Page 14 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

about the soul. The place where he can indulge without restraint
his physical and vital impulses is an imaginary Paradise. To attain
such a heaven after physical death is his salvation.
The man who is primarily intellectual always tries to regulate
his desires and interests by reason. Where lies the fulfilment of
desires, which particular interest among many different ones
should have precedence, what is the nature of the ideal life, how
and which discipline, as determined by reason to be followed so
that nature may be cleansed and the ideal realised — he is ever
engaged in thinking about these matters. He is willing to establish
as his dharma a certain regulated cultivation of that nature and
ideal principle. Such a sense of dharma is indeed the regulator of
an advanced society enlightened by rational knowledge.
The dominantly spiritual man is aware of the secret soul
beyond the intellect, the mind, the life, and the body and bases
his life movement on self-knowledge. He directs all his activities
towards liberation, self-realisation and the attainment of God,
knowing these to be the culmination of life. And he regards as his
dharma that way of life and the cultivation of that ideal which
are conducive to self-realisation and which leads the movement
of evolution towards that goal. The highest type of society is led
by such ideal and such dharma.
From dominance by life to reason, from reason to the suprara-
tional love, these are the steps of man's ascent to the peaks of God.
Writings in Bengali: 176-77

The average Hindu is right in his conception of religion as dharma,
to live according to holy rule; but the holy rule is not a mass of
fugitive and temporary customs, but this, to live for God in one-
self and others and not for oneself only, to make the whole life a
sadhana the object of which is to realise the Divine in the world by
work, love and knowledge.
CWSA 1: 493 Sri Aurobindo

14 All India Magazine, August 2025