The message of Bahagavan Das on the present significance of the Vedic Social Order

to go through every possible experience in innumerable cycles of birth, death and rebirth and all of which are at any moment at different stages of their life development. Each self has to develop the feeling of its complete separateness from every other self and from the One Self in which they all inhere. This is the process known as Pravritti—going forth into deeper and deeper identification of the self with the not-self—with existence and matter. Then there is a disillusionment or disenchantment, known as Vairagya—the ceasing of desire for separate existence, which is the same as the ‘conversion’ described by Plato in his Myth of the Cave in the Republic. And after this starts the journey home known as Nivritti—release from the illusion of separateness as an ultimate reality, from the identification of self with not-self and realisation of oneness with the Self.

In the Science of the Emotions Bhagavan Das develops a whole systematic analysis of all emotions based on the relationship of the individual soul to other souls, either as acceptance or rejection, attraction or repulsion. These are the primary opposites Love and Hate; Hate being necessary for the creation of a universe and for the development of individual selfconsciousness, that is for the path of Pravritti, Love being necessary for the dissolution of the universe and for the individual’s realisation of his oneness with all other beings, that is for the path of Nivritti.

It is too easy for us in the Western world to grasp the notion of self-attainment or self-fulfilment and to fail to see that this is only half of Man’s journey. It corresponds with the first half of the life of an individual when he is going out into the world to make his mark, to become someone and achieve something. But the time comes in his life when his outward striving energy, his physical and psychic strength, starts to ebb and he knows that in the end he will die. Our Western world has lost the understanding that every moment of this second half of life is as significant as the first half, but it must be seen as a wholly different experience. For then the individual must make a radical reorientation of his whole life; he must learn to cultivate and to rely upon inner strength rather than the natural outer energy which has hitherto activated him, and to prepare for physical dissolution.

In the ancient Indian view this is to be regarded as a homecoming; but only temporarily, for until the realisation of his

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