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Chapter 5 Rajchandra's Influences on Gandhi
It has been mentioned before that Gandhi's main goal in life was to attain moksha' and see God face-to-face. All his personal, social, and moral efforts were directed at this end and he tried to take guidance from the past secular and religious traditions, great men of different times, and his own experiences, austerities, endeavors, and introspections. Outwardly Gandhi remained a worldly man while discharging his mundane responsibilities, but inwardly he was focused on his spiritual goals and lived a detached life. For such goals and orientations, he owed to his father, mother Putlibai, own childhood and adult experiences, and his Christian, Muslim, and Hindu friends in England, South Africa, and India. Gandhi believed in the age-old tradition of seeking a guru for the purpose of attaining moksha and was always in search of a perfect guru. Three people, Rajchandra, Leo Tolstoy, and John Ruskin, inspired him in this regard and Rajchandra was on the top of the list due to his superior spiritual strengths. Gandhi though adored Rajchandra and publicly acknowledged his debt to him on many occasions, did not enthrone him as his spiritual master because he felt that Rajchandra still had not reached the highest spiritual level and lacked a few qualities to be a perfect guru.
Gandhi became acquainted with Rajchandra in 1891 after his return from England and was first impressed by his memory feats. Later he also came to know Rajchandra's many other qualities, such as his independent judgment, simplicity, piety, wisdom, renunciation, spotless character, freedom from all kinds of blind orthodoxy, wide knowledge of the
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