Fic+reading+pack (1)

FOUNDATIONS OF INDIAN CULTURE
Reading Pack
Module Leaders
Dr. Falguni Jani
Dr. Shruti Bidwaikar
BBA-LLB, BSc IT, BHM, BBA &
MBA

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Foundations of Indian Culture
Contents
• Culture
• Indian Culture
• Chaturvarna,
• Ashram
• Purushartha
• Dharma
• Indian Literature
• Indian Art
• Indian Polity

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WHAT IS CULTURE?
• Culture is one of the most important and basic concepts of
sociology. In sociology, culture has a specific meaning. The
anthropologists believe that the behavior, which is meant, is called
culture. In other words the behavior which is transmitted to us by
someone is called culture. The way of living, eating, wearing,
singing, dancing and talking is all parts of a culture.
• In common, parlance, the word culture, is understood to mean
beautiful, refined or interesting. In sociology, we use the word
culture to denote acquired behavior, which are shared by and
transmitted among the members of the society. In other words,
culture is a system of learned behavior shared by and transmitted
among the members of a group.
Definitions of Culture:
• Culture has been defined in various ways by sociologists and
anthropologists. Following are the important definitions of culture.
• E.B. Tylor defines "Culture is that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, Jaw, customs and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society".
• Edward Sapir says, "Culture is any socially inherited element of
the life of man, material and spiritual".

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• Malionwski defines "Culture the handwork of man and
conventional understanding manifest in art and artifact which
persisting through which he achieves his ends".
• Redfield remarks that "Culture is an organised body of
conventional understanding manifest in art and artifact which
persisting through, characterizes a human group".
• Mac Iver is of the view that "Culture is the expression of our
nature in our modes of living, and our thinking, intercourses in our
literature, in religion, in recreation and enjoyment.
• According to E.S. Bogardus "Culture is all the ways of doing and
thinking of a group".
Characteristics of Culture
For a clear understanding of
the concept of culture, it is
necessary for us to know its
main characteristics. Culture
has several characteristics.
Following are the main
characteristics of culture.
1. Culture is Learnt
Culture is not inherited biologically, but learnt socially by man. It is not an
inborn tendency. There is no culture instinct as such culture is often
called learned ways of behavior. Unlearned behavior such as closing the

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eyes while sleeping, the eye blinking reflex and so on are purely
physiological and culture sharing hands or saying ‘namaskar’ or thanks
and shaving and dressing on the other hand are culture. Similarly
wearing clothes, combing the hair, wearing ornaments, cooking the food,
drinking from a glass, eating from a plate or leaf, reading a newspaper,
driving a car, enacting a role in drama, singing, worship etc. are always
of behavior learnt by man culturally.
2. Cultural is Social
Culture does not exist in isolation neither it is an individual phenomenon.
It is a product of society. It originates and develops through social
interaction. It is shared by the members of society. No man can acquire
culture without association with other human beings. Man becomes man
only among men. It is the culture, which helps man to develop human
qualities in a human environment. Deprivation is nothing but deprivation
of human qualities.
3. Culture is Shared
Culture in the sociological sense, is something shared. It is not
something that an individual alone can possess. For example customs,
tradition, beliefs, ideas, values, morals, etc. are shared by people of a
group or society. The invention of Arya Bhatta or Albert Einstein,
Charaka or Charles Darwin, the literary, works of Kalidasa or Keats,
Dandi or Dante, the philosophical works of Confucius or Lao Tse,
Shankaracharya or Swami Vivekananda, the artistic work of Kavi Verma
or Raphael etc. are all shared by a large number of people. Culture is
something adopted, used, believed practised or possessed by more than

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one person. It depends upon group life for its existence. (Robert
Brerstedt)
4. Culture is Transmissive
Culture is capable of being transmitted from one generation to the next.
Parents pass on culture traits to their children and them in turn to their
children arid so on. Culture is trasmitted not trough genes but by means
of language. Language is the main vehicle of culture. Language in its
different forms like reading, writing and speaking makes it possible for
the present generation to understand the achievements of earlier
generations. But language itself is a part of culture. Once language is
acquired it unfolds to the
individual in wide field.
Transmission of culture may
take place by intution as well as
by interaction,
5. Culture is Continuous and
Cumulative
Culture exists, as a continuous process. In its historical growth, it tends
to become cumulative. Culture is growing completely which includes in
itself, the achievements of the past and present and makes provision for
the future achievements of mankind. Culture may thus be conceived of
as a kind of stream flowing down through the centuries from one
generation to another. Hence, some sociologists like Lition called culture
the social heritage of man. As Robert Brerstedt writes culture or the
money of human race. It becomes difficult for us to imagine what society

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would be like without this accumulation of culture what lives would be
without it.
6. Culture is Consistent and Interconnected
Culture, in its development has revealed tendency to be consistent. At
the same time, different parts of culture are interconnected. For example
the value system of a society, a society is closely connected with, its
other aspects such as morality, religion, customs, traditions, beliefs and
so on.
7. Culture is Dynamic and Adaptive
Though culture is relatively stable, it is not altogether static. It is subject
to slow but constant change. Change and growth are latent in culture.
We find amazing growth in the present Indian culture when we compare
it with the culture of the Vedic time. Hence, culture is dynamic.
Culture is responsive to the changing conditions of the physical world. It
is adaptive. It also intervenes in the natural environment and helps man
in his process of adjustment. Just as our house
shelters us from the storm, so also does our culture help us from natural
dangers and assist us to survive. Few of us indeed could survive without
culture.
8. Culture is Gratifying
Culture provides proper opportunities, and prescribes means for the
satisfaction of our needs and desires. These needs may be biological or
social in nature. Our need for food, shelter and clothing and our desire

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for status, name, fame and money etc are all, for example, fulfilled
according to the cultural ways. Culture determines and guides the varied
activities of man. In fact culture is defined as the process through which
human beings satisfy their wants.
9. Culture varies from Society to Society
Every society has a culture of its own. It differs from society to society.
Culture of every society in unique to itself. Cultures are not uniform.
Cultural elements such as customs, traditions, morals, ideals, values,
ideologies, beliefs in practices, philosophies institutions, etc. are not
uniform everywhere. Ways of eating, speaking, greeting, dressing,
entertaining, living etc. of different sects differ significantly. Culture varies
from time to time also. No culture ever remains constant or changeless.
If Manu were to come back to see the Indian society today he would be
bewildered to witness the vast changes that have taken place in our
culture.
10. Culture is Super Organic and Ideational
Culture is sometimes called the super organic. By super organic Herbert
Spencer meant that culture is neither organic nor inorganic in nature but
above these two. The term implies the social meaning of physical
objectives and physiological acts. The social meaning may be
independent of physiological and physical properties and characteristics.
For example, the social meaning of a national flag is not just a piece of
colored cloth. The flag represents a nation. Similarly, priests and
prisoners, professors and profanation, players, engineers and doctors,
farmers and soldiers and others are not just biological beings. They are

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viewed in their society differently. Their social status and role can be
understood only through culture.
LEARNING OUTCOME:
The above explanation gives a simple and detailed
understanding of the basic concept of culture. Clarity regarding
culture and its function is essential before the student embarks
on a journey full of the depth and heights of the beliefs and
values and practices of culture.
EXERCISES:
Q1. What do you understand by culture?
Q2. Discuss the difference between values, beliefs and practices.

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CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE INDIAN CULTURE
SPIRITUALITY AS THE
MASTER KEY
It would be a tragic irony of fate if India were to throw away her
spiritual heritage at the very moment when in the rest of the world
there is more and more a turning towards her for spiritual help and
a saving Light. This must not and will surely not happen; but it
cannot be said that the danger is not there.
Sri Aurobindo
(SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 412)
Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense
of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, - and,
even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance,
she never lost hold of the insight, - that life cannot be rightly seen
in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its
externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and
forces; she had a keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences;

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she knew how to organise the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the
physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the
supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be
explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight,
that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself
of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part
of himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the
suprasensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite.
She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming
himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, - truths which have only
recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for
its common intelligence. She saw the myriad gods beyond man, God
beyond the gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw
that there were ranges of life beyond our life, ranges of mind beyond
our present mind and above these she saw the splendours of the spirit.
Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or
littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual,
ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things
which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could
conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god,
become one with God, become the ineffable Brahman. And with the
logical practicality and sense of science and organised method which
distinguished her mentality, she set forth immediately to find out the way.
Hence from long ages of this insight and practice there was ingrained in
her spirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her great yearning to
grapple with the infinite and possess it, her ineradicable religious sense,
her idealism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art and her philosophy.
But this was not and could not be her whole mentality, her entire
spirit; spirituality itself does not flourish on earth in the void, even as our

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mountain-tops do not rise like those of an enchantment of dream out of
the clouds without a base. When we look at the past of India, what
strikes us next is her stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power
of life and joy of life, her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness.
For three thousand years at least, - it is indeed much longer, - she
has been creating abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an
inexhaustible manysidedness, republics and kingdoms and
empires, philosophies and cosmogonies and sciences and creeds
and arts and poems and all kinds of monuments, palaces and
temples and public works, communities and societies and religious
orders, laws and codes and rituals, physical sciences, psychic
sciences, systems of Yoga, systems of politics and administration,
arts spiritual, arts worldly, trades, industries, fine crafts, - the list is
endless and in each item there is almost a plethora of activity. She
creates and creates and is not satisfied and is not tired; she will not have
an end of it, seems hardly to need a space for rest, a time for inertia and
lying fallow. She expands too outside her borders; her ships cross the
ocean and the fine superfluity of her wealth brims over to Judea and
Egypt and Rome; her colonies spread her arts and epics and creeds in
the Archipelago; her traces are found in the sands of Mesopotamia; her
religions conquer China and Japan and spread westward as far as
Palestine and Alexandria,- and the figures of the Upanishads and the
sayings of the Buddhists are re-echoed on the lips of Christ.
Everywhere, as on her soil, so in her works there is the teeming of a
super-abundant energy of life. European critics complain that in her
ancient architecture, sculpture and art there is no reticence, no holding
back of riches, no blank spaces, that she labours to fill every rift with ore,
occupy every inch with plenty. Well, but defect or no that is the necessity
of her superabundance of life, of the teeming of the infinite within her.

