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Vol. XIX, No. 4
209 "living conduit of cosmic power, the power of truth", "the highest expression of the unconditioned energy".
Gandhi affirmed that the inner universe of man is governed by laws that are immutable. He affirmed, "Earth and heaven are in us. We know the earth, and we are strangers to the Heaven within us”.? Gandhi declared. “I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him and, if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent". 8
Answering a question, "How would you meet the atom 'bomb......with non-violence” on January 3!), 1948, just a few hours before he was killed; Gandhi replied, “I will not go underground. I will not go into shelter. I will come out in the open and let the pilot see that I have not a trace of ill-will against him. The pilot will not see our faces from his great height, I know. But the longing in our hearts-that he will not come to harm-would reach up to him and his eyes would be opened”.9 This statement is not his faith or a mystical belief, but a fact that a non-violent mind is at a higher quantum energy potential than a violent mind, and has the potential of transforming a violent mind. This would involve a suffering. Gandhi said, "It was this unalloyed self-suffering which was the truest form a self-defence which knew no surrender”.5 The present era will be associated by the future historians with two world-shaking events, viz,, the discovery and fabrication of nuclear weapons and the demonstration of the hidden power of mind, which, in common parlance, is called the power of the atman cr soul force. 10 In a moment of rare illumination, Thoreau wrote, "Love...... never ceases, it never slacks. Its power is incalculable; it can move the globe without a resting place... ..Shall we not contribute our share to this enterprise then ?”11 Tolstoy, a couple of months before Gandhi's death, wrote, "The whole of Christian world and non-christian world was bound one day to participate in the non-violent work)”. 12
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