The essence of varnasrama

Interview of His Holiness Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami

Conducted by Çréman Bhagiratha Dasa                                                                    

Bhagiratha Dasa: What are the pillars of a varnasrama society?

Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami: The essence is that varnasrama is a science of relationship. Our philosophy is explained in terms of sambandha, abhideya, and prayojana. Sambandha simply means “relationship.” We have relationships. A relationship is operated according to the desired prayojana (goal). The same relationship could be operated differently in view of a different result. Therefore, the nature of the activity depends on the nature of the desired result. This is how we operate relationships. You may have a relationship with God, but your goal may be some material benefit. In that case, your abhideya (process) would be praying to God for material prosperity. But if in the same relationship with God you seek prema, the abhideya would be bhakti.

What is the constitutional position of a living entity? What is his position in the material world? What are the natural relationships between various living entities? What is the position of God? What is the relationship between God and the living entities? The answers to these questions form the basis of Vedic society. That is varnasrama.

So we are dealing with dharma, the varnasrama-dharma. Dharma means “religion” or “inherent nature that does not change.” We cannot change the inherent nature of anything—no matter how hard we try—because all those attributes are set by God. Therefore the logical option is always to understand that nature and act accordingly—if we want things to work out nicely for us. Varnasrama gives us in details the positions of all individuals in society, their relations with each other, and their consequent duties. Varnasrama explains the position of the brahmana and the ksatrya, what they do, what they need, and how they relate. The relationship between the ksatrya and the vaisya is of a different nature. Similarly, a ksatrya-sudra or a vaisya-sudra relation has its unique nature. Each of them has its own position and relationships. Varnasrama is neither a managerial system, nor an economic system. It includes management, economics, sense gratification, and liberation, but its main purpose is to develop one’s relationship with God. Varnasrama extends far beyond economic development. That is why it is also called sanatana-dharma (eternal religion).

Let us look at varnasrama and the marital institution. In the spiritual realm, do they have husbands and wives? Is Mother Yasoda a devotee, or somebody’s wife?

Bhagiratha Dasa: She is both a devotee and the wife of Nanda Maharaja.

Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami: Okay. She has a husband, so they have a marital relationship there in the spiritual world. That relationship is reflected here in the material world. The rules originate there and are based on their spiritual behavior. Did Nanda Maharaja and Mother Yasoda have a child?

Bhagiratha Dasa: Yes.

Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami: Do they eat? Do they sleep? Do they have a house? Do they cook, wash their clothes, or make ornaments? Yes. The difference is that there they do it for Krishna, while here we do it selfishly. That is the varnasrama system. Varnasrama is not an economic system, solely explaining how to make money and put things together. That is what a vaisya would conclude. Therefore in our society, up until now varnasrama is not manifesting because we do not really understand it; without the basic understanding, any effort to put it together will fail. We miss the point because we only consider varnasrama as a system of economics, not as a religion, not as something eternal. It does not matter whether we live in a modern society or not—varnasrama works. We cannot accept the imposition of mundane adjustments upon eternal religion.

Manu-samhita describes what is modern. Millions of years ago, Manu gave the definition of modern: “that which is not Vedic.” Modern people are very proud and consider themselves special, but they are actually old dogs and hogs. They also follow some knowledge, i.e., Vedic knowledge. There is no knowledge without its connection to the Vedas. Modern man searches and simply finds out things that already exist. Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity—which was already there—and Newton figured out gravity, which we see everywhere. This means that they have simply uncovered, unknowingly, a drop of Vedic knowledge pertaining to those phenomena, which are just manifestations of the material world. You cannot avoid that there is only Vedic knowledge—despite the pride and arrogance of the modern people, who feel that they are so unique, special, and somehow aloof from God. Anything not firmly connected to the Vedas is temporary; that is called modern. Therefore, that body of knowledge which is not cohesively connected to the Vedas is called modern. Philosophically, modern simply means temporary. Anything temporary has no substance, it does not last. Therefore, what modern means to people is always mutating; the fashion changes with time. “I am modern” today has to be different than what it was six months ago. “My language is different than six months before. I do not use these old, archaic English terms anymore; I use upbeat modern terms now.” After a few years, those too are rotten and something fresh is used. That is modern.

