As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world—that is the myth of the “atomic age”—as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mahatma Gandhi

[...] [Some] people tell me I am being idealistic about human nature. “It would be nice,” they say, “if we human beings could override impulses like fear, greed, and violence when we see that they threaten the welfare of the whole. But that’s just not realistic. Whenever there is a conflict between reason and biology, biology is bound to win.”

Arguing like this, some observers feel that we have passed the point of no return. Like lemmings, they seem to say, we must race to a destruction we ourselves shall have caused. I differ categorically—and for proof I have the living example of Mahatma Gandhi, who not only transformed fear, greed, and violence in himself but inspired hundreds of thousands of ordinary men, women, and even children in India to do the same.

When I was a student in my twenties India had been under British domination for two hundred years. It’s difficult to imagine what that means if you haven’t lived through it. It’s not just economic exploitation; generations grow up with a foreign culture superimposed on their own. When I went to college, I never questioned the axiom that everything worthwhile, everything that could fulfill my dreams, came from the West. The science, the wealth, the military power, all demonstrated unequivocally the superiority of Western civilization. It never occurred to most of us to look anywhere else for answers.

But then along came Gandhi, who was shaking India from the Himalayas in the north to Cape Kanniyakumari in the south. Everyone in the country was talking about Gandhi the statesman, Gandhi the politician, Gandhi the economist, Gandhi the educator. But I wanted to know about Gandhi the man. I wanted to know the secret of his power.

In his youth, I knew, Gandhi had been a timid, ineffectual lawyer whose only extraordinary characteristic was his big ears. By the time he came back to India from South Africa in 1915, he had transformed himself into such a mighty force for love and non-violence that he would become a lighthouse to the whole world. And I had just one driving question: What was the secret of his transformation?

My university was in Nagpur, a strategic location at the geographic center of India where all the major railways connecting north and south, east and west, came together like spokes in a wheel. Nearby lay the town of Wardha, a dot on the map thrown into international recognition as the last railway junction before Gandhi’s ashram. The rest of the way one had to travel on one’s own. I walked the few miles down the hot, dusty road to the little settlement that Gandhi called Sevagram, “the village of service.”

At Sevagram I found myself among young people from around the world—Americans, Japanese, Africans, Europeans, even Britons—who had come to see Gandhi and to help in his work. Whether a person’s skin was white, brown, or black, whether he or she supported or opposed him, seemed to make no difference to Gandhi: he related to all with ease and respect. Almost immediately, he made us feel we were part of his own family.

Indeed, I think that, in a private corner of our hearts, we all saw ourselves in him. I did. It was as if a precious element common to all of us had been extracted and purified to shine forth brightly as the Mahatma, the Great Soul. That very commonness was what moved us most—the feeling that in spite of all our fears and resentments and petty faults we too were made of such stuff. The Great Soul was our soul.

At that time, of course, there were many observers who said Gandhi was extraordinary, an exception to the limitations that hold back the rest of the human race. Others dismissed him—some with great respect, others with less—as just another great man who was leaving his mark on history. Yet, according to him, there was no one more ordinary. “I claim to be an average man of less than average ability,” he often repeated. “I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.”

The fact is, while most people think of ordinariness as a fault or limitation, Gandhi had discovered in it the very meaning of life—and of history. For him, it was not the famous or the rich or the powerful who would change the course of history. If the future is to differ from the past, he taught, if we are to leave a peaceful and healthy earth for our children, it will be the ordinary man and woman who do it: not by becoming extraordinary, but by discovering that our greatest strength lies not in how much we differ from each other but in how much—how very much—we are the same.

This faith in the power of the individual formed the foundation for Gandhi’s extremely compassionate view of the industrial era’s large-scale problems, as well as of the smaller but no less urgent troubles we found in our own lives. Our problems, he would say, are not inevitable; they are not, as some historians and biologists have suggested, a necessary side effect of civilization.

On the contrary, war, economic injustice, and pollution arise because we have not yet learned to make use of our most civilizing capacities: the creativity and wisdom we all have as our birthright. When even one person comes into full possession of these capacities, our problems are shown in their true light: they are simply the results of avoidable—though deadly—errors of judgment.