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She lavishes her riches because she must, as the Infinite fills every inch
of space with the stirring of life and energy because it is the Infinite.
But this supreme spirituality and this prolific abundance of the
energy and joy of life and creation do not make all that the spirit of India
has been in its past. It is not a confused splendour of tropical vegetation
under heavens of a pure sapphire infinity. It is only to eyes
unaccustomed to such wealth that there seems to be a confusion in this
crowding of space with rich forms of life, a luxurious disorder of excess
or a wanton lack of measure, clear balance and design. For the third
power of the ancient Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality, at
once austere arid rich, robust and minute, powerful and delicate,
massive in principle and curious in detail. Its chief impulse was that
of order and arrangement, but an order founded upon a seeking for
the inner law and truth of things and having in view always the
possibility of conscientious practice. India has been pre-eminently
the land of the Dharma and the Shastra. She searched for the inner
truth and law of each human or cosmic activity, its Dharma; that found,
she laboured to cast into elaborate form and detailed law of arrangement
its application in fact and rule of life. Her first period was luminous with
the discovery of the Spirit; her second completed the discovery of the
Dharma; her third elaborated into detail the first simpler formulation of
the Shastra; but none was exclusive, the three elements are always
present.
In this third period the curious elaboration of all life into a
science and an art assumes extraordinary proportions. The mere
mass of the intellectual production during the period from Asoka well into
the Mahomedan epoch is something truly prodigious, as can be seen at
once if one studies the account which recent scholarship gives of it, and
we must remember that that scholarship as yet only deals with a

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fraction of what is still lying extant and what is extant is only a small
percentage of what was once written and known. There is no historical
parallel for such an intellectual labour and activity before the invention of
printing and the facilities of modem science; yet all that mass of research
and production and curiosity of detail was accomplished without these
facilities and with no better record than the memory and for an aid the
perishable palm-leaf. Nor was all this colossal literature confined to
philosophy and theology, religion and Yoga, logic and rhetoric and
grammar and linguistics, poetry and drama, medicine and astronomy
and the sciences; it embraced all life, politics and society, all the arts
from painting to dancing, all the sixty-four accomplishments, everything
then known that could be useful to life or interesting to the mind, even,
for instance, to such practical side minutiae as the breeding and training
of horses and elephants, each of which had its Shastra and its art, its
apparatus of technical terms, its copious literature. In each subject from
the largest and most momentous to the smallest and most trivial there
was expended the same all-embracing, opulent, minute and thorough
intellectuality. On one side there is an insatiable curiosity, the desire of
life to know itself in every detail, on the other a spirit of organisation and
scrupulous order, the desire of the mind to tread through life with a
harmonised knowledge and in the right rhythm and measure. Thus an
ingrained and dominant spirituality, an inexhaustible vital
creativeness and gust of life and, mediating between them, a
powerful, penetrating and scrupulous intelligence combined of the
rational, ethical and aesthetic mind each at a high intensity of
action, created the harmony of the ancient Indian culture.
[The Renaissance in India-1; pg 6-10]

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Spiritual Culture of India
…first let us say what we do not mean by this ideal. Clearly it does not
signify that we shall regard earthly life as a temporal vanity, try to
become all of us as soon as possible monastic ascetics, frame our social
life into a preparation for the monastery or cavern or mountain-top or
make of it a static life without any great progressive ideals but only some
aim which has nothing to do with earth or the collective advance of the
human race. That may have been for some time a tendency of the
Indian mind, but it was never the whole tendency. Nor does spirituality
mean the moulding of the whole type of the national being to suit the
limited dogmas, forms, tenets of a particular religion, as was often
enough attempted by the old societies, an idea which still persists in
many minds by the power of old mental habit and association; clearly
such an attempt would be impossible, even if it were desirable, in a
country full of the most diverse religious opinions and harbouring too
three such distinct general forms as Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, to
say nothing of the numerous special forms to which each of these has
given birth. Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion…
Nor do we mean the exclusion of anything whatsoever from our
scope, of any of the great aims of human life, any of the great problems
of our modern world, any form of human activity, any general or inherent
impulse or characteristic means of the desire of the soul of man for
development, expansion, increasing vigour and joy, light, power,
perfection…
But still there is a great difference between the spiritual and the purely
material and mental view of existence. The spiritual view holds that the
mind, life, body are man’s means and not his aims and even that they

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are not his last and highest means; it sees them as his outer
instrumental self and not his whole being. It sees the infinite behind all
things finite and it adjudges the value of the finite by higher infinite
values of which they are the imperfect translation and towards which, to
a truer expression of them, they are always trying to arrive. It sees a
greater reality than the apparent not only behind man and the world, but
within man and the world, and this soul, self, divine thing in man it holds
to be that in him which is of the highest importance, that which
everything else in him must try in whatever way to bring out and express,
and this soul, self, divine presence in the world it holds to be that which
man has ever to try to see and recognize through all appearances, to
unite his thought and life with it and in it to find his unity with his fellows.
This alters necessarily our whole normal view of things; even in
preserving all the aims of human life, it will give them a different sense
and direction.
We aim at the health and vigour of the body; but with what object?
For its own sake, will be the ordinary reply, because it is worth having; or
else that we may have long life and a sound basis for our intellectual,
vital, emotional satisfactions. Yes, for its own sake, in a way, but in this
sense that the physical too is an expression of the spirit and its
perfection is worth having, is part of the dharma of the complete human
living; but still more as a basis for all that higher activity which ends in
the discovery and expression of the divine self in man. Śarīram khalu
dharmasādhanam, runs the old Sanskrit saying, the body too is our
means for fulfilling the dharma, the Godward law of our being. The
mental, the emotional, the aesthetic parts of us have to be developed, is
the ordinary view, so that they may have a greater satisfaction, or
because that is man’s finer nature, because so he feels himself more
alive and fulfilled. This, but not this only; rather because these things too

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are the expressions of the spirit, things which are seeking in him for their
divine values and by their growth, subtlety, flexibility, power, intensity he
is able to come nearer to the divine Reality in the world, to lay hold on it
variously, to tune eventually his whole life into unity and conformity with
it. Morality is in the ordinary view a well-regulated individual and social
conduct which keeps society going and leads towards a better, a more
rational, temperate, sympathetic, self-restrained dealing with our fellows.
But ethics in the spiritual point of view is much more, it is a means of
developing in our action and still more essentially in the character of our
being the diviner self in us, a step of our growing into the nature of the
Godhead.
So with all our aims and activities; spirituality takes them all and
gives them a greater, diviner, more intimate sense. Philosophy is in the
Western way of dealing with it a dispassionate enquiry by the light of the
reason into the first truths of existence, which we shall get at either by
observing the facts science places at our disposal or by a careful
dialectical scrutiny of the concepts of the reason or a mixture of the two
methods. But from the spiritual view-point truth of existence is to be
found by intuition and inner experience and not only by the reason and
by scientific observation; the work of philosophy is to arrange the data
given by the various means of knowledge, excluding none, and put them
into their synthetic relation to the one Truth, the one supreme and
universal reality. Eventually, its real value is to prepare a basis for
spiritual realisation and the growing of the human being into his divine
self and divine nature. Science itself becomes only a knowledge of the
world which throws an added light on the spirit of the universe and his
way in things. Nor will it confine itself to a physical knowledge and its
practical fruits or to the knowledge of life and man and mind based upon
the idea of matter or material energy as our starting-point; a spiritualized

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culture will make room for new fields of research, for new and old
psychical sciences and results which start from spirit as the first truth
and from the power of mind and of what is greater than mind to act upon
life and matter. The primitive aim of art and poetry is to create images of
man and Nature which shall satisfy the sense of beauty and embody
artistically the ideas of the intelligence about life and the responses of
the imagination to it; but in a spiritual culture they become too in their
aim a revelation of greater things concealed in man and Nature and of
the deepest spiritual and universal beauty. Politics, society, economy are
in the first form of human life simply an arrangement by which men
collectively can live, produce, satisfy their desires, enjoy, progress in
bodily, vital and mental efficiency; but the spiritual aim makes them
much more than this, first, a framework of life within which man can seek
for and grow into his real self and divinity, secondly, an increasing
embodiment of the divine law of being in life, thirdly, a collective advance
towards the light, power, peace, unity, harmony of the diviner nature of
humanity which the race is trying to evolve. This and nothing more but
nothing less, this in all its potentialities, is what we mean by a spiritual
culture and the application of spirituality to life.
***
In Indian civilisation philosophy and religion, philosophy made dynamic by religion,
religion enlightened by philosophy have led, the rest follow as best they can. This is
indeed its first distinctive character, which it shares with the more developed Asiatic
peoples, but has carried to an extraordinary degree of thoroughgoing pervasiveness.
When it is spoken of as a Brahminical civilisation, that is the real significance of the
phrase. The phrase cannot truly imply any domination of sacerdotalism, though in
some lower aspects of the culture the sacerdotal mind has been only too prominent;
for the priest as such has had no hand in shaping the great lines of the culture. But it
is true that its main motives have been shaped by philosophic thinkers and religious
minds, not by any means all of them of Brahmin birth. The fact that a class has been

