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A more in-depth perception of life is the blending synthesis that has been achieved in ancient times in a concept known as the fourfold aim of human existence. The aspiration of the human soul cannot be equated with any kind of philosophy or objective evaluation—material, social or otherwise. The soul of man refuses to be equated with anything in this world though it has a connection, apparently, with all things in the world. Permeating all conceivable values of life, it also stands above all available values. The aims of human life have been summed up in a very well thought-out pattern of aspiration designated as dharma, artha, kama and moksha.

All values in life which are materially construed are known as artha. Anything that can be contacted through the sense organs is artha. Anything that can be possessed as a property is artha. Anything that is contributory to the satisfaction of physical needs is considered as a material value—this is artha. Artha is a Sanskrit word meaning an object of perception, a content of consciousness. That which is the end result of any kind of sensory activity is artha. Kama is the psychological value of human life. Dharma is the human value, which at the same time surpasses itself, reaching beyond itself in a superhuman grasp of a cosmic principle. An intelligent investigation into the structure of this pattern, namely the coming together of dharma, artha and kama, will reveal to us the profundity of this research and its final finding.

The spiritual value of life, we may say, is what generally people consider as moksha, a difficult term to properly understand in its linguistic form or even in its philosophical content. The evaluation of human life is actually, from this point of view, an evaluation of all life. When the human individual rises to the level of spiritual aspiration, the human ceases to be a limited individual social unit and becomes an embodiment of a call which is above all individual values or social relationships.

There is a many-sided envisagement of the requirements in life when it is understood from the point of view of the soul of the human individual. Our soul, or the soul that we are, is such a comprehensive experience—we can only call it experience for want of a better word—that it leaves nothing as an external possibility, nothing outside itself. The soul is all things and everything, though human understanding limited to a physical evaluation of things may wrongly imagine that the soul is within an individual, that it is something inside people.

What we call the soul is also known as the spirit that enlivens the personality and gives meaning to all life in general. Spirituality is the character of the spirit. It is the nature of the innermost essence of all living beings. It is that which gives meaning to any kind of aspiration, desire or engagement in any field of life. Though it is true that, at a particular level of experience, life is involved in physical matter, embodied in a physical personality, we as souls are also embodied in this visible form, this tabernacle. Giving concession to this extent of involvement of the soul in the physical body, we have also to give an equal concession to its physical requirements. It is the soul that needs, and nobody else has any need whatsoever. Any need, any call, any requirement, any desire, any aspiration, is the activity of the soul.

It is difficult to understand what we actually mean by the word ‘soul’, inasmuch as the meaning attached to it usually has been limited to its embodied relationships and it has never been considered from its own point of view. The soul cannot be known by anyone except the soul itself. No faculty other than that which can be identified by the soul itself can be said to be competent of knowing what the soul is. Any psychological operation or intellectual activity, even in its highest reaches, should be considered inadequate for the purpose. The comprehensiveness of the activity of the soul is inclusive in such a wide-stretched manner that there is nothing worthwhile in all life that can be excluded from its purview or the jurisdiction of its activity.

Actually, there are no distinctive features in life called material, psychological, human, etc. They are phases of the operation of a single vision of things, appearing to be distinct from one another on account of emphasis specially laid on one particular aspect or other. When we limit ourselves to the perception of only what is externally envisioned by the sense organs, we appear to be aware only of what can be called the material values of life because of the fact that the senses can contact only that which they regard as material. But granting that the materiality of whatever the senses contact is valid from its own level of manifestation, the demand of the sense organs in their contact with things they consider as material is not exhausted merely by a material evaluation of values. Even the sense organs cannot entirely be satisfied by material objects. If food that is material, whatever it be, is fed into the sense organs, even up to the point of surfeit and utter satiation, that still would not end the desire of the sense organs.

Thus the perception of the senses, which is basically material and objective, is not satisfying even to the senses themselves. That is to say, whatever is available to the sense organs is not going to satisfy them. But the satisfying character of objects available to the sense organs also points to a state which is beyond that particular level of satisfaction. Our craving for objects of sense is, of course, a call for a kind of happiness that we imagine to be derived from external material objects, but the dissatisfaction that follows from that satisfaction of the contact of the senses with objects is a pointer to a higher involvement.

