Page 21 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

to the contrary, — the ethical nature of man and the ethical law
of the world. It considered that man was justified in satisfying his
desires, since that is necessary for the satisfaction and expansion of
life, but not in obeying the dictates of desire as the law of his being;
for in all things there is a greater law, each has not only its side of
interest and desire, but its dharma or rule of right practice, satisfac-
tion, expansion, regulation. The Dharma, then, fixed by the wise in
the Shastra is the right thing to observe, the true rule of action. First
in the web of Dharma comes the social law; for man's life is only
initially for his vital, personal, individual self, but much more impera-
tively for the community, though most imperatively of all for the
greatest Self one in himself and in all beings, for God, for the Spirit.
Therefore first the individual must subordinate himself to the com-
munal self, though by no means bound altogether to efface himself
in it as the extremists of the communal idea imagine. He must live
according to the law of his nature harmonised with the law of his
social type and class, for the nation and in a higher reach of his be-
ing — this was greatly stressed by the Buddhists — for humanity.
Thus living and acting he could learn to transcend the social scale of
the Dharma, practise without injuring the basis of life the ideal scale
and finally grow into the liberty of the spirit, when rule and duty
were not binding because he would then move and act in a highest
free and immortal dharma of the divine nature. All these aspects of
the Dharma were closely linked up together in a progressive unity.
Thus, for an example, each of the four orders had its own social
function and ethics, but also an ideal rule for the growth of the pure
ethical being, and every man by observing his dharma and turning
his action Godwards could grow out of it into the spiritual freedom.
CWSA 20: 225-26

The catholicity of Sanatana Dharma
The system of Indian ethics liberalised by the catholicity of the
ancient mind did not ban or violently discourage the aesthetic or

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