Chapter II

Dharma cannot be restricted to any particular society or nation, for it is closely bound up with the fortunes of the entire living world. It is a flame of light that can never be extinguished. It is untrammeled in its beneficent action. Krishna taught the Gita to Arjuna. But He intended it for the whole of humanity. Arjuna was just an excuse. That very Gita is today correcting all mankind. It is not for any particular caste, religion or nation. It is the very breath for humans everywhere.

Dharma expresses itself in a variety of forms, known sometimes by the persons who codified it, like Manudharma, sometimes by the group which followed it like Varnadharma, sometimes by the stage of life to which it is applied, like Grihastha-dharma etc. But these are subsidiary practical details, not the Fundamental Norm. The Atmadharma, the Divine Dharma, is what I am speaking of. Practical Dharma or Acharadharma relates to temporary matters and problems and physical needs, to man's passing relationships with the objective world. The very instrument of those rules, the human body, is itself not permanent; how can these Dharmas be eternal? How can their nature be described as true? The Eternal cannot be expressed by the evanescent; Truth cannot reveal itself in untruth; Light cannot be procured from darkness. The Eternal can emerge only from the Eternal; Truth can emanate only from Truth. Therefore, the objective codes of Dharma relating to worldly activities and daily life, though important in their own sphere, have to be followed with the full knowledge and consciousness of the Inner Basic Atmadharma; then only can the internal and external urges co-operate and yield the Bliss of harmonious progress.

If, in your daily avocations, you translate the Real Values of Eternal Dharma into love-filled acts, then your duty to the inner Reality, the Atma-Dharma is also fulfilled. Always build your living on the Atmic Plinth; then, your progress is assured.

Making God into stone - that is the effort being made today! How can such effort lead to Truth, when the real task is to see the stone as God? First, the Form of the Godhead has to be meditated upon and imprinted on the consciousness; then, that Form has to be conceived within the stone and the stone forgotten in the process, until the stone is transformed into God. In the same way, you have to imprint on your consciousness the basic Dharma, the Fundamental Fact of Atma as the only Entity; and, then, filled with that Faith and Vision, you have to deal with the manifold world of objects, its attractions and impingements. The Ideal can be realised only thus. If this is done, there is no danger of the Authentic Meaning getting diluted, or Atmadharma losing its luster.

What happens when a stone is worshipped as God? The Unlimited, the Ever-present, the All-pervading-immanent Entity, the Absolute, is visualised in the Particular, in the Concrete. Similarly, Dharma, which is Universal, Equal and Free, can be spotted and tested in a single concrete act. Do not be misled by the idea that this is not possible. Are not many things difficult accomplished by you, things that only increase your anxiety and fear? If man is wise, can he not take up instead things that are more worthwhile, which give him peace of mind?

To be free is your birthright, not to be bound. It is only when you guide your steps along the Path illumined by the Universal Unbound Dharma that you are really free; if you stray away from the light, you get bound and you are caught. Some might raise a doubt; how Dharma which sets limits on thoughts and words, which regulates and controls, can make a person free. "Freedom" is the name that you give to a certain type of bondage; genuine freedom is got only when delusion is absent, when there is no identification with the body and the senses, no servitude to the objective world. Persons who have escaped from this servitude and achieved freedom in the genuine sense are very few in number. Bondage lies in every act done with the consciousness of the body as the Self, for, man is then the plaything of the senses. Only those who have escaped this fate are free; that "freedom" is the ideal stage to which Dharma leads. With that stage constantly in mind, if one engages in the activity of living, he can become liberated, a Mukthapurusha.

It is only because you bind yourself that you become bound and stray away from the Dharmic path. It is always so; no other person can bind you; you do it yourself. If faith in God's Omnipresence is deep-rooted, then, you would be aware that He is your self and that you can never be bound! For that faith to grow, you must grasp Atmananda firmly. The reality of the Atma is the bedrock, the Jnana that is incontrovertible, the Nischithajnana. Devoid of that foundation, one becomes the target of doubt, despair and delusion. The maid of Dharma will not wed such.

Therefore, endeavour first to become Free. That is to say, as a preliminary to successful living, cultivate Faith in the Atma as the core of your personality and then learn and practice the discipline necessary to reach down to that core. With that qualification acquired, you can engage fully in worldly activities, following the Dharma prescribed for their regulation. Then you become a moral individual, a Dharma purusha. Those who hold the physical objective world as the all of life and the body as the Self, lead but wasted lives, as meaningless as making God into stone. Making the stone into God is the holier, more wholesome task. So, too, seeing the Atmadharma in every single act of yours transforms it into an act of worship, elevates it and removes its binding characteristic. If the duties of worldly life are done with no regard to genuine Sathyadharma, it is as unholy as treating God as stone. The Acharadharma pursued apart from Sathyadharma and Sathyadharma divorced from Acharadharma are both barren of results. They are both inextricably intertwined, and should be treated as such. The senior officer needs the work of the junior official as much as the junior official needs the help of the senior officer. Who then is the bound, who, the free? Both are bound to their desire to be happy and comfortable. Until the fundamental secret of the Atma is recognised, the outer state of bondage will persist. When that is done, the burden of slavery to the senses and to the objective world will be diminished. Then, the code of behaviour towards the objective world will be merged with the code towards the inner Divinity and so, the urges will all be co-operating harmoniously.

