Page 30 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

human mind and soul and its development through the natural to
the spiritual existence. CWSA 20: 405-406

Dharma in economics
Politics, society, economics are the natural field of the two first
and grosser parts of human aim and conduct recognised in the
Indian system, interest and hedonistic desire: Dharma, the higher
law, has nowhere been brought more than partially into this outer
side of life, and in politics to a very minimum extent; for the effort
at governing political action by ethics is usually little more than a
pretence. The coordination or true union of the collective outward
life with Moksha, the liberated spiritual existence, has hardly even
been conceived or attempted, much less anywhere succeeded in
the past history of the yet hardly adult human race. Accordingly,
we find that the governance by the Dharma of India's social, eco-
nomic and even (though here the attempt broke down earlier than
in other spheres) her political rule of life, system, turn of existence,
with the adumbration of a spiritual significance behind, — the full
attainment of the spiritual life being left as a supreme aim to the
effort of the individual — was as far as her ancient system could
advance. This much endeavour, however, she did make with persis-
tence and patience and it gave a peculiar type to her social polity.
It is perhaps for a future India, taking up and enlarging with a more
complete aim, a more comprehensive experience, a more certain
knowledge that shall reconcile life and the spirit, her ancient mis-
sion, to found the status and action of the collective being of man
on the realisation of the deeper spiritual truth, the yet unrealised
spiritual potentialities of our existence and so ensoul the life of
her people as to make it the Lila of the greater Self in humanity, a
conscious communal soul and body of Virat, the universal spirit.
CWSA 20: 397-98 Sri Aurobindo

30 All India Magazine, August 2025