for to align oneself for a good life. If one truly has an attitude of telling the truth, they would not do anything that they could not live up to. Of course, sinning is inevitable, because life happens fast, and it is often a matter of imprecision, not ill-will, that often constitutes the actions that we cannot live up to. However, by preparing oneself to live up to one’s own inevitable mistakes, and actually doing it, one transcends oneself through retrospective moral action, which sets oneself free from the lower level paradigm one was operating on in the ill moment. “The truth will set you free.”
At some point, however, Truth as a concept and ideal to strive for, has to eventually be discarded, when one is wise and brave enough to handle enough ambiguity without falling into nihilism.
As I said before, however, is that Gandhi’s emphasis on truth is a rigid one. Telling the truth is not simply a matter of saying what’s correct, as Gandhi himself was early aware of. I’m afraid that Gandhi would be unaware that the subtitle “My experiments with truth” could be “My experiments with virtue,” for they are ultimately inseparable.
My reason for pushing back on this is that I believe a philosophical justification for, say, social ineptness is unuseful for the mass of people looking up to Gandhi as a role model.
Nevertheless, Gandhi serves as a moral example to millions, myself included and is practically a universal father figure for Indians, and God knows how much the world has been improved by him, and what he’s done in particular for peace between religious groups in India and bringing the Christian values into India and pushing for the eradication of the caste system.
Given that Gandhi’s background is completely different from mine, he was not at all times very relatable. For instance, I don’t understand why Gandhi thought riding third class is more “truthful” than riding first class in public transport. Here, I suppose there is a friction between a Christian sense of truth and a Hinduistic sense of the word. An important concept in Hinduism is “Maya,” that all material things are ultimately an illusion, and therefore any material luxury is a deviation from the truth.
Gandhi sought to eradicate his passion, lust, and desire by practically starving himself with the bare minimum of foods, reaching a point where he’d only eat fruits and nuts. Ironically, for an autobiography that’s obsessed with diet, and for someone who’s made a guide on healthy eating, there was plenty of description of sickness caused by malnutrition. He made a vow of vegetarianism and celibacy at a relatively early age. I believe the vow of celibacy was the motivation to practically starve the vitality of his body, to make celibacy easier. It seems to me that desire is fundamentally human, and in Gandhi’s quest to eradicate desire, he did so by depleting himself of energy, ultimately as an act of denying one’s own humanness.
Gandhi would say that to be a moral person is so difficult anyways that one needs to do every measure one can take to even stand a chance, and the libido is worth sacrificing. However, there seems to be a level of virtue in a different dimension when a strong libido is kept under control. Where an energetic, vital, viral body is forcing the character to keep up. And so it seems to me that the ultimate goal is to embrace bodily health and vitality while at the same time keeping the forces that accompany a vital being under one’s control, perhaps in the form of celibacy.
As for the book itself, and my poor rating, Gandhi’s devotion to the rigid truth was reflected in his writing; not very exciting. With his autobiography, he aimed at reflecting on his life in the most truthful way possible. His autobiography is not an exciting read, and from the second half of the book, I decided to skim until I saw something readable because there was a whirlwind of unfamiliar names, places, and institutions that would require a serious dedication or a background knowledge of the events to comprehend. Therefore, I cannot recommend the book to anyone that isn’t already embedded in Gandhi’s life and the political events surrounding him. On top of this, I find Gandhi's writing style very strange and unnecessarily convoluted. Perhaps due to his background in law and Latin?
As a final note, the book seemed to make an impression effect on me. While reading this book, when confronted with very difficult questions, I wondered what my life would be if it were too, an experiment with truth.