Page 37 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

as this vital aspect of life is the one which most easily draws us
outward and away from the inner self and the diviner aim of liv-
ing, it was the most strenuously linked up at every point with the
religious idea in the way the vital man can best understand, in the
Vedic times by the constant reminder of the sacrifice behind every
social and civic act, at a later period by religious rites, ceremonies,
worship, the calling in of the gods, the insistence on the subsequent
results or a supraterrestrial aim of works. So great was this preoccu-
pation, that while in the spiritual and intellectual and other spheres
a considerable or a complete liberty was allowed to speculation, ac-
tion, creation, here the tendency was to impose a rigorous law and
authority, a tendency which in the end became greatly exaggerated
and prevented the expansion of the society into new forms more
suitable for the need of the spirit of the age, the Yugadharma. A
door of liberty was opened to the community by the provision of an
automatic permission to change custom and to the individual in the
adoption of the religious life with its own higher discipline or free-
dom outside the ordinary social weft of binding rule and injunction.
A rigid observation and discipline of the social law, a larger nobler
discipline and freer self-culture of the ideal side of the Dharma, a
wide freedom of the religious and spiritual life became the three
powers of the system. The steps of the expanding human spirit
mounted through these powers to its perfection.
CWSA 20: 228-29

Deepest law of our nature

All India Magazine, August 2025 37