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developed whose business was to preserve the spiritual traditions, knowledge and
sacred law of the race, ― for this and not a mere priest trade was the proper
occupation of the Brahmin, ― and that this class could for thousands of years
maintain in the greatest part, but not monopolise, the keeping of the national mind
and conscience, and the direction of social principles, forms and manners, is only a
characteristic indication. The fact behind is that Indian culture has been from the
beginning and has remained a spiritual, an inward-looking religio-philosophical cul-
ture. Everything else in it has derived from that one central and original peculiarity or
has been in some way dependent on it or subordinate to it; even external life has
been subjected to the inward look of the spirit.
LEARNING OUTCOME:
The above passage highlights the special contribution of India to the
world; Spiritual Knowledge. The characteristic that makes this country
unique is its spiritual inquiry and the method
of searching the deepest values of life.
India’s cultural heritage is full of the
penetration of this search in its social
organization. The contemporary situation is
witness to the demands of Indian Yoga and
spiritual knowledge in the world.
EXERCISES:
Q1. Elaborate the sentence “SPRITUALITY IS THE MASTER KEY”.
Q2. Mention the three powers that make India unique in the world?
Q3. Explain the words “DHARMA” and “SHASTRA”.

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“CULTURE”
A true happiness in this world is the right
terrestrial aim of man, and true happiness lies
in the finding and maintenance of a natural
harmony of spirit, mind and body. A culture is to
be valued to the extent to which it has
discovered the right key of this harmony and
organised its expressive motives and move-
ments. And a civilisation must be judged by the
manner in which all its principles, ideas, forms, ways of living work to bring that
harmony out, manage its rhythmic play and secure its continuance or the
development of its motives. A civilisation in pursuit of this aim may be predominantly
material like modern European culture, predominantly mental and intellectual like the
old GraecoRoman or predominantly spiritual like the still persistent culture of India.
India's central conception is that of the Eternal, the Spirit here incased in matter,
involved and immanent in it and evolving on the material plane by rebirth of the
individual up the scale of being till in mental man it enters the world of ideas and
realm of conscious morality, dharma. This achievement, this victory over
unconscious matter develops its lines, enlarges its scope, elevates its levels until the
increasing manifestation of the sattwic or spiritual portion of the vehicle of mind
enables the individual mental being in man to identify himself with the pure spiritual
consciousness beyond Mind. India's social system is built upon this conception; her
philosophy formulates it; her religion is an aspiration to the spiritual consciousness
and its fruits; her art and literature have the same upward look; her whole Dharma or
law of being is founded upon it. Progress she admits, but this spiritual progress, not
the externally self-unfolding process of an always more and more prosperous and
efficient material civilisation. It is her founding of life upon this exalted conception
and her urge towards the spiritual and the eternal that constitute the distinct value of
her civilisation. And it is her fidelity, with whatever human shortcomings, to this
highest ideal that has made her people a nation apart in the human world.
But there are other cultures led by a different conception and even an opposite

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motive. And by the law of struggle which is the first law of existence in the material
universe, varying cultures are bound to come into conflict. A deep-seated urge in
Nature compels them to attempt to extend themselves and to destroy, assimilate and
replace all disparates or opposites. Conflict is not indeed the last and ideal stage; for
that comes when various cultures develop. freely, without hatred, misunderstanding
or aggression and even with an underlying sense of unity, their separate special
motives. But so long as the principle of struggle prevails, one must face the lesser
law; it is fatal to disarm in the midmost of the battle. The culture which gives up its
living separateness, the civilisation which neglects an active self-defence will be
swallowed up and the nation which lived by it will lose its soul and perish. Each
nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle
which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual
conception, and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence. For by its virtue
alone she has been one of the immortal nations; this alone has been the secret of
her amazing persistence and perpetual force of survival and revival.
Spiritual and temporal have indeed to be perfectly harmonised, for the spirit works
through mind and body. But the purely intellectual or heavily material culture of the
kind that Europe now favours bears in its heart the seed of death; for the living aim of
culture is the realisation on earth of the kingdom of heaven. India, though its urge is
towards the Eternal, since that is always the highest, the entirely real, still contains in
her own culture and her own philosophy a supreme reconciliation of the eternal and
the temporal and she need not seek it from outside. On the same principle the form
of the interdependence of mind, body and spirit in a harmonious culture is important
as well as the pure spirit; for the form is the rhythm of the spirit. It follows that to
break up the form is to injure the spirit's self-expression or at least to put it into grave
peril. Change of forms there may and will be, but the novel formation must be a new
self-expression or self-creation developed from within; it must be characteristic of the
spirit and not servilely borrowed from the embodiments of an alien nature. (CWSA
20:56-60)
***

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…Since some centuries Europe has become material, predatory, aggressive, and
has lost the harmony of the inner and outer man which is the true meaning of
civilisation and the efficient condition of a true progress. Material comfort, material
progress, material efficiency have become the gods of her worship. The modern
European civilisation which has invaded Asia and which all violent attacks on Indian
ideals represent, is the effective form of this materialistic culture. India, true to her
spiritual motive, has never shared in the physical attacks of Asia upon Europe; her
method has always been an infiltration of the world with her ideas, such as we today
see again in progress. But she has now been physically occupied by Europe and this
physical conquest must necessarily be associated with an attempt at cultural
conquest; that invasion too has also made some progress. On the other hand
English rule has enabled India still to retain her identity and social type; it has
awakened her to herself and has meanwhile, until she became conscious of her
strength, guarded her against the flood which would otherwise have submerged and
broken her civilisation.1 It is for her now to recover herself, defend her cultural
existence against the alien penetration, preserve her distinct spirit, essential principle
and characteristic forms for her own salvation and the total welfare of the human
race. (CWSA 20: 58)
What is Culture?
The culture of a people may be roughly described as the expression of a
consciousness of life which formulates itself in three aspects. There is a
side of thought, of ideal, of upward will and the soul’s aspiration; there is

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a side of creative self expression and appreciative aesthesis, intelligence
and imagination; and there is a side of practical and outward formulation.
A people’s philosophy and higher thinking give us its mind’s purest,
largest and most general formulation of its consciousness of life and its
dynamic view of existence. Its religion formulates the most intense form
of its upward will and the soul’s aspirations towards the fulfilment of its
highest ideal and impulse. Its art, poetry, literature provide for us the
creative expression and impression of its intuition, imagination, vital turn
and creative intelligence. Its society and politics provide in their forms an
outward frame in which the more external life works out what it can of its
inspiring ideal and of its special character and nature under the
difficulties of the environment. (CWSA 20: 106)
The Soul of Indian Culture
Philosophy and religion are the soul of Indian culture, inseparable from
each other and interpenetrative. The whole objective of Indian
philosophy, its entire raison d’être, is the knowledge of the spirit, the
experience of it and the right way to a spiritual existence; its single aim
coincides with the highest significance of religion. Indian religion draws
all its characteristic value from the spiritual philosophy which illumines its
supreme aspiration and colours even most of what is drawn from an
inferior range of religious experience. (CWSA 20: 110)
India: A Great Spiritual and Cultural Nation
…in India at a very early time the spiritual and cultural unity was made
complete and became the very stuff of the life of all this great surge of
humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas. The peoples of

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ancient India were never so much distinct nations sharply divided from
each other by a separate political and economic life as sub-peoples of a
great spiritual and cultural nation itself firmly separated, physically, from
other countries by the seas and the mountains and from other nations by
its strong sense of difference, its peculiar common religion and culture.
The creation of a political unity, however vast the area and however
many the practical difficulties, ought therefore to have been effected
more easily than could possibly be the unity of Europe. The cause of the
failure must be sought deeper down… (CWSA 20: 428)
None Reached Higher
…culture cannot be judged by material success; still less can spirituality
be brought to that touchstone. Philosophic, aesthetic, poetic, intellectual
Greece failed and fell while drilled and militarist Rome triumphed and
conquered, but no one dreams of crediting for that reason the victorious
imperial nation with a greater civilisation and a higher culture. The
religious culture of Judaea is not disproved or lessened by the
destruction of the Jewish State, any more than it is proved and given
greater value by the commercial capacity shown by the Jewish race in
their dispersion. But I admit, as ancient Indian thought admitted, that
material and economic capacity
and prosperity are a necessary, though not the highest or most essential
part of the total effort of human civilisation. In that respect India
throughout her long period of cultural activity can claim equality with any
ancient or mediaeval country. No people before modern times reached a
higher splendour of wealth, commercial prosperity, material appointment,
social organisation. (CWSA 20: 119)

