Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

Page 67

A GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
The True Laws of Life-Indian Thought
Facts about Life beyond horizon of our observations
senses and placed on the shore, it sees and hears many things, which it had not perceived before, having no eyes and ears; how can it understand these things? It will not believe in its own senses. Such has been the case with those human beings who had only limited observations from which they draw their conclusions, But if we extend our horizon, if we take into consideration the fact that life is eternal, it did not begin at any time, and is not going to end at any time, and that it is going to exist in some state or the other at all times, then we can be in a position to derive conclusions valuable to all lives and to all living beings at all times. That is the way in which our philosophers have looked upon life.
Object of life itself
The subject of the True laws of Life is a very-wide one, because these laws cannot be ascertained from a limited observation only of few facts. We may collect a few facts on the physical basis, we may collect a
few facts on the domain of the animal kingdom and some others which concern human development. But the deductions drawn from these facts must be limited because we do not take into consideration the fact that there are many other planes of consciousness and of existence, and to derive the laws concerning life on only a few stages would be altogether insufficient to establish a general rule of our life as human beings. If human beings were totally separated, from others beings in relation to whole universe. If they live on a planet without any other life than human life, we might make laws of life after observations only of the human species. Scientists have derived very limited conclusions, right only so far as those limited observations are concerned, and cannot derive conclusions from the facts beyond horizon of their observations. Suppose a being living in the sea and having only one organ, that of touch, suddenly develops into a higher being with five
There is another difference with them(Hindus). You Americans have another idea of life that is, the object of life itself is different from their view. Hindu's view may appear mystical to some of these scientists and philosophers, but I only wish to put before you the two views and you can derive conclusions for yourself. As Max Muller has stated, in his latest work, the idea of life in all the Western countries is that of a "struggle for existence", That has been the idea of life in the entire nation with which Europeans and Americans have become acquainted. That is also the idea of life of the English people. But he also says that it is not the only object for which