Dharma, synonym of Rita in its primary sense, was the Cosmic Order which upheld the whole creation. Being one and indivisible, it is operated upon all planes, material, social, moral and spiritual, and everything that was created evolved according to its laws.
In its secondary sense, Dharma meant the pursuit of the Highest Good by a man trying to live in conformity with the Cosmic Order.
Dharma took its stand on the fact that man was neither the creature nor the victim of forces, either physical or supra-physical. He was certainly not the creature of environments, as held by some modern social philosophers. He was the meeting point of hereditary and environmental forces as well as of moral and spiritual forces operating through a series of lives.
By pursuing Dharma, therefore, he could operate the forces of the Cosmic Order, and by so doing, outgrow his limitations as well as alter the course of his present and future lives, as also change the shape of his social and material environment.
- Kulapativani
Bhavan’s Journal, 15 January 2009