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…no nation before the modern epoch carried scientific research so far
and with such signal success as India of ancient times. That is a truth
which lies on the face of history for all to read; it has been brought
forward with great force and much wealth of detail by Indian scholars
and scientists of high eminence, but it was already known and
acknowledged by European savants who had taken the trouble to make
a comparative study in the subject. Not only was India in the first rank in
mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, surgery, all the branches
of physical knowledge which were practised in ancient times, but she
was, along with the Greeks, the teacher of the Arabs from whom Europe
recovered the lost habit of scientific enquiry and got the basis from which
modern science started. In many directions India had the priority of
discovery,—to take only two striking examples among a multitude, the
decimal notation in mathematics or the perception that the earth is a
moving body in astronomy,—cālā p thvī sthirā bhātiṛ , the earth moves
and only appears to be still, said the Indian astronomer many centuries
before Galileo. (CWSA 20: 123)
Fullness of Life must precede the surpassing of Life
The ancient civilisation of India founded itself very expressly upon four
human interests; first, desire and enjoyment, next, material, economic
and other aims and needs of the mind and body, thirdly, ethical conduct
and the right law of individual and social life, and, lastly spiritual
liberation; kāma, artha, dharma, mokśa. The business of culture and
social organisation was to lead, to satisfy, to support these things in man
and to build some harmony of their forms and motives. Except in very
rare cases the satisfaction of the three mundane objects must run before
the other; fullness of life must precede the surpassing of life. The debt to

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the family, the community and the gods could not be scamped; earth
must have her due and the relative its play, even if beyond it there was
the glory of heaven or the peace of the Absolute. There was no
preaching of a general rush to the cave and the hermitage.
All-inclusive Spirituality
Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger
ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes
no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by
which we shall understand in the future man’s seeking for the eternal,
the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive
at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of
human life with the eternal and the divine values. Nor do we mean the
exclusion of anything whatsoever from our scope, of any of the great
aims of human life, any of the great problems of our modern world, any
form of human activity, any general or inherent impulse or characteristic
means of the desire of the soul of man for development, expansion,
increasing vigour and joy, light, power, perfection. Spirit without mind,
spirit without body is not the type of man, therefore a human spirituality
must not belittle the mind, life or body or hold them of small account: it
will rather hold them of high account, of immense importance, precisely
because they are the conditions and instruments of the life of the spirit in
man. The ancient Indian culture attached quite as much value to the
soundness, growth and strength of the mind, life and body as the old
Hellenic or the modern scientific thought, although for a different end
and a greater motive. Therefore to everything that serves and belongs to
the healthy fullness of these things, it gave free play, to the activity of the
reason, to science and philosophy, to the satisfaction of the aesthetic

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being and to all the many arts great or small, to the health and strength
of the body, to the physical and economical well-being, ease, opulence
of the race,—there was never a national ideal of poverty in India as
some would have us believe, nor was bareness or squalor the essential
setting of her spirituality,—and to its general military, political and social
strength and efficiency. Their aim was high, but firm and wide too was
the base they sought to establish and great the care bestowed on these
first instruments. Necessarily the new India will seek the same end in
new ways under the vivid impulse of fresh and large ideas and by an
instrumentality suited to more complex conditions; but the scope of her
effort and action and the suppleness and variety of her mind will not be
less, but greater than of old. Spirituality is not necessarily exclusive; it
can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive. (CWSA 20: 33)
The Governing Idea of Thought and Life and Action
The fundamental idea of all Indian religion is one common to the highest
human thinking everywhere. The supreme truth of all that is a Being or
an existence beyond the mental and physical appearances we contact
here. Beyond mind, life and body there is a Spirit and Self containing all
that is finite and infinite, surpassing all that is relative, a supreme
Absolute, originating and supporting all that is transient, a one Eternal. A
one transcendent, universal, original and sempiternal Divinity or divine
Essence, Consciousness, Force and Bliss is the fount and continent and
inhabitant of things. Soul, nature, life are only a manifestation or partial
phenomenon of this self-aware Eternity and this conscious Eternal. But
this Truth of being was not seized by the Indian mind only as a
philosophical speculation, a theological dogma, an abstraction
contemplated by the intelligence. It was not an idea to be indulged by

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the thinker in his study, but otherwise void of practical bearing on life. It
was not a mystic sublimation which could be ignored in the dealings of
man with the world and Nature. It was a living spiritual Truth, an Entity, a
Power, a Presence that could be sought by all according to their degree
of capacity and seized in a thousand ways through life and beyond life.
This Truth was to be lived and even to be made the governing idea of
thought and life and action. This recognition and pursuit of something or
someone Supreme is behind all forms the one universal credo of Indian
religion, and if it has taken a hundred shapes, it was precisely because it
was so much alive. The Infinite alone justifies the existence of the finite
and the finite by itself has no entirely separate value or independent
existence. Life, if it is not an illusion, is a divine Play, a manifestation of
the glory of the Infinite. Or it is a means by which the soul growing in
Nature through countless forms and many lives can approach, touch,
feel and unite itself through love and knowledge and faith and adoration
and a Godward will in works with this transcendent Being and this infinite
Existence. This Self or this self-existent Being is the one supreme reality,
and all things else are either only appearances or only true by
dependence upon it. It follows that self-realisation and God-realisation
are the great business of the living and thinking human being. All life and
thought are in the end a means of progress towards self-realisation and
God-realisation. (CWSA 20: 182)
The Aim of Human Existence
Indian culture recognises the spirit as the truth of our being and our life
as a growth and evolution of the spirit. It sees the Eternal, the Infinite,
the Supreme, the All; it sees this as the secret highest Self of all, this is
what it calls God, the Permanent, the Real, and it sees man as a soul

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and power of this being of God in Nature. The progressive growth of the
finite consciousness of man towards this Self, towards God, towards the
universal, the eternal, the infinite, in a word his growth into spiritual
consciousness, by the development of his ordinary ignorant natural
being into an illumined divine nature, this is for Indian thinking the
significance of life and the aim of human existence. To this deeper and
more spiritual idea of Nature and of existence a great deal of what is
strongest and most potential of fruitful consequences in recent European
thinking already turns with a growing impetus. This turn may be a
relapse to “barbarism” or it may be the high natural outcome of her own
increasing and ripened culture; that is a question for Europe to decide.
But always to India this ideal inspiration or rather this spiritual vision of
Self, God, Spirit, this nearness to a cosmic consciousness, a cosmic
sense and feeling, a cosmic idea, will, love, delight into which we can
release the limited, ignorant, suffering ego, this drive towards the
transcendental, eternal and infinite, and the moulding of man into a
conscious soul and power of that greater Existence have been the
engrossing motive of her philosophy, the sustaining force of her religion,
the fundamental idea of her civilisation and culture. (CWSA 20: 214)
Thoughts as Forces
All energies put into activity – thought, speech, feeling, act – go to
constitute Karma. These things help to envelop the nature in one
direction or another, and the nature and its actions and reactions
produce their consequences inward and outward: they also act on others
and create movements in the general sum of forces which can return
upon oneself sooner or later. Thoughts unexpressed can also go out as

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forces and produce their effects. It is a mistake to think that a thought or
will can have effect only when it is expressed in speech or act: the
unspoken thought, the unexpressed will are also active energies and can
produce their own vibrations, effects or reactions. (Letters of Yoga
SABCL 22: 477)
The Four Necessities of Human Life
Indian religion placed four necessities before human life. First, it
imposed upon the mind a belief in a highest consciousness or state of
existence universal and transcendent of the universe, from which all
comes, in which all lives and moves without knowing it and of which all
must one day grow aware, returning towards that which is perfect,
eternal and infinite. Next, it laid upon the individual life the need of self-
preparation by development and experience till man is ready for an effort
to grow consciously into the truth of this greater existence. Thirdly, it
provided it with a well-founded, well-explored,many-branching and
always enlarging way of knowledge and of spiritual or religious
discipline. Lastly, for those not yet ready for these higher steps it
provided an organisation of the individual and collective life, a framework
of personal and social discipline and conduct, of mental and moral and
vital development by which they could move each in his own limits and
according to his own nature in such a way as to become eventually
ready for the greater existence. (CWSA 20: 181)
The Ideals of the Indian Mind
It is a great error to suppose that spirituality flourishes best in an
impoverished soil with the life half-killed and the intellect discouraged

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and intimidated. The spirituality that so flourishes is something morbid,
hectic and exposed to perilous reactions. It is when the race has lived
most richly and thought most profoundly that spirituality finds its heights
and its depths and its constant and many-sided fruition… (CWSA 20: 10)
Everywhere we find this tendency. The ideals of the Indian mind
have included the height of self-assertion of the human spirit and its
thirst of independence and mastery and possession and the height also
of its self-abnegation, dependence and submission and self-giving. In life
the ideal of opulent living and the ideal of poverty were carried to the
extreme of regal splendor and the extreme of satisfied nudity. Its
intuitions were sufficiently clear and courageous not to be blinded by its
own most cherished ideas and fixed habits of life. (CWSA 20: 11)
The First Distinctive Character of Indian Culture
…the people of India, even the “ignorant masses” have this distinction that they are
by centuries of training nearer to the inner realities, are divided from them by a less
thick veil of the universal ignorance and are more easily led back to a vital glimpse of
God and Spirit, self and eternity than the mass of men or even the cultured elite
anywhere else. Where else could the lofty, austere and difficult teaching of a Buddha
have seized so rapidly on the popular mind? Where else could the songs of a
Tukaram, a Ramprasad, a Kabir, the Sikh gurus and the chants of the Tamil saints
with their fervid devotion but also their profound spiritual thinking have found so
speedy an echo and formed a popular religious literature? This strong permeation or
close nearness of the spiritual turn, this readiness of the mind of a whole nation to
turn to the highest realities is the sign and fruit of an age-long, a real and a still living
and supremely spiritual culture. (CWSA 20:186)
Spirituality has meant hitherto a recognition of something greater than mind and life,
the aspiration to a consciousness pure, great, divine beyond our normal mental and
vital nature, a surge and rising of the soul in man out of the littleness and bondage of

