2. Society should be organized to promote spiritual fulfillment in the populace.

A civilization which claims to exalt individualism but which tries to blanket everyone with the same laws, customs, responsibilities and rights is clearly self-contradictory. The Vedic writings offer us a science of societal organization which is capable of meeting men’s seemingly contradictory needs for both communal security and individual character development. That this great science once degenerated into the caste-by-birth system and thus served to weaken and corrupt Hindu civilization should not be taken as a final judgment against it. It did, after all, offer a sufficiently strong structure to uphold the most long-lived civilization of which we have any knowledge, one not yet perished from the world stage.

This system, correctly called “Varnashram Dharma,” gave two sets of outlines for social organization, one vertical and the other horizontal. The four divisions by occupation, or “caste,” offered, originally, not restrictions but opportunities for young students to take up certain types of work at an early age—according to exhibited inclination. This sort of individualized preparation for a life-long career is capable of standing amongst the most progressive concepts in education today.

According to training in the Vedic system, one might take up the career of an administrator or soldier (Kshatriya), that of an intellectual or priest (Brahmin), that of a businessman or farmer (Vaishya), or that of a laborer or servant (Sudra). These are not divisions of society which have disappeared. They exist today as much as in the past. And it might be seen that a more stable and happy populace could be created by the introduction of specialization at an earlier level than we find in our contemporary school system. The present method of imparting a little dose of everything—and a great dose of nothing—into each student regardless of his personality has been so widely criticized by the eminent educators of this century that it is unnecessary to take up the matter at any greater length here.

The horizontal divisions of society advised in the Vedic writings are likewise four: student life, household life, retired life and the renounced order. The vertical caste system was meant to promote material well-being and security, and it was from this stable platform that man could rise to achieve his true purpose, in the quest for God realization, the ultimate fulfillment. This was done by progressing through the four stages of life:

1. The word for student life in the Vedic context is “Brahmacharya”, and it is significant that the same word means celibacy. For student life in terms of spiritual fulfillment is a time not only of occupational training, but a formative period when it is possible to instill a sense of detachment in the young. This, of course, is in direct contradistinction to our present curriculum, which seeks to stimulate ambition, aggressiveness and competition.

2. Passing from student life, a man who follows the Vedic principles may either enter directly into the renounced order—the complete submission to God in devotional service—or he may marry and take up his career. As a householder, he is expected to support the entirety of the community, for students, the retired and the renounced order are not involved with practical affairs. Such responsibility perhaps helps dim the glamor of householder life, which might otherwise prove too great an entanglement in material existence. It also permits the other members of society to take up the business of spiritual advancement in complete seriousness, for, of course, the benefit of all.

3 & 4. The retired man is a householder who, at late middle age, tries to loosen his attachments by making pilgrimages with his wife, and by leaving all business affairs in the hands of his children. This is a preparation for the final stage—the renounced order of life—when utter detachment from family and home is undertaken. The mendicant in this last stage lives solely at the mercy of God, his mind, activities and words fixed on transcendence.

In The Bhagavad Gita As It Is, in the Fourth Chapter, Lord Krishna states that these divisions of society were created by Him from the beginning. They are not unnatural or oppressive conditions. They cannot, all the same, be imposed upon mankind by statute or constitution. They will develop naturally as the transcendental consciousness of humanity advances, in accordance with the first of our points. They are mentioned here mainly because they do offer a practical pattern for social organization at a time when the world sorely needs an alternative to such tasteless proposals as capitalism, communism, socialism and other materialistic cages on the one hand, and the sort of narrow religious intolerance and brittleness represented by feudal Europe (and caste-Hindu India) on the other. The principles of Varnashram will be found, in the end, to present far the most adaptable, practical and spiritually wise concept of human civilization ever to have existed.