"Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth" by Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi

I must preface this by saying that Gandhi is one of the three men that I respect more than anything in the world. The other two are Jung and Einstein. I believe these three men have given more to humanity than any living soul in the last 100 years. I am trying to educate and familiarize myself with every little detail of their lives, with their background, all the writings etc. just to be in a position to better understand their ideas and worldviews.

This book is very important for gleaning the real Gandhi. It is not an autobiography in the standard sense of that word, i.e. as a chronological presentation of events and people. Gandhi skips over large periods of his life, like the struggle in South Africa, and although he does present the events chronologically, it doesn't put equal emphasis on all of them. He talks in length about his veganism, the need to be without desires (brahmacharya) and not hurting any living being (ahimsa), and goes in depth about the different religious exploration and his final conclusion that the supreme God to which everything is subordinated is The Truth. One needs to spend one's life being completely truthful to oneself and to the others.

We learn a bit about Mahatma's early life, how he was married early, about his schooling in India and the subsequent trip to get a barrister (law) degree in England "because it is cheaper, easier, and takes less time." The accounts of his first trip to South Africa and about are very powerful, as he describes the inrooted racism and discrimination within the apartheid society, which sound even more striking when told by Mahatma's calm, compassionate and forgiving voice. He truly practiced what he preached and loved his enemies and felt sorry for them even though when he was physically abused and forced out of a first class compartment because he was a 'koolie' a colored person, and when he wasn't allowed inside a stage coach with the white passengers, but had to sit next to the coachman, outside.

Although there are much better books to learn about Mahatma's life and also the wonderful film, this is a very important book, written directly by The Great Soul himself and explaining the roots of his ideas and behaviors in his own words.