Page 32 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

mere morality will not give it to you.
Politics as such has nothing to do with the spiritual life. If the
spiritual man does anything for his country, it is in order to do
the will of the Divine and as part of a divinely appointed work
and not from any other common human motive. In none of his
acts does he proceed from the common mental and vital motives
which move ordinary men but acts out of the truth of the Spirit
and from an inner command of which he knows the source.
The kind of worship (puja) spoken of in the letter belongs to
the religious life. It can, if rightly done in the deepest religious
spirit, prepare the mind and heart to some extent but no more.
But if worship is done as part of meditation or with a true aspira-
tion to the spiritual reality and the spiritual consciousness and
with the yearning for contact and union with the Divine, then it
can be spiritually effective.
If you have a sincere aspiration to the spiritual change in your
heart and soul, then you will find the way and the Guide. A mere
mental seeking and questioning are not enough to open the doors
of the Spirit.
CWSA 28: 419-20

Living religiously
Religion in India is a still more plastic term and may mean any-
thing from the heights of Yoga to strangling your fellow man and
relieving him of the worldly goods he may happen to be carrying
with him. It would therefore take too long to enumerate every-
thing that can be included in Indian religion. Briefly, however, it
is dharma or living religiously, the whole life being governed by
religion. But again what is living religiously? It means, in ordinary
practice, living according to authority. The authority generally ac-
cepted is the Shastra; but when one studies the Shastra and Indian
life side by side, one finds that the two have very little to do with
each other; the Indian governs his life not by the Shastra but by
custom and the opinion of the nearest Brahmin. In practice this re-

32 All India Magazine, August 2025