Why are we dissatisfied even after we are satisfied with sensory contact? All the material in the world for which the senses crave as their diet has not left them satisfied. The artha which has been longed for, through an inward operation called kama, has brought to a standstill, to some extent, this operation of the psyche in the form of kama or desire, but it has left a lacuna at the same time—a lacuna of the nature of a total vacuum, in the end. After all satisfaction, after the fulfillment of every desire, the satiation of our kama by the acquirement of everything that is called artha; after this so-called fulfillment, the state in which we feel we are entirely filled to the brim with joy, after having attained this state of an overwhelming sense of completeness through sense contact of objects appearing to give satisfaction, we are left with an emptiness in ourselves.

The objects of the senses, the things that we long for through our kama or longing, sap our energy, suck our blood as it were, and leave us lifeless. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad an interesting name has been given to the objects of sense, while another name has been given to the manner in which the sense organs operate in respect of their objects. The senses grab—their only intention is to catch, clutch objects of sense—and because of their habit of catching hold of anything that is available around them, the Upanishad calls this sense activity as ‘graha’. It is a kind of crocodile, as it were, which grabs with a tight grip anything that is presented before it. There is no end to the asking of the senses.

But the objects which the senses grab have also a strength of their own. Very interestingly, the Upanishad calls these objects ‘atigraha’, a greater catcher. If the senses tightly grasp the objects, the objects grasp the sense organs with a greater grasp. It is difficult to imagine why such a situation should arise at all, how it is that while we grab things, the objects, the things also seem to be willing to grab us in such a manner that they leave us almost dead. This is an undercurrent of activity that is taking place beneath the surface of the operation of the mind in its activity called desire for objects of sense—kama for artha.

The kama is the calling for the object. The artha is the object itself. While it is necessary that the call should be strong enough to evoke the movement of the object in its presence, the object also should have the capacity to fit into the nature of this call. The magnet should have the strength to pull iron filings into itself—the pull cannot be exerted on dry bamboo or straw. The magnetic attraction is felt only by certain elements such as iron. So, the object should be of a character that is commensurate with the nature of the operation of the sense organs. There should be a give and take policy between the senses and the objects. The two have to be en rapport with each other.

There seems to be a kind of internal relationship between ourselves as individual centres of satisfaction, kama or desire, and the objects outside. There is a reciprocal relationship between ourselves as desiring centres and the objects which constitute the world outside. This internal relationship of a reciprocal nature between the subjective side and the objective side is what makes it difficult for any particular individual to be entirely a possessor of any group of objects. This also makes it difficult for the capacity of the objects to entirely satisfy the sense organs. Neither can the objects entirely satisfy anyone, nor can anyone have complete control of all the objects in the world. This is so because of the fact that there is a non-individual background behind the individual percipient, and a non-objective character in the objects of the world. The objects are not merely objects, and the individual seeker, the desirer, is also not entirely individual. There is an unseen background behind both the desiring individual and the desired object. This makes the contact between the senses and the objects an inadequate operation, not up to the mark, and actually not promising the satisfaction that they hold up before the senses. The activity of the mind and senses in respect of objects, known as the artha, through the operation known as kama, will be a futile attempt in the end if something else is not there acting as a principle to bring them together into a framework of coherence.

The cementing principle does not leave the subjective side, on one side, and the objective side, on the other side, as unrelated elements. This principle that brings them together into a vital relationship is called dharma. It is another peculiar terminology whose meanings have been construed in a multitudinous variety of ways. The law of a thing is called dharma. The principle that is at the root of anything is dharma. The essence of a thing is called dharma. That which keeps the stability, maintains the stability of any particular localised thing is dharma. If we feel that we are a single self-identical individuality, it is due to the dharma that is operating within us. Any kind of law can be regarded as dharma. A law is that which maintains order and system. A disarray or chaos of any kind is prevented by the operation of dharma.

