Publications: The Theosophist, Vol. II, No. 8, May, 1881, pp. 181-182
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FOOTNOTES TO “TRUE RELIGION DEFINED”
[In this article, the writer, Vishnu Bawa, says, among other things, that “the Sanskrit word dharma radically implies Duty and Nature. Dharma is the Duty and Nature co-existent with the very living or existence of a being in the universe.” To this H.P.B. remarks:]
“Duty” is an incorrect and unhappy expression. “Property” would be the better word. “Duty” is that which a person is bound by any natural, moral, or legal obligation to do or refrain from doing and cannot be applied but to intelligent and reasoning beings. Fire will burn and cannot “refrain” from doing it.
[“. . . the highest, the best, the most beneficial . . . and omnipresent Religion or dharma of a rational being . . . is not only to 142 know, but also to experience . . . personally, i.e., to feel this . . . unconscious immateriality, or Paramatma—the Infinity and Eternity of Existence and Happiness.”]
This teaching is the highest stage of Philosophical ultra-Spiritual Pantheism and Buddhism. It is the very spirit of the doctrines contained in the Upanishads wherein we would vainly seek for Iśvara—the afterthought of the modern Vedantins.
[“This state of unconscious immateriality . . . is the true or eternal state of every being, for saving it there can be found no other true existence; therefore, every rational being’s dharma or natural duty and Religion is first to acquire the dhyana (knowledge) or vidya of its real Self, the Paramatma, and then by the annihilation of its atma, or worldly self or soul to experience the infinity of Happiness prevalent in its unconscious Immateriality.”]
We draw the attention of the theoristic and dogmatic Spiritualists to the passage. The late Vishnu Bawa was, perhaps, the greatest Philosopher and most acute metaphysician and seer of India in our present century.