Page 14 - NAMAH-Oct-2022

Namah Vol. 30, Issue 3, 15th October 2022

intrinsically believes that he can be error-free religion with its stress on outer law given
from the very start or at least once he has in a scripture and a society organised by
reached a certain level of maturity. This belief the authority of the state and the rule-book
stems from something deeper within him, a cannot solve this riddle. Both lack the deeper
secret substratum where one is indeed free vision that would or could set the soul of
of error. This secret substratum or the soul man free and empower him within so that
within him is also the cause of man’s persistent his choices are spontaneously free from error
seeking for an ideal and holding within himself and the heavy limitations imposed by a life

the instinct of immortality even though he is in ignorance. The ancient Indian conception
surrounded by the shadow of death. The soul came much closer to solving the problem
or the psychic being in man does carry an by turning the eye inwards so that man can
intuition of truth to which the rational mind is discover the true inner law that flows from
blind. Hence the instinctive belief that we can his inmost core as rays from some inner sun.
be right has its justifications. At the same time, They called it Dharma, a thing very different
since man is yet far from touching this fount of from its modern interpretation.
truth, hence he cannot be faulted for errors or
castigated for mistakes and punished for ‘sins’. “We must then, in order to understand the Gita’s
description of the work of the Avatar, take the
Religion and science has both tried to solve idea of the Dharma in its fullest, deepest and
this paradox of the secret sense of infallibility largest conception, as the inner and the outer
and yet the vulnerability to error exists by law by which the divine Will and Wisdom work
bringing in the idea of an external law. In out the spiritual evolution of mankind and its
religion, the law is given by the founder or circumstances and results in the life of the race.
the scripture. In science, it is given by the Dharma in the Indian conception is not merely
state and the constitution. Both provide an the good, the right, morality and justice, ethics;
outer framework within which man must it is the whole government of all the relations
move. Both reinforce the law through fear, of man with other beings, with Nature, with
whether in other worlds or this one. Both try God, considered from the point of view of a
to maintain order and justice in the society divine principle working itself out in forms and
by giving a certain bandwidth within which laws of action, forms of the inner and the outer
human beings are allowed to move. Both life, orderings of relations of every kind in the
allow a certain margin of error as an inevitable world. Dharma is both that which we hold to
and acceptable price of being human. Both and that which holds together our inner and
use the law mainly as a means to avoid harm outer activities. In its primary sense it means a
to others. Both also permit the possibility of fundamental law of our nature which secretly
forgiveness by modifying one’s behaviour and conditions all our activities, and in this sense
changing one’s ways. Yet neither religion nor each being, type, species, individual, group has
Reason, neither philosophical belief-systems its own dharma. Secondly, there is the divine
nor the gospel of scientific materialism has nature which has to develop and manifest in
been able to solve the enigma that haunts us, and in this sense dharma is the law of the
human life with its stamp of imperfection and inner workings by which that grows in our
the proneness to error. In fact, conventional being. Thirdly, there is the law by which we

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