That religion includes the whole of life - and, therefore, it is not merely one of the functions that man performs among many others as his vocation - is the crux of the whole matter, a point which is easily overlooked by enthusiasts of religion. This vital fact was borne in mind by the ancient adepts of India, who brought about such a transformation in their outlook of life that they felt a necessity to introduce a system of living according to which life becomes religion, and religion becomes life. This system is embodied in the concept of what is known as the Purusharthas, meaning thereby the aims of human existence.

There is a fourfold concept which includes the four facets of human longing, human desire, human aspiration, and human enterprise, all which are brought together into the focus of the attention of the religious student. When it is said that religion comprises the whole of life, it becomes necessary to understand what is meant by the whole life. Life may be defined as a kind of reaction of the individual to the outer atmosphere - an atmosphere which is at once social, personal, physical, and superphysical. All the aspects of life, which are the concerns of man, should be regarded as needs to be transformed into the religious endeavour. This is, again, something interesting and important. Whatever be man's occupation in life, that has to become the religion, that has to become a way to God, that has to get transformed into a worship of the Divine Ideal. This is so because religion is the encounter of the total individual in regard to the totality of the cosmos: Inasmuch as this is the truth, the whole of life has to be harnessed into the religious enterprise. The facets of life, while they can be manifold, may be grouped under four categories. These are the Purusharthas, or the principal aims of life, for which one works hard every day, and which are the principal concerns throughout one's earthly sojourn; these are Artha (material need), Kama (emotional need), Dharma (ethical need), and Moksha (spiritual need).

Man experiences a reaction in respect of the environment around which he seeks the fulfilment of his material needs; these may be called one's economic needs. Anything that is essential for physical existence, without which man cannot live in this world, becomes an object of his pursuit, and his life in the world is, to that extent, inseparable from it. This inviolable law operating in the physical universe, according to which one is urged to work hard for the material and economic amenities in life, is a facet of life which is called Artha. Food, clothing, shelter are some of the ostensible forms which this pressure of life takes. Man has to work for this purpose, for the daily bread that he requires, for the clothings he has to put on, and the shelter that he needs for security. This is an important requirement indeed - the material necessities of life, the creature comforts, so-called. This urge towards the acquisition of material requirements is also to be transformed into a religious discipline, because religion is the whole of life, and here is a part of its demands. Even if one works for one's bread, in a factory, in a school or a college, it is religion that one is living, for material forces are one pedestal in the gamut of ascent to Reality. Anna is Brahma, says the Upanishad. Matter is one rung in the ladder of development into the spirit of the cosmos. There is nothing unspiritual in a world animated by a universal consciousness, with which every individual is inextricably related. The word 'secular', as meaning the 'unspiritual', cannot exist in the dictionary of creation.

Together with the material requirements of man, which are economic in their nature, he has other longings within, which also constitute a part of his life. He cannot be satisfied merely with bread, clothing, and a house to live in. Even if man has all these, he would still be in search of something else. This is because man is a complex of different layers of involvement. There are aesthetic desires. There is an impulse for love and appreciation of beauty. This cannot be regarded as an unimportant aspect of life. Its voice is as vehement and pressing as the call for material comfort. Man is stimulated by the impulse for beautiful things. The attraction for fine arts and literature is an outer form which this inward impulse for aesthetic enjoyment takes in him. Man has a vital desire apart from a physical need. He loves, and expects love. This impulse also has to be converted into a religious experience and performance. Man's vital satisfactions and fulfilment of emotional needs are a part of his religious life. Else, his existence becomes segmented and partial, and not a whole which religion ought to be. The aesthetic impulse is called Kama, usually translated as desire. Kama, while it can be regarded as any kind of love or longing, is essentially a vital urge which has many expressions. The romantic impulse; the aesthetic impulse; the love for order, system, beauty, regularity and perfection; all these come under the category of Kama. Its major thrust is, however, in the impetuosity of the sexual hunger in the individual, which manifests itself as the many forms of conditioned appreciation of beauty.

Everyone knows well how forceful desire is, and what a role it plays in one's life. The impulses have their visible expressions as well as hidden forms. The ancient seers were very clear in their understanding of the nature of human psychology. There was, in India, no ban imposed on the natural fulfilment of desires, contrary to the dictates of certain over-austere religious attitudes which emphasise to a point of excess mortification of the flesh, the starving of desires, and a hibernation of one's normal impulses. India has not gone that way, because the original incentive behind all desire is the Divine Call. This is the reason why even the ordinary daily occupations and instinctive impulsions are regarded as raw materials for purification and intelligent harnessing along the stages in the evolution of the spirit towards Godhead. Every form of desire, and every impulse within man towards anything, has, at its root, the touch of a beckoning that comes from God Himself. Desire, whatever be its nature, and whatever the form it takes in life, can be traced, though by a zig-zag movement, to a summons from the Eternal. If God were not to call man, there would have been no desires in life. Every desire is some distorted shape which the response of man to God takes in this world. When the individual expresses a desire, he is responding to the call of God, though in an ignorant and misconceived way. This was well appreciated by the Masters, and they felt that it is not only possible, but also necessary to transform the desires into a religious and a spiritual technique. Desires are to be channelised, sublimated, and turned back to their original source, from the present reflected, contorted shape which they have taken in their ill-calculated relationship with an external world. A desire, while it is apparently directed towards the fulfilment of an objective satisfaction, actually arises from a need for universal experience. It is not the object that is calling man when he desires something. It is, rather, the universal that is speaking to him. But, as he is placed in space and time, and the space-time complex externalises even the universal; God Himself appears as an object of sense. That is why the divine aspiration to return to God takes the form of a desire for an unrelated object. Man is innocent essentially, but he looks like a devil when he co-operates, due to lack of proper education, with this externalising impulse which pulls him in the direction of localised objects, rather than towards the original universality of existence. This truth of life is the reason why the ancient seers formulated a scheme of living, according to which physical and vital desires can and must be transformed into a spiritual discipline.