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

oneness with the Self is complete, each self must be born again and again to endure—as in the “Bhagavad Gita’ Arjuna was told by Krishna to endure bravely—the contacts of matter and the impermanent play of the pairs of opposites. Nor can the individual self find salvation alone, but only in unity with the whole world and therefore in the unity of the whole world. It was this unity of the whole world, known as Loka-sangraha, for which Krishna told Arjuna he should fight, and which is the end and aim of Man’s life.

Social Order is thus not to be regarded, as we in the Western world are in danger of regarding it, as merely a very desirable state of peace and prosperity, in which everyone can find physical comfort and happiness. Such peace and prosperity are indeed desirable so that Mankind may change the emphasis of his consciousness from a continual striving after them. Indeed we might more easily have them if we would cease to treat the striving after them as the aim of our lives. For the attainment of Social Order is part of the goal and purpose of Man in his sojourn on this planet, so as to enable the individual spirits that we are to reach our own self-attainment and ultimately our self transcendence.

Bhagavan Das himself considered The Science of Social Organisation as his most important work. In it he tried to give the true meaning of the Manu Code or the Laws of Manu in their ancient context and from that to interpret them in their present significance for the attainment of social order. The Manu Code is not, like Plato’s Republic, the portrayal of an ideal but not actually existing Social State. It is not a Utopia. Nor is it a description of an existent constitution or a set of Laws as we understand it. It must be taken as somewhere between the two. It is clear that it refers to a Social State that actually did exist, but equally there is in it an element of the ideal which cannot actually have been achieved in practice; and this is confirmed by the detailed provisions for punishment of those who transgressed or failed in their duty.

The Sanskrit name for it is Manava~-Dharma-Shastra and Bhagavan Das refers to it by the name Varna~Ashrama-Dharma. The word Manu is to be taken not merely as the name of a person, whether mythical or historic, or a succession of persons,

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