Page 12 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

Avatar. In the Buddhistic formula the disciple takes refuge from
all that opposes his liberation in three powers, the dharma, the
sangha, the Buddha. So in Christianity we have the law of Chris-
tian living, the Church and the Christ. These three are always the
necessary elements of the work of the Avatar. He gives a dharma,
a law of self-discipline by which to grow out of the lower into the
higher life and which necessarily includes a rule of action and of
relations with our fellowmen and other beings, endeavour in the
eightfold path or the law of faith, love and purity or any other such
revelation of the nature of the divine in life. Then because every
tendency in man has its collective as well as its individual aspect,
because those who follow one way are naturally drawn together
into spiritual companionship and unity, he establishes the sangha,
the fellowship and union of those whom his personality and his
teaching unite. In Vaishnavism there is the same trio, bhagavata,
bhakta, bhagavan, — the bhagavata, which is the law of the Vaish-
nava dispensation of adoration and love, the bhakta representing
the fellowship of those in whom that law is manifest, bhagavan,
the divine Lover and Beloved in whose being and nature the divine
law of love is founded and fulfils itself. The Avatar represents this
third element, the divine personality, nature and being who is the
soul of the Dharma and the sangha, informs them with himself,
keeps them living and draws men towards the felicity and the
liberation.
CWSA 19: 173

Dharma and Adharma
The Gita lays stress upon the struggle of which the world is
the theatre, in its two aspects, the inner struggle and the outer
battle. In the inner struggle the enemies are within, in the individ-
ual, and the slaying of desire, ignorance, egoism is the victory. But
there is an outer struggle between the powers of the Dharma and
the Adharma in the human collectivity. The former is supported by

12 All India Magazine, August 2025