This is Sanatan Dharma: The Quest for Truth

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We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is... This is the Dharma that for the salvation of humanity was cherished in the seclusion of this peninsula from of old. It is to give this religion that India is rising. She does not rise as other countries do, for self or when she is strong, to trample on the weak. She is rising to shed the eternal light entrusted to her over the world. India has always existed for humanity and not for herself and it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great.

These are the words of Maharishi Sri Aurobindo. But what is this Sanatan Dharma? Is it just the religion and rituals that Hindus follow or is it really the secret of life and consciousness that is embedded in the very fabric of our cosmic existence? This book reveals, layer by layer, the subtler spiritual dimensions of Sanatan Dharma, and its timeless relevance to human existence and civilization.

This book was written as a series of reflective notes on Sanatan Dharma from the vedantic perspective, highlighting some of the foundational vedantic concepts of the Dharma. My intention in writing this book was not to provide an exhaustive or encyclopedic span of the Dharma but only to draw some of its broad contours. The Sanatan Dharma, as I have maintained throughout this book, is vedantic in conception but yogic in practice-and this is precisely my leitmotif through the book. There is, of course, much more to Sanatan Dharma than its vedantism, and not all of Sanatan Dharma is vedantic, there is much in it that is dualistic, monistic, even theistic, agnostic and atheistic; there are also pervasive elements of the religious, the symbolic and the ritualistic, as there are of the purely contemplative-but then all of these seemingly disparate elements can be beautifully subsumed and integrated within the overarching vedantic worldview. Once the underlying vedanta of Sanatan Dharma is understood, almost all its other aspects-metaphysical or practical can be easily understood in that context. I did not, therefore, feel the necessity to go into the more pluralistic aspects of the Dharma, including some dualistic Vedic aspects that I feel are well resolved in the vedanta. In any case, writing on all aspects of Sanatan Dharma in any meaningful way even if at all possible-would have meant far too much time than I presently have at my disposal. Thus, I have limited the scope of this book to the mystical and the yogic elements in Sanatan Dharma, touching only briefly on some historical and cultural aspects of the Dharma.