Giving and Feeling

We are all familiar with the reverence Mahatma Gandhi gave not only to Christ, but to the great religious figures belonging to each and every religion. But the way he describes the relationship between such great teachers and their followers is worth noticing.

Whenever I hear someone say, “I received Christ” or “I accepted Christ”, I sometimes wonder, and am amused—even teasingly—whether the language unintentionally makes the devotee sound like the giver and Christ the recipient. I used to respond, “Finally, He got some place to dwell, as you magnanimously received Him—as if He had been standing outside waiting for someone to receive Him. Thank God, finally there is someone who accepted Him!”

I know, of course, that this is not what Christians ordinarily mean when they say, “I received Christ” or “I accepted Christ”. It is a devotional expression, and I do not want to caricature it. But my teasing question points to something that has often struck me: who are we to “accept” or “receive” anyone whom we consider greater than ourselves—not merely a great religious figure, but even a person whom we deeply revere, such as Mahatma Gandhi himself?

What, then, can we really do?

Perhaps we can remain humble enough to cherish and nourish the feeling that has been given to us—the grace of being able to recognise someone as our teacher, our guide, or the one to whom we wish to offer ourselves as a follower.

This is where Gandhiji’s words become particularly interesting to me. In a speech at Central College, Jaffna, on 29 November 1927, he was asked what place he would give to Christ among the great world teachers, not as a divine instructor but as a man and a teacher. Gandhiji answered:

“Of course, Christians claim a higher place for Jesus of Nazareth than as a non-Christian and as a Hindu I have been able to feel.

I purposely use the word ‘feel’ instead of ‘give’, because I consider that neither I, nor anybody else can possibly arrogate to himself the claim of giving place to a great man. The great teachers of mankind have had the place not given to them, but the place has belonged to them as a matter of right, as a matter of service that they have rendered, but it is given to the lowest and the humblest amongst us to feel certain things about certain people.” (342)

I find the distinction between “give” and “feel” remarkably precise.

Gandhiji does not say that we create the place of a great teacher by accepting him. He says that the place already belongs to the great teacher, by right and by virtue of the service rendered. What is given to the humble is the capacity to feel certain things about certain people.

He then gives an illustration that makes the point even more vividly:

“The relation between great teachers and ourselves is somewhat after the style of relation between a husband and wife. It would be a most terrible thing, a tragic thing, if I was to argue out intellectually for myself what place I was to give to my wife in my heart. It is not in my giving, but she takes the place that belongs to her as a matter of right in my heart. It is a matter purely for feeling.” (342–43)

This illustration is important. Gandhiji is not constructing an intellectual theory of bhakti. His point is simpler and more intimate: some relationships cannot be established by intellectual calculation. We do not sit down and decide what place we should “give” to someone who already occupies a rightful place in our heart. The relationship is experienced and felt.

And then Gandhiji applies this directly to Jesus:

“Then I can say that Jesus occupies in my heart the place of one of the great teachers who has had considerable part in finding that place in my heart…” (343)

That last expression particularly interests me: “finding that place in my heart.”

Gandhiji does not speak as though he has generously allotted a place to Jesus. He recognises that Jesus has come to occupy a place in his heart. The distinction is subtle, but it is significant.

This gives me a way of expressing something I have believed for a long time.

For me, this comes close to what bhakti means: standing in a personal relationship without reservation. The devotee does not imagine that he or she is conferring greatness upon God, the Guru, or the great teacher. Rather, the devotee comes to recognise and feel the relationship that has been given.

Here I am taking Gandhiji’s illustration into my own reflection; he himself does not use the word bhakti in this passage. But his distinction between giving and feeling helps me express something that I already strongly believed.

In that relationship, God does not become God because I give Him a place. A great teacher does not become great because I accept him. The place is not created by my act of acceptance. What changes is my own relationship to the one whom I have come to recognise.

And this leaves me with a question which I find both amusing and serious:

Who is really accepting whom?

When I say, “I accepted Christ,” the sentence seems to place me in the position of the one who is doing the accepting. But if Christ is the one whom I recognise as greater than myself, should I not approach the relationship with greater humility? What have I actually given Him?

Perhaps what I can say is not that I have magnanimously given Christ a place, but that I have been given the grace to feel His place.

This does not make the devotee’s response unimportant. Acceptance, surrender, devotion and love are real. But they do not confer greatness upon the one to whom they are offered. They express what has happened in the heart of the devotee.

That is why Gandhiji’s distinction between giving and feeling speaks to me so strongly.

It also protects us from making devotion into an intellectual exercise. Gandhiji says that it would be “a most terrible thing, a tragic thing” to argue intellectually about what place one should give one’s wife in one’s heart. His point is precisely that such a relationship cannot be established by intellectual calculation. It is “a matter purely for feeling”.

For me, this is where his words touch something very close to bhakti.

I may think that I am giving.

But perhaps I am simply learning to feel.

And perhaps that is the more humble posture of a devotee: not to imagine that I have given a place to the One whom I worship, but to be grateful that I have been given the grace to recognise and cherish the place that is already there.

Gandhiji gives me the distinction. The larger reflection is mine.

And that is precisely why I value it.

Ashram, September 25, 2026

229.

Notes: 2 The Principal of the College had asked Gandhiji what place he would
give to Christ among the great world teachers not as a divine instructor, but
as a man and a teacher.

Source:

SPEECH AT CENTRAL COLLEGE, JAFFNA
November 29, 1927. The Hindu, 2-12-1927. 

CWMG, vol. 35, pp. 342-43. mkgandhi.org