Automatic is the action of dharma—it is not some instrument that is wielded by someone. The world seems to be made up in such a way that it has a spontaneous character of maintaining its stability as completeness by itself. Dharma is the self-assertive character of the world, the whole universe, we may say, by which it maintains itself as a self-complete individuality. That which does not permit the universe to become chaotic, or things to be scattered in a disorderly manner, is called dharma. It is that principle that works in such a way that things are what they are, and anything is what it is, and a thing cannot be other than what it is. That stability of things to anything whatsoever is given by an unseen law which is called dharma.

Conflicts are avoided by dharma whenever it operates in any of its levels. There are degrees and varieties of the intensity in the action of the principle we call dharma. It acts mildly in certain stages, and very strongly and powerfully in some other stages. The intensity with which we feel that we are this body, the vehemence we manifest in the feeling or assertion that we are just this little person and nothing more than that—this vehemence is an instance of the intensity with which dharma can act in maintaining a sort of indivisibility in a given location, such as my individuality or yours.

But the power of cohesive action of dharma is not so intense in social relationships. The manner in which an individual asserts himself as being only that individual and nothing other than that is more intense in its self-affirmation than the manner in which he affirms himself as a unit in human society. We feel that we belong to a formation of bodies called human society, it is true, but we do not feel it as intensely as we feel the intensity in our own selves. The action of dharma, this force of cohesion in the maintenance of the individuality of a thing, is pre-eminently operative in comparison with the more modified and diluted forms of it in social relationships, affections and hatreds.

There is a bond established between things that act and react upon each other, either by way of like or of dislike. This power of action and reaction is also dharma acting. It brings about a relationship between two things, either by way of attraction or by way of repulsion. But this is an artificial way in which it acts, suggesting that any kind of social relationship—all relations that are externalised in nature, are not basic to the nature of things. Our aim in life is not any kind of makeshift arrangement with things we consider as existent outside, even in such forms of relationship as family, society, etc. There is a pull of transcendence imminently present even in social relationships, so that social relation is not all and everything.

Dharma is not merely a power that works in the material world by way of gravitation, etc.—it is something more than that. It acts as a biological cohesion in a living being, a psychological cohesion where there is reason and intellect operating, and, finally, a universal cohesion where the spirit acts directly. Dharma, therefore, is seen to be present in all levels of life. It is in the physical world, as mentioned by way of gravitation—the pull of bodies, whether it is in the level of life on earth or in the planetary realms or the galaxies. Even loves and hatreds, psychologically felt, are also a sort of gravitation, propelling or repelling as the case may be.

Any sensible coming together of particularities for the formation of an intelligent whole, whether it is on the material level, the biological level, the psychological level or the rational level, is dharma acting. Dharma is that which sustains; anything that protects, sustains, maintains and stabilises is dharma. It is a very intriguing operation taking place everywhere, and not available to the grasp of the sense organs. The interaction between the sense organs and objects, by way of this catching and greater catching mentioned, is indicative of there being something that is above both the individual that grasps and the object that is grasped. In fact, we tend to move towards objects and ask for things in the world not because the things have any individually ingrained inherent value in themselves, but because there is a call that we feel emanating from these visible forms outside, a call actually arising not from the things themselves but from something which is inherent in them, inherent in the objects, present in them and present also in the very perception of the objects.

This call for the cohesion of coming together, which is the love of life and the fear of death, is operating in a threefold manner—in the desire for things inwardly, in the pull of objects outwardly, and in the perception of things in a third fashion altogether. The knower, the known and the knowing process are the three phases in which this pull operates. What is this pull? It does not come either from only inside, or only outside, or just midway between inside and outside. It is a total pull coming from every corner. Actually, the love of life is not the love of life in this particular body only, though it appears to be that from an erroneous point of view. It also does not mean a love for objects outside—it is not a love for the possession of things. It is another love altogether which emanates from all corners, in all directions, transcending time and space, such that we may say love alone exists anywhere. People sometimes call God the centre of love, identifying love with God and God with love. There is some point in this assessment because it is a call of the Self for itself.