Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else unreal.
Such worship or prayer is no flight of eloquence; it is no lip-homage. It springs from the heart. If, therefore, we achieve that purity of the heart when it is 'emptied of all but love', if we keep all the chords in proper tune, they 'trembling pass in music out of sight'.
Prayer needs no speech. It is itself independent of any sensuous effort.
I have not the slightest doubt that prayer is an unfailing means of cleaning the heart of passions. But it must be combined with the utmost humility.
Pg 80, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi
Gandhi's Guiding Principle
Return Good for Evil Done
For a bowl of water give a goodly meal;
For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal;
For a simple penny pay thou back with gold;
If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.
Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;
Every little service tenfold they are reward.
But the truly noble know all men as one,
And return with gladness good for evil done.
On Intimacy and Reform
...A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform.
True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world. Only between like natures can friendship be altogether worthy and enduring.
Friends react on one another. Hence in friendship there is very little scope for reform.
I am of opinion that all exclusive intimacies are to be avoided; for man takes in vice far more readily than virtue.
And he who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend.
Pg 33, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi
On Living Frugally
While studying law in London:
... Let not the reader think that this living made my life by any means a dreary affair.
On the contrary the change harmonized my inward and outward life.
It was more in keeping with the means of my family.
My life was certainly more truthful and my soul knew no bounds of joy.
Pg 66, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi
On Listening, and Economy of Words
Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of the votary of truth.
Proneness to exagerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it.
A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in speech; he will measure every word.
Pg 72, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi
The Bhagavad Gita
The Gita unfolds a philosophical system which remains to this day the prevailing Brahmanic belief.