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

separate classes of the community. But it is necessary to distinguish three aspects in the life of every man: his need for physical maintenance and for the provision of what is materially necessary to a full life, his relations with his fellow men individually and in groups, and his own inner striving to self-realisation and selfattainment. These three must be distinguished in order that they may be rightly related to one another, and their right relationship in the life of the individual must have its counterpart in their being distinguished and rightly related in society as a whole.

The right relationship which Manu ordained, and to which Bhagavan Das spent his life’s work drawing attention, is that the inner life of Man, his thought, his valuation, his sense of a goal and meaning in the life, both for himself individually and for the whole of Mankind on this planet, must be the guide. His social life is the field in which the guidance of his inner life is worked out, and his physical economic life must serve them both. It is not that one is more important than the others, they are all three equally important as three equally necessary aspects of human life; and at different stages in the life of each individual different aspects will take priority. What is necessary is that the life of the single person should be seen within the scope of the whole life of Mankind, and that in this Man’s own inner consciousness—the experience of valuation in his heart and the clarity of thinking in his mind—is known to be the key to the ultimate meaning of his life and must in future be his guide.

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