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our lower parts towards a greater thing secret within him. That at least is the idea,
the experience, which is the very core of Indian thinking. (CWSA 20: 121)
A spiritual aspiration was the governing force of this culture, its core of thought, its
ruling passion. Not only did it make spirituality the highest aim of life, but it even
tried, as far as that could be done in the past conditions of the human race, to turn
the whole of life towards spirituality. But since religion is in the human mind the first
native, if imperfect form of the spiritual impulse, the predominance of the spiritual
idea, its endeavour to take hold of life, necessitated a casting of thought and action
into the religious mould and a persistent filling of every circumstance of life with the
religious sense; it demanded a pervading religio-philosophic culture. (CWSA 20:
179)
Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is
native to it. India saw from the beginning, —and, even in her ages of reason and her
age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight,—that life cannot be
rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its
externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a
keen eye for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organise the
arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it
stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the
universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his
superficial sight, that there were other powers behind, other powers within man
himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of
himself, that the invisible always surrounds the visible, the suprasensible the
sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite. She saw too that man has the
power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than
he is,—truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even
now too great for its common intelligence. She saw the myriad gods beyond man,
God beyond the gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there
were ranges of life beyond our life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and
above these she saw the splendours of the spirit. Then with that calm audacity of her
intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual
or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these

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things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could
conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with
God, become the ineffable Brahman. And with the logical practicality and sense of
science and organised method which distinguished her mentality, she set forth
immediately to find out the way. Hence from long ages of this insight and practice
there was ingrained in her her spirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her great
yearning to grapple with the infinite and possess it, her ineradicable religious sense,
her idealism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art and her philosophy. (CWSA 20:
6)
[What We Mean by a Spiritual View of Existence]
But first let us say what we do not mean by this ideal. Clearly it does not signify that
we shall regard earthly life as a temporal vanity, try to become all of us as soon as
possible monastic ascetics, frame our social life into a preparation for the monastery
or cavern or mountain-top or make of it a static life without any great progressive
ideals but only some aim which has nothing to do with earth or the collective
advance of the human race. That may have been for some time a tendency of the
Indian mind, but it was never the whole tendency. Nor does spirituality mean the
moulding of the whole type of the national being to suit the limited dogmas, forms,
tenets of a particular religion… (CWSA 20: 33)
Nor do we mean the exclusion of anything whatsoever from our scope, of any of the
great aims of human life, any of the great problems of our modern world, any form of
human activity, any
general or inherent impulse or characteristic means of the desire of the soul of man
for development, expansion, increasing vigour and joy, light, power, perfection…
(CWSA 20: 33)
But still there is a great difference between the spiritual and the purely material and
mental view of existence. The spiritual view holds that the mind, life, body are man’s
means and not his aims and even that they are not his last and highest means; it
sees them as his outer instrumental self and not his whole being. It sees the infinite
behind all things finite and it adjudges the value of the finite by higher infinite values
of which they are the imperfect translation and towards which, to a truer expression

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of them, they are always trying to arrive. It sees a greater reality than the apparent
not only behind man and the world, but within man and the world, and this soul, self,
divine thing in man it holds to be that in him which is of the highest importance, that
which everything else in him must try in whatever way to bring out and express, and
this soul, self, divine presence in the world it holds to be that which man has ever to
try to see and recognize through all appearances, to unite his thought and life with it
and in it to find his unity with his fellows. This alters necessarily our whole normal
view of things; even in preserving all the aims human life, it will give them a different
sense and direction. (CWSA 20:35)
The Second Distinctive Character of Indian Culture
But… spirituality itself does not flourish on earth in the void, even as our
mountaintops do not rise like those of an enchantment of dream out of the clouds
without a base. When we look at the past of India, what strikes us next is her
stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of life and joy of life, her almost
unimaginably prolific creativeness. For three thousand years at least,—it is indeed
much longer,—she has been creating abundantly and incessantly, lavishly, with an
inexhaustible manysidedness, republics and kingdoms and empires, philosophies
and cosmogonies and sciences and creeds and arts and poems and all kinds of
monuments, palaces and temples and public works, communities and societies and
religious orders, laws and codes and rituals, physical sciences, psychic sciences,
systems of Yoga, systems of politics and administration, arts spiritual, arts worldly,
trades, industries, fine crafts,—the list is endless and in each item there is almost a
plethora of activity. She creates and creates and is not satisfied and is not tired; she
will not have an end of it, seems hardly to need a space for rest, a time for inertia
and lying fallow. She expands too outside her borders; her ships cross the ocean
and the fine superfluity of her wealth brims over to Judaea and Egypt and Rome; her
colonies spread her arts and epics and creeds in the Archipelago; her traces are
found in the sands of Mesopotamia; her religions conquer China and Japan and
spread westward as far as Palestine and Alexandria, and the figures of the
Upanishads and the sayings of the Buddhists are reechoed on the lips of Christ.
Everywhere, as on her soil, so in her works there is the teeming of a superabundant

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energy of life. European critics complain that in her ancient architecture,sculpture
and art there is no reticence, no holding back of riches, no blank spaces, that she
labours to fill every rift with ore, occupy every inch with plenty. Well, but defect or no,
that is the necessity of her superabundance of life, of the teeming of the infinite
within her. She lavishes her riches because she must, as the Infinite fills every inch
of space with the stirring of life and energy because it is the Infinite. (CWSA 20: 8)
The Third Distinctive Character of Indian Culture
But this supreme spirituality and this prolific abundance of the energy and joy of life
and creation do not make all that the spirit of India has been in its past. It is not a
confused splendor of tropical vegetation under heavens of a pure sapphire infinity. It
is only to eyes unaccustomed to such wealth that there seems to be a confusion in
this crowding of space with rich forms of life, a luxurious disorder of excess or a
wanton lack of measure, clear balance and design. For the third power of the ancient
Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality, at once austere and rich, robust and minute,
powerful and delicate, massive in principle and curious in detail. Its chief impulse
was that of order and arrangement, but an order founded upon a seeking for the
inner law and truth of things and having in view always the possibility of
conscientious practice. India has been preeminently the land of the Dharma and the
Shastra. She searched for the inner truth and law of each human or cosmic activity,
its dharma; that found, she laboured to cast into elaborate form and detailed law of
arrangement its application in fact and rule of life. Her first period was luminous with
the discovery of the Spirit; her second completed the discovery of the Dharma; her
third elaborated into detail the first simpler formulation of the Shastra; but none was
exclusive, the three elements are always present. In this third period the curious
elaboration of all life into a science and an art assumes extraordinary proportions.
The mere mass of the intellectual production during the period from Asoka well into
the Mahomedan epoch is something truly prodigious, as can be seen at once if one
studies the account which recent scholarship gives of it, and we must remember that
that scholarship as yet only deals with a fraction of what is still lying extant and what
is extant is only a small percentage of what was once written and known. There is no
historical parallel for such an intellectual labour and activity before the invention of

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printing and the facilities of modern science; yet all that mass of research and
production and curiosity of detail was accomplished without these facilities and with
no better record than the memory and for an aid the perishable palm-leaf. Nor was
all this colossal literature confined to philosophy and theology, religion and Yoga,
logic and rhetoric and grammar and linguistics, poetry and drama, medicine and
astronomy and the sciences; it embraced all life, politics and society, all the arts from
painting to dancing, all the sixty-four accomplishments, everything then known that
could be useful to life or interesting to the mind, even, for instance, to such practical
side minutiae as the breeding and training of horses and elephants, each of which
had its Shastra and its art, its apparatus of technical terms, its copious literature. In
each subject from the largest and most momentous to the smallest and most trivial
there was expended the same all-embracing, opulent, minute and thorough
intellectuality. On one side there is an insatiable curiosity, the desire of life to know
itself in every detail, on the other a spirit of organisation and scrupulous order, the
desire of the mind to tread through life with a harmonised knowledge and in the right
rhythm and measure. Thus an ingrained and dominant spirituality, an inexhaustible
vital creativeness and gust of life and, mediating between them, a powerful,
penetrating and scrupulous intelligence combined of the rational, ethical and
aesthetic mind each at a high intensity of action, created the harmony of the ancient
Indian culture. (CWSA 20: 10)
The Fourth Distinctive Character of Indian Culture
The European eye is struck in Indian spiritual thought by the Buddhistic and
illusionist denial of life. But it must be remembered that this is only one side of its
philosophic tendency which assumed exaggerated proportions only in the period of
decline. In itself too that was simply one result, in one direction, of a tendency of the
Indian mind which is common to all its activities, the impulse to follow each motive,
each specialisation of motive even, spiritual, intellectual, ethical, vital, to its extreme
point and to sound its utmost possibility. Part of its innate direction was to seek in
each not only for its fullness of detail, but for its infinite, its absolute, its profoundest
depth or its highest pinnacle. It knew that without a “fine excess” we cannot break
down the limits which the dull temper of the normal mind opposes to knowledge and