The Vedantha, the Adhyatmic Sastras, Dharma - all invite man to live and act as Bhagavan, and not as bondsman. Then, all acts become Dharmakarma and not Kamyakarma (acts done with intent to gain the fruits thereof). The shackles of bondage cannot be avoided by a mere change of the type of activity. They can be avoided only by changing the point of view from the Deha to the Deva, from the Created to the Creator. The moral qualities also will be rendered stronger, thereby. Some persons hold the opinion that being employed is bondage, while sitting at home without any specific work is freedom! This is a sign of want of intelligence. When employed in a job, one has to obey the superior officer. But, can one escape the demands and compulsions of relations even while at home? Well, even when one is amidst friends only, can he avoid the necessity of acting according to their fancy? Can one be free at least from the need to take care of one's own body and cater to one's own comfort? How then can man feel free, while in the cage of bondage? All life is a prison, whatever the difference between one type of sentence and another. It is so, as long as the attitude of identifying the Self with the body is there.

That is why once Sankara said, "the egoism based on the body is what is meant by Naraka or Hell". Egoism of this kind is just another form of the contra-Divine attitude. Who can remove all the thorns and pebbles from the face of the earth? The only way to avoid them is to move about with footwear. So too, with the Vedanthadarsana or Philosophy of Vedantha. With the vision fixed on Sathya or the Reality, with full faith in the Brahmam which is your own essential nature, you can by-pass the need to transform the external world to suit your ideal of happiness and Sathyadharma can be attained. He who tramples down egoism and declares with conviction thus: "I am not the bondsman of this body, which is the repository of all types of servitude; the body is my bondsman. I am the master and the manipulator of everything, I am the embodiment of freedom", is already liberated. All codes of duties must help in this process of the destruction of the ego; they should not foster it and make it grow wild. That is the road to freedom. If a person, finding life with the son miserable, goes to the daughter and lives in her house, that is not winning freedom! That's only a way of feeding the ego. This search for sensual happiness cannot be elevated into "Dharma".

After all, what is a home for? For the enjoyment of the bliss derived from the contemplation of the Lord, for getting the opportunity to meditate on the Lord undisturbed. All the rest can be ignored, but not these. The True Dharma of the individual is to taste the bliss of merging with the Absolute, and attain true Liberation. A person who has reached that stage can never be bound, even if he is put in the grimmest of prisons; on the other hand, for a person who is the slave of the body, even a blade of grass can become an instrument of death. The true Dharma is to be immersed in the Atmic Bliss, the Inner Vision, the steady faith in the identity of one's real nature with the Absolute, and the realisation that all is Brahmam; these four are the authentic Dharma. In this physical existence as particular individuals, these four are named for the convenience of practice (but yet saturated with the Inner Dharma of Atmic Reality) Sathya, Santham, Prema and Ahimsa, so that particularised individuals who are only personifications of that Absolute can follow them in daily life. The mode of pursuit of Dharma, now as in the past, is to adhere to these high principles in every act and thought. The Sathya, Santham, Ahimsa and Prema of today are but the Unintermittent immersion in the Atma, the Vision fixed on the Inner Truth, the Contemplation of One's Real Nature and the Knowledge that all is Brahmam, the one and the only. These, the Fundamental and the Derived, must be co-ordinated and harmonised. Then only can it be termed Atmadharma.

It does not matter what your activity is, or what name and form you have chosen. A chain is a chain whatever the material it binds, whether it is iron or gold, is it not? So too, whether the work is of this type or that, so long as the Atma Dharma is the base, and Atmathathwa the root, it is Dharma beyond doubt. Such work will bless one with the fruit of Santhi. When the waves of egoist fear or greed drive one forward, either into the privacy of the home, or the loneliness of the forest, or to any other refuge, it is impossible to escape suffering. The cobra does not cease to be a cobra, when it lies coiled. Then too, it is cobra nevertheless. In daily practice, when acts are motivated by the basic Principle of the reality of the Atma, every act becomes stamped with the seal of Dharma. But when acts are motivated by convenience and selfish interest, the Dharma becomes pseudo Dharma. It is a variety of bondage, however attractive it may be. Like prisoners in a jail pushed in a single file by warders, either to the court of trial or the dining barracks, the prompting of the senses pushes the bondsman forward either to a place of sorrow or to a place of relief.