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Rajchandra's Influences on Gandhi
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From these different sources, Gandhi understood that one's life was to be based on some solid spiritual principles and that the following of Truth, compassion, and service to others were to be the key guiding motives in life. He, however, laments that the school system did not provide him the needed religious knowledge and that "I may say that I failed to get from the teachers what they could have given me without any effort on their part. And yet I kept on picking up things here and there from my surroundings."77 It was later in England that Gandhi was able to systematically pick up his religious interests and he engaged himself in a comparative study of Hinduism and other religions. Now he started reading the texts of different religions and gained much by way of spiritual insights.78 This habit he continued in South Africa and India for the rest of his life.
Upon his return to India from England, Gandhi visited Rajchandra regularly and discussed with him his religious and spiritual yearnings. He learned many lessons from Rajchandra through the discourses he had with him. Rajchandra himself had an early awakening relative to his religious and spiritual pursuits" and Gandhi learned from him that one had to be consciously, constantly, and vigorously devoted to these pursuits in order to attain self-realization and ultimately moksha. Rajchandra was a living example before Gandhi in this regard and he needed to go no further for any additional spiritual guidance. Rajchandra believed in a practical religion and he advised Gandhi and others that one should not feel overly concerned about the teachings, dogmas, and philosophies of any particular religion and should pay more attention to own thoughts, speech, and actions on a momentby-moment and day-by-day basis. One's natural religious environment was better than a foreign one, but one should not get confined within the walled enclosures of even this environment and must rise above it. When Gandhi asked Rajchandra which religious books he should read, he advised him to continue to read Bhagavad Gita, which was closer to Gandhi's own interest and consistent with his early
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