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thought and experience; and it had in seeking this point a boundless courage and yet
a sure tread. Thus it carried each tangent of philosophic thought, each line of
spiritual experience to its farthest point, and chose to look from that farthest point at
all existence, so as to see what truth or power such a view could give it. It tried to
know the whole of divine nature and to see too as high as it could beyond nature and
into whatever there might be of supradivine. When it formulated a spiritual atheism, it
followed that to its acme of possible vision. When, too, it indulged in materialistic
atheism,—though it did that only with a side glance, as the freak of an insatiable
intellectual curiosity,—yet it formulated it straight out, boldly and nakedly, without the
least concession to idealism or ethicism. Everywhere we find this tendency. The
ideals of the Indian mind have included the height of self-assertion of the human
spirit and its thirst of independence and mastery and possession and the height also
of its self-abnegation, dependence and submission and self-giving. In life the ideal of
opulent living and the ideal of poverty were carried to the extreme of regal splendor
and the extreme of satisfied nudity. Its intuitions were sufficiently clear and
courageous not to be blinded by its own most cherished ideas and fixed habits of life.
If it was obliged to stereotype caste as the symbol of its social order, it never quite
forgot, as the caste-spirit is apt to forget, that the human soul and the human mind
are beyond caste. For it had seen in the lowest human being the Godhead,
Narayana. It emphasised distinctions only to turn upon them and deny all
distinctions. If all its political needs and circumstances compelled it at last to
exaggerate the monarchical principle and declare the divinity of the king and to
abolish its earlier republican city states and independent federations as too
favourable to the centrifugal tendency, if therefore it could not develop democracy,
yet it had the democratic idea, applied it in the village, in council and municipality,
within the caste, was the first to assert a divinity in the people and could cry to the
monarch at the height of his power, “O king, what art thou but the head servant of
the demos?” Its idea of the golden age was a free spiritual anarchism. Its spiritual
extremism could not prevent it from fathoming through a long era the life of the
senses and its enjoyments, and there too it sought the utmost richness of sensuous
detail and the depths and intensities of sensuous experience. Yet it is notable that
this pursuit of the most opposite extremes never resulted in disorder; and its most
hedonistic period offers nothing that at all resembles the unbridled corruption which a
similar tendency has more than once produced in Europe. For the Indian mind is not

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only spiritual and ethical, but intellectual and artistic, and both the rule of the intellect
and the rhythm of beauty are hostile to the spirit of chaos. In every extreme the
Indian spirit seeks for a law in that extreme and a rule, measure and structure in its
application. Besides, this sounding of extremes is balanced by a still more ingrained
characteristic, the synthetical tendency, so that having pushed each motive to its
farthest possibility the Indian mind returns always towards some fusion of the
knowledge it has gained and to a resulting harmony and balance in action and
institution. Balance and rhythm which the Greeks arrived at by self-limitation, India
arrived at by its sense of intellectual, ethical and aesthetic order and the synthetic
impulse of its mind and life. (CWSA 20: 12)
Learning Outcome: The above passages provides a robust idea about Indian
culture and values. It is easy to be misled amidst various points of view based on
western historians. Here the students learn about the fundamental beliefs and
practices of the people of this country who faced alien invasions and influences and
maintained the cultural ethos of the country known for its deeper search for Truth
and Harmony. It is enlightening to know how the various systems of social
organizations are sustained, nourished and maintained through a well-knit family and
community network. The student gains insight into the fundamental value system
that hold people together and the Shakti that leads the Nation.
India’s Mission
…with India rests the future of the world. Whenever she is aroused from her
sleep, she gives forth some wonderful shining ray of light to the world which is
enough to illuminate the nations. Others live for centuries on what is to her the
thought of a moment. God gave to her the book of Ancient Wisdom and bade
her keep it sealed in her heart, until the time should come for it to be opened.
Sometimes a page or a chapter is revealed, sometimes only a single sentence.
Such sentences have been the inspiration of ages and fed humanity for many
hundreds of years. So too when India sleeps, materialism grows apace and the
light is covered up in darkness. But when materialism thinks herself about to

Page3
triumph, lo and behold! a light rushes out from the East and where is
Materialism? Returned to her native night. (Bande Mataram, CWSA 6:890)
Each nation is a Shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by
the principle which it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy
of a great spiritual conception, and fidelity to it is the very principle of her
existence. For by its virtue alone she has been one of the immortal nations;
this alone has been the secret of her amazing persistence and perpetual force
of survival and revival. (The Renaissance in India, CWSA 20: 57)
India has been preeminently the land of the Dharma and
the Shastra. She searched for the inner truth and law of
each human or cosmic activity, its dharma; that found,
she laboured to cast into elaborate form and detailed
law of arrangement its application in fact and rule of life.
Her first period was luminous with the discovery of the
Spirit; her second completed the discovery of the
Dharma; her third elaborated into detail the first simpler
formulation of the Shastra; but none was exclusive, the three elements are
always present. (CWSA 20: 9)
India is not the earth, rivers and mountains of this land, neither is it a
collective name for the inhabitants of this country. India is a living being, as
much living as, say, Shiva. India is a goddess as a Shiva is a god. If she likes,
she can manifest in human form. The Mother (CWM 13: 372)
We have all things else, but we are empty of strength, void of energy. We have
abandoned Shakti and are therefore abandoned by Shakti. The Mother is not in
our hearts, in our brains, in our arms. (CWSA 6: 80)
The deeper we look, the more we shall be convinced that the one thing
wanting, which we must strive to acquire before all others, is strength
physical, strength mental, strength moral, but above all strength spiritual

Page3
which is the one inexhaustible and imperishable source of all the others. If we
have strength, everything else will be added to us easily and naturally. In the
absence of strength we are like men in a dream which have hands but cannot
seize or strike, which have feet but cannot run. (CWSA 6: 83)
If India were to survive, she must be made young again. Rushing and billowing
streams of energy must be poured into her; her soul must become, as it was
in the old times, like the surges, vast, puissant, calm or turbulent at will, an
ocean of action or of force. (CWSA 6: 83)
Learning Outcome: It is of great importance that we learn about our
Motherland in its entirety. The youth, especially need to respect and value all
that is Indian, as well as understand the shortcomings. The above passage
provided the student an insight into the land of their birth, its spiritual
significance, its innate quality, at the same time its role in the world. Every
country and Nation is endowed with a special gift born from its specific belief
and philosophy. It relevant for the young mind to know and be proud of India.
THE CHAURVARNA SYSTEM
We are told that the institution of the four orders of society was the result
of an economic evolution complicated by political causes. For while we
are satisfied when we have found the practical and material causes of a
social phenomenon and do not care to look farther, they cared little or
only subordinately for its material factors and looked always first and
foremost for its symbolic, religious or psychological significance.

Page3
Or let us take, for this example will serve us best, the Vedic institution
of the fourfold order, caturvarna, miscalled the system of the four
castes,—for caste is a conventional, varn. a a symbolic and typal
institution.
This appears in the Purushasukta ofthe Veda, where the four orders are
described as having sprungfrom the body of the creative Deity, from his
head, arms, thighsand feet. To us
this is merely a poetical image and
its sense is that the Brahmins were
the men of knowledge, the
Kshatriyas the men of power, the
Vaishyas the producers and
support of society, the Shudras its
servants. As if that were all, as if
the men of those days would have
so profound a reverence for mere
poetical figures like this of the
body of Brahma or that other of the
marriages of Sury¯ a, would have
built upon them elaborate systems of ritual and sacred ceremony,
enduring institutions, great demarcations of social type and ethical
discipline.We read always our own mentality into that of these ancient
forefathers and it is therefore that we can find in them nothing but
imaginative barbarians.
To them this symbol of the Creator’s body was more than an image, it
expressed a divine reality. Human society was for them an attempt to

Page3
express in life the cosmic Purusha who has expressed himself otherwise
in the material and the supraphysical universe. Man and the cosmos are
both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden Reality.
The spiritual idea governs all; the symbolic religious forms which support
it are fixed in principle; the social forms are lax, free and capable of
infinite development. One thing, however, begins to progress towards a
firm fixity and this is the psychological type. Thus we have first the
symbolic idea of The four orders, expressing—to employ an abstractly
figurative language which the Vedic thinkers would not have used nor
perhaps understood, but which helps best our modern understanding—
the Divine as knowledge in man, the Divine as power, the Divine as
production, enjoyment and mutuality, the Divine as service,
obedience and work.
These divisions answer to four cosmic principles, the Wisdom that
conceives the order and principle of things, the Power that
sanctions, upholds and enforces it, the Harmony that creates the
arrangement of its parts, theWork that carries out what the rest
direct.
Next, out of this idea there developed a firm but not yet rigid social order
based primarily upon temperament and psychic type [GUNA] with a
corresponding ethical discipline and secondarily upon the social and
economic function. [KARMA]
But the function was determined by its suitability to the type and its
helpfulness to the discipline; it was not the primary or sole factor. The
first, the symbolic stage of this evolution is predominantly religious and

