Outside Help Weakens the Inside

"Doctors have almost unhinged us...Their business is really to rid the body of diseases that may afflict it...The doctor intervened and helped me to indulge myself. My body thereby felt more at ease; but my mind became weakened" (33).

Here Gandhi uses an analogy with doctors to illustrate how our indulgences and outside remedies are weakening our minds. He explains that we never learn not to indulge because we immediately ease the pain or consequences with medicine or some sort of remedy. This treatment is bad because we feel better from our indulgences and never suffer the actual consequences of our actions, we ignore it and numb the affects with medicine. Thus, the mind is weakened because it is being deprived of its true feelings. For example, I get headaches a lot. Sometimes because I am tired, stressed, dehydrated etc. I know these are the reasons I get them, but I never treat a headache with more rest and less stress. I usually just take an Advil and get over it and continue on with my fast paced life. I am just ignoring the problem when the headaches are my body's way of telling me something is wrong. In a spiritual sense, as Gandhi states, this is overall weakening my mind because I am not in touch with the workings of myself, only reliant on outside help.

I think this metaphor can also be used to describe India and the English rule. The Indians rely on the the English to keep their government somewhat stable because the political parties have too many conflicts. So, the Indians just rely on the English to keep everything under control, an outside remedy, the English medicine. Therefore, India "mind," or independent capability is becoming weaker because the English are not allowing it to feel for what the country really needs and what needs to be done to rule independently with out the foreign help.