Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

^harm^ is generally spoken of as something eternal and unchanging, and so it is in the funda- mental principle, in the ideal, but in its forms it ^continually changii^ and eyplvingJ because man does not already possess the ideal or live in it, but aspires more or less perfectly towards k, is growing towards its knowledge and practice. lAnd in thi s gjpwth^^arma is all that he^ us to grow into the divin e pu rity, l^geness, light, freedom, power, ^ strength, joy, love, good, unity, beautyjj^and against it stands its shadow and denial, all that resists its growth and has not undergone its lav^) all that has not yielded up and does not will to yield up its secret of divine values, but presents a front of per- * The word means “holding* ** from the root dhri, to hold. 25a THE DIVINE BIRTH AND DIVINE WORKS 2version and contradiction, of impurity, narrowness, bondage, darkless, weakness, vileness, discord and suffering and division,^nd the hideous and the crude, all that ^n has to leave behind in his progr^. This is tiie £>dlmrnm, not-dharma, which strives with and seeks to overcome the dharmaj to draw backward and downward, the reactionary force which makes for evil, ignorance and darkness. Between the two there is perpeo^l battle and struggl e, oscillation of victory and defeat in which sometimes the upward and sometimes the down- ward forces prevail. This has been typified in the Vedic image of the struggle between the Divine and the Titanic powers, the sons of the Light and the undivided Infinity and the children of the Darkness and Division^, in Zoroastrianism 'by Ahuramazda and Ahriman, and in later religions in the contest between God and his angels and Satan or Iblis and his demons for the possession of human life and the ^uman soul.