Page3
spiritual; the other elements, psychological, ethical, economic, physical
are there but subordinated
to the spiritual and religious idea. The second stage, which we may call
the typal, is predominantly psychological and ethical; all else, even the
spiritual and religious, is subordinate to the psychological idea and to the
ethical ideal which expresses it.
Religion becomes then a mystic sanction for the ethical motive and
discipline, Dharma; that becomes its chief social utility, and for the
rest it takes a more and more other-worldly turn. The idea of the
direct expression of the divine Being or cosmic Principle in man ceases
to dominate or to be the leader and in the forefront; it recedes, stands in
the background and finally disappears from the practice and in the end
even from the theory of life.
[The Human Cycle, pp. 9-11]
Chaturvarna
Hinduism recognizes human nature and makes no such impossible demand. It sets
one ideal for the saint, another for the man of action, a third for the trader, a fourth
for the serf. To prescribe the same ideal for all is to bring about varnasankara, the
confusion of duties, and destroy society and the race. If we are content to be serfs,
then indeed boycott is a sin for us, not because it is a violation of love, but because it

Page3
is a violation of the Sudra’s duty of obedience and contentment. Politics is the field of
the Kshatriya and the morality of the Kshatriya ought to govern our political actions.
To impose on politics the Brahminical duty of saintly sufferance, is to preach
varnasankara. (Bande Mataram, CWSA 7: 1118)
***
The Un-Hindu Spirit of Caste Rigidity
The Bengalee reports Srijut Bal Gangadhar Tilak to have made a definite
pronouncement on the caste system. “The prevailing idea of social inequality is
working immense evil”, says the Nationalist leader of the Deccan. This
pronouncement is only natural from an earnest Hindu and a sincere Nationalist like
Srijut Tilak. The baser ideas underlying the degenerate perversions of the original
caste system, the mental attitude which bases them on a false foundation of caste,
pride and arrogance, of a divinely ordained superiority depending on the accident of
birth, of a fixed and intolerant inequality, are inconsistent with the supreme teaching,
the basic spirit of Hinduism which sees the one invariable and indivisible Divinity in
every individual being. Nationalism is simply the passionate aspiration for the
realisation of that Divine Unity in the nation, a unity in which all the component
individuals, however various and apparently unequal their functions as political,
social or economic factors, are yet really and fundamentally one and equal. In the
ideal of Nationalism which India will set before the world, there will be an essential
equality between man and man, between caste and caste, between class and class,
all being as Mr. Tilak has pointed out different but equal and united parts of the Virat
Purusha as realised in the nation. The insistent preaching of our religion and the
work of the Indian Nationalist is to bring home to every one of his countrymen this
ideal of their country’s religion and philosophy. We are intolerant of autocracy
because it is the denial in politics of this essential equality, we object to the modern
distortion of the caste system because it is the denial in society of the same essential
equality. While we insist on reorganising the nation into a democratic unity politically,
we recognise that the same principle of reorganisation ought to and inevitably will
assert itself socially; even if, as our opponents choose to imagine, we are desirous of
confining its working to politics, our attempts will be fruitless, for the principle once
realised in politics must inevitably assert itself in society. No monopoly racial or

Page3
hereditary can form part of the Nationalist’s scheme of the future, his dream of the
day for the advent of which he is striving and struggling.
The caste system was once productive of good, and as a fact has
been a necessary phase of human progress through which all the civilizations of the
world have had to pass. The autocratic form of government has similarly had its use
in the development of the world’s polity, for there was certainly a time when it was
the only kind of political organisation that made the preservation of society possible.
The Nationalist does not quarrel with the past, but he insists on its transformation,
the transformation of individual or class autocracy into the autocracy, self-rule or
Swaraj, of the nation and of the fixed, hereditary, anti-democratic caste-organisation
into the pliable, self-adapting, democratic distribution of function at which socialism
aims. In the present absolutism in politics and the present narrow caste-organisation
in society he finds a negation of that equality which his religion enjoins. Both must be
transformed.The historic problem that the present attitude of Indian Nationalism at
once brings to the mind, as to how a caste-governed society could co-existwith a
democratic religion and philosophy, we do not propose to consider here today. We
only point out that Indian Nationalism must by its inherent tendencies move towards
the removal of unreasoning and arbitrary distinctions and inequalities. Ah! he will
say, this is exactly what we Englishmen have been telling you all these years. You
must get rid of your caste before you can have democracy. There is just a little flaw
in this advice of the Anglo-Indian monitors, it puts the cart before the horse, and that
is the reason why we have always refused to act upon it.
It does not require much expenditure of thought to find out that the only way to
rid the human mind of abuses and superstitions is through a transformation of spirit
and not merely of machinery. We must educate every Indian, man, woman and child,
in the ideals of our religion and philosophy before we can rationally expect our
society to reshape itself in the full and perfect spirit of the Vedantic gospel of
equality. We dwell on this commonsense idea here at the risk of being guilty of
repetition. Education on a national scale is an indispensable precondition of our
social amelioration. And because such education is impossible except through the
aid of state-finance, therefore, even if there were no other reason, the Nationalist
must emphasise the immediate need of political freedom without which Indians
cannot obtain the necessary control over their money. So long as we are under an
alien bureaucracy, we cannot have the funds needed for the purpose of an adequate

Page3
national education, and what little education we are given falls far short of the
Nationalist ideal, being mainly concerned with the fostering of a spirit of sordid
contentment with things that be. Apart from the question of the cultivation of those
virtues which only come in the wake of liberty, apart from the question of
reorganisation of the country, if we were to look into the problem in its purely social
aspect, even then we are confronted with the primary need of political emancipation
as the condition precedent of further fruitful activity.
The Nationalist has been putting the main stress on the necessity of political
freedom almost to the exclusion of the other needs of the nation, not because he is
not alive to the vital importance of those needs of economic renovation, of education,
of social transformation, but because he knows that in order that his ideal of equality
may be brought to its fullest fruition, he must first bring about the political freedom
and federation of his country. (Bande Mataram CWSA 6-7: 678)
On Chaturvarna
One of the key issues of human existence is the relation between the individual and
the collectivity. The conflict between classes as envisaged by Marx is an important
consideration but from the psychological standpoint, the conflict between the individual
and the society is a more basic conflict to be resolved. The Indian mind aimed at a
balance between the free growth of communal life and the full flowering of the individual
and for this purpose erected a framework characterised by a triple quartette :(1)
(a) the first quartette was a graded synthesis of the four-fold objects of life : Vital
desire and hedonistic enjoyment (kama), personal and communal interest (artha),
moral right and law (dharma) and spirituality (moksha);
(b) the second quartette was the Caturvarna or the four-fold order of the society;
[C] the third quartette was the four-fold scale and succession of the hierarchical
stages of life : student (Brahmacharya), house holder (Garhasthya), forest recluse
(Vanaprastha) and free super-social man (Sannyasa).
The four types of functioning people constituted the four-fold order of the society in
ancient India. This was the original Caturvarna system. The economic order of the

Page3
society was also mapped and graded to suit this four-fold classification. However it is
worthwhile to note that the intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth of the individual was
given a higher status that the economical need.
The economical man (The Vaishya) held an honourable but a lower position in the
social hierarchy: he was placed third while the lead was in the hands of the intellectual
and political classes. In fact, at different points in the history of social evolution,
different factors have been thrown up by the Zeitgeist - The Time-spirit, to dominate
society. In the past, non-economic factors were more important when the man of
learning had a higher social status.
Today the position has changed. With the decline of the Brahmin (the aristocracy of
letters and culture) and the Kshatriya (the military aristocracy), the commercial and
industrial classes, Vaishya and Sudra, 'Capital' and Labour' have come to the
forefront and after casting out their rivals are themselves engaged in a fratricidal
conflict. Sri Aurobindo 3)
explains that the Vaishya still predominates with his stamp of
commercialism and utilitarianism which is even extended to the realms of science, art,
poetry and philosophy. Sri Aurobindo also prophesises that this state will not continue
and Labour will get its due dignity and a time might come when other non-economic
factors will again come to the forefront and dominate the life of an elevated human
race.
The Caturvarna in the Conventional stage:
Unfortunately, with the passage of time, the psychological and ethical ideas ceased
to be the guiding principles and the typal life became fixed, conventional, hereditary
and traditional. The plasticity of the typal stage was replaced by a fixed and formalised
arrangement. Sri Aurobindo points out that the conventional stage is born when the
outward supports of the ideal become more important than the ideal itself. In the
evolution of castes, the outward supports that held the four-fold order comprised
primarily of
(a)birth
(b)economic factors
(c)religious ritual and sacrament and
(d) family custom.

Page3
Each of these factors began to exaggerate itself. Initially, faculty and capacity were
more important than birth but as the type fixed itself, its maintenance by education and
tradition became necessary and these in turn fixed themselves in hereditary grooves.
The son of a Brahmin also became conventionally a Brahmin and the maintenance of
ethical and psychological types receded to the background. The four orders of the
Caturvarna became fixed and rigid in a mechanical system of castes that became a
matter of convention.
Sri Aurobindo describes, 'Finally, even the economic basis began to disintegrate :
birth, family customs and remnants, deformations, new accretions of meaningless or
fanciful religious sign and ritual, the very scarecrow and caricature of the old profound
symbolism, became the riveting links of the system of caste in the iron age of the old
society. In the full economic period of the caste the priest and pundit masquerade in
the name of the Brahmin, the aristocrat and feudal baron under the name of Kshatriya,
the trader and money-getter under the name of Vaishya, the half-fed labourer and
economic serf under the name of the Shudra. When the economic basis also breaks
down, then the unclean and diseased decrepitude of the old system has begun; it has
become a name, a shell, a sham and must either be dissolved in the crucible of an
individualist period of society or else fatally affect with weakness and falsehood the
system of life that clings to it. That in visible fact is the last and present state of the
caste system in India.’(16)
The four orders of the Caturvarna figuratively sprang from the limbs of the creative
deity — the cosmic godhead, from his head, arms, thighs and feet. Ordinarily this is
construed to indicate that Brahmins were men of knowledge, Kshatriyas were men of
power, Vaishyas were the producers and support of the society and the Sudras were its
servants. But this is a too superficial reading of the imagery which actually tried to
depict how the Divine expresses itself in man and his myriad activities ~ the Divine as
knowledge in man, the Divine as Power, the Divine as production, enjoyment and
mutuality and the Divine as service, obedience and work. These divisions correspond
to the four cosmic principles whose efflorescence need the help of the four great powers
of the Divine Shakti -
(a) Wisdom that conceives the order and principle of things and manifested by
Maheswari, Goddess of supreme knowledge;

Page3
(b) The Power that sanctions, upholds and enforces it,
aided by Mahakali, Goddess of the supreme strength;
(c) The Harmony that creates the arrangements of its parts
with the help of Mahalakshmi, the Goddess of love and
beauty; and
(d) The Work that carries out what the rest directs with the
sanction of Mahasaraswati, Goddess of skill and perfection. *
(Footnote text: These four principles effected by the four
Powers of the Divine Shakti fufill the mission of the four kings
of the Vedic pantheon-Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman and Bhaga - they represent the purity
and vastness of The Truth-Consciousness, its law of light, love and harmony, its power
and aspiration, its pure and happy enjoyment of things(24)
.)
These four principles justified the four-fold order of the society. They can also be
used to justify and build up an ideal four-fold personality as the same Reality expresses
itself equally in man and the collectivity. Sri Aurobindo describes that the very nature of
our life is such that it is at every moment subject to the influence of these four
principles at work -- 'Our life itself is at once an inquiry after truth and knowledge, a
struggle and battle of our will with ourselves and surrounding forces, a constant
production, adaptation, application of skill to the material of life and a sacrifice and
service.'(25)
LEARNING OUTCOME:
This passage gives the student an understanding of the foundations of
Indian cultural system. The triple quartet is essential to the knowledge of
the Indian way of living throughout the centuries. It provides the basis of
the Indian social organization. One understands the network of

Page3
relationships between various groups based on the ability and economic
preoccupation.
EXERCISES:
Q1. What do you understand by the ‘chaturvarna’?
Q2. Describe the four ashramas and their function.
Q3. What is the origin of the caste system in India?
Q4. Mention the four cosmic Principles or Divine Shakti?
Four Ashramas
This system of ashramas is believed to be prevalent since the 5th
century BCE in Hindu society. However, historians say that these stages
of life were always viewed more as 'ideals' than as common practice.
According to one scholar, even in its very beginnings, after the first
ashrama, a young adult could choose which of the other ashramas he
would wish to pursue for the rest of his life. Today, it is not expected that

Page3
a Hindu male should go through the four stages, but it still stands as an
important "pillar" of Hindu socio-religious tradition.
In Hinduism, human life is believed to comprise four stages. These are
called "ashramas" and every man should ideally go through each of
these stages:
• The First Ashrama - "Brahmacharya" or the Student Stage
• The Second Ashrama - "Grihastha" or the Householder Stage
• The Third Ashrama - "Vanaprastha" or the Hermit Stage
• The Fourth Ashrama - "Sannyasa" or the Wandering Ascetic Stage
Brahmacharya - The Celibate Student:
This is a period of formal education. It lasts until the age of 25, during
which, the young male leaves home to stay with a guru and attain both
spiritual and practical knowledge. During this period, he is called a
brahmachari, and is prepared for his future profession, as well as for his
family, and social and religious life ahead.
Grihastha - The Married Family Man:
This period begins when a man gets married, and undertakes the
responsibility for earning a living and supporting his family. At this stage,
Hinduism supports the pursuit of wealth (artha) as a necessity, and
indulgence in sexual pleasure (kama), under certain defined social and
cosmic norms. This ashrama lasts until around the age of 50. According
to the Laws of Manu, when a person's skin wrinkles and his hair greys,
he should go out into the forest. However, in real life, most Hindus are so
much in love with this second ashrama that the Grihastha stage lasts a

Page3
lifetime!
Vanaprastha - The Hermit in Retreat:
This stage of a man begins when his duty as a householder comes to an
end: He has become a grandfather, his children are grown up, and have
established lives of their own. At this age, he should renounce all
physical, material and sexual pleasures, retire from his social and
professional life, leave his home, and go to live in a forest hut, spending
his time in prayers. He is allowed to take his wife along, but is supposed
to maintain little contact with the family. This kind of life is indeed very
harsh and cruel for an aged person. No wonder, this third ashrama is
now nearly obsolete.
Sannyasa - The Wandering Recluse:
At this stage, a man is supposed to be totally devoted to God. He is a
sannyasi, he has no home, no other attachment; he has renounced all
desires, fears and hopes, duties and responsibilities. He is virtually
merged with God, all his worldly ties are broken, and his sole concern
becomes attaining moksha, or release from the circle of birth and death.
(Suffice it to say, very few Hindu men can go up to this stage of
becoming a complete ascetic.) When he dies, the funeral ceremonies
(Pretakarma) are performed by his son and heir.
Learning Outcome: The knowledge of the ashramas, which means a
resting place or preparation for the next stage is fundamental to the
Indian way of life. It gives the student an idea about the priorities of life
at every stage of his growth and development.

Page3
Purusharthas or The Four Aims of Human Life
Jayaram V
Purusha means either God or a human being. Artha means,
purpose, an object or objective. "Purusharthas" means objectives of
a person or a human being. Purusha does not mean male in the
physical sense, but any individual soul or Self in its purest,
undifferentiated aspect. So the Purusharthas are applicable to both
men and women equally. However, the Hindu law books place

Page3
greater emphasis upon men in performing their obligatory duties
and associative roles for women. Sons in a family may have
emotional attachment with their mother but have an obligatory duty
towards their father, who is responsible for their birth since, as per
Hindu beliefs, he carries them in his semen before he transfer them
to his wife. A father also lives through his sons. He transmits his
powers, name and fame, to his eldest son before he departs from
this world. Thus, the Vedic tradition, as is the case with many
ancient religious traditions, is predominantly men oriented.
The Purusharthas serve as pointers in the life of a human being.
They are based on the vision of God which is evident in the
creation He manifested and which can be followed by man to be
part of that vision and in harmony with His aims. His worlds are
established on the principles of dharma. They are filled with the
abundance of material and spiritual beings and energies, who seek
fulfillment by achieving their desires and liberation. Since man is
God in his microcosmic aspect, he too should emulate God and
manifest the same reality in his own little world. He should pursue
the same aims, experience life in its fullness and be an instrument
of God by serving the purpose for which he has been created. The
four chief aims or Purusharthas are:
1. Dharma (righteousness)
2. Artha (wealth)
3. Kama (desire) and
4. Moksha (salvation or liberation).

Page3
The rationale behind these Purusharthas becomes clear when we
consider the basic tenets of Hinduism. Man is an aspect of God. He
is God's objective reality in creation. He exists in relationship with
God like a reflection in the mirror that is somewhat different yet
inseparable and somewhat similar. Veiled in him is the true self by
the influence and involvement of Prakriti or primordial nature. The
purpose of his life upon earth is to follow the law (dharma) of God
and achieve salvation (moksha) or freedom from his false self
(ahamkara) by leading a balanced life in which both material
comforts and human passions
have their own place and
legitimacy. The four aims are
essential for the continuity of life
upon earth and for the order and
regularity of the world. They
provide structure and meaning to
human life and give us a reason
to live with a sense of duty, moral
obligation and responsibility.
Man cannot simply take birth on earth and start working for his
salvation right away by means of just dharma alone. If that is so
man would never realize why he would have to seek liberation in
the first place. As he passes through the rigors of life and
experiences the problem of human suffering, he learns to
appreciate the value of liberation. He becomes sincere in his quest
for salvation. So we have the four goals, instead of just one, whose
pursuit provides us with an opportunity to learn important lessons

Page3
and move forward on the spiritual path. What the Purusharthas
characterize is not a life of self-negation, but of balance,
complexity, richness, opportunities and moderation in a cosmic
drama of immense proportions in which man ultimately envisions
and experiences his true grandeur and fulfills the very purpose of
his creation.
Every individual in Hindu society is expected to achieve these four
objectives with detachment, without any expectation and as a
sacrificial offering to God in the ritual of human life. They have to be
pursued selflessly for a higher and greater cause. Depending upon
the attitude and the manner in which we pursue them, they either
set us free or entangle us deeper with the allurements of human
life.
Dharma
The first of the goals is dharma, a word which is difficult to translate
in English. Since the same word is used in many eastern religions,
it means many things to many people and eludes a true definition. It
has been variously translated as duty, faith, religion, righteousness,
sacred law, justice, ethics, morality and so on. According to one
school of Hinduism, dharma is an obligatory duty as prescribed by
the Vedas to be performed by an individual in accordance with the
rules prescribed for the caste to which he or she belongs. God is an
upholder of dharma because he performs His duties even though
they are not obligatory and He is without desire or preference.
There is no word in Latin or English that can truly explain the
complex meaning of dharma. Its first letter "dha" is also the first

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