                                                                                                                                                                        If you understand your relationship with God, things work; if you do not, you will never understand varnasrama. Ultimately there is only one relationship: the one with Krishna, nothing else. Because we chose to ignore the varnasrama system and created these artificial rules and regulations for society, we have forgotten the path of reestablishing our relationship with Krishna. The intelligent follows the path directly, and the less intelligent should at least respect and follow the scriptures piously. God and his laws are all there is. Krishna says, “I am the taste of water”; anything that happens, anything special, is Him. Materialistic people want to go to the heavenly planets by performing yajna; but in truth, all that they desire is in fact Krishna. The road they take is Krishna, and so is their destination—everything is Krishna—but they cannot see this underlying truth. Therefore they are in illusion.

So the essence of varnasrama is to understand relationships. A human being can have four different occupations—brahmana, ksatrya, vaisya, sudra—and four different social positions: brahmacari, grihasta, varnasrama, and sannyasa. Each one has a specific definition, a nature that makes it what it is. Varnasrama is the science for understanding those positions and their interrelations. To understand varnasrama, first of all we have to understand who we are. If we do not, we cannot understand the identity of someone else. If you cannot see yourself, you cannot see what is outside. In varnasrama, if you can understand who you are, you can come to understand everyone else and organize society. But if you are unsure of your own identity, you will be unable to function in relationships or to organize society.

The main duty of a brahmana is in relation to knowledge, to study scriptures and teach; that of a ksatrya is protection; that of a vaisya is economic development, to generate wealth and give charity; and that of a sudra is service, to happily assist the other three classes without any bad feelings. This is what we want.

Then we have the asramas. The brahmacari gets trained how to function in life. Without the brahmacari training, one cannot be a grihasta, varnasrama, or sannyasi. If one is a sudra, that is all right because he will follow what the brahmanas, ksatryas, or vaisyas do. But without training, you cannot be a grihasta per se; you have to learn from somebody. If you find some nice grihastas, properly trained and successful, and ask them, you will find out that they absorbed that culture from their parents or someone else. This is a science. For a brahmacari, the essential is that he is a menial servant meant to study. He is humble, respectful, clean, and strictly celibate; he is studying and gaining knowledge. Without those qualities you cannot be a grihasta. Srila Prabhupada explains that a first-class brahmacari makes a first-class grihasta. So it follows that a second-class brahmacari makes a second-class grihasta, and that third-class gives you third-class. Only a first-class brahmacari can make a first-class grihasta.

There is no exception to this rule, because we are dealing with science. This is neither a matter of opinion nor a matter of preference. Suppose you have a car—what are you going to do with it? You are going to drive around. But if you decide to use it to make mango juice … You could to some extent. You would have to stick the mangos into the fan or under the wheels. But this is neither what the car is for nor the best way to make juice. You have to understand and follow principles. What does God say? What is God’s opinion? His opinion is the one that matters. In the Bhagavad-gita Krishna says, “Some say this and some say that, but My opinion is this.” You have to follow Krishna. This is varnasrama, this is dharma. You cannot change it. Sugar is sweet and you have no say in the matter. You could use it as a paper weight or whatever—you could do that—but sugar is sweet; that is what makes it sugar. This is the definition of dharma.

The grihasta is going to practice what he learned as a brahmacari. His inspiration will be detachment. A brahmacari learns to submissively follow the orders of the guru. He develops humility, tolerance, respect for others, and he is active, doing service, always absorbed in activities. If the grihasta does exactly the same thing it will work. Therefore if he is not a good brahmacari he will not make a good grihasta. Women will not live with men who are impatient, intolerant, disrespectful, or lazy. They will not live with them—guaranteed.

The grihasta has to understand who God is, and the wife follows the husband. That is an important point. But we have to understand the term follow as something dynamic. Following implies that one person is following another person who is actively going somewhere. Although a man may demand that his wife follow him, it only makes sense if he is going somewhere. If he is not going anywhere, what is the meaning of that injunction? That is why most marriages fail—because the man is ignorant of the nature of relationship. He just likes to think that he is the boss. But he does not understand that he is being the boss like a woman, not like a man. The main problem in society is that most grihasta men act like women. Therefore, because the man acts like a woman, she has to act like a man. One of the main reasons for “women’s liberation” is men behaving like women. The male and female couple is dynamic in a balanced relationship. If you have full male, you will have full female; if you have partial male, you will have partial female. For sure, the missing male part has to be filled by the female, and vice versa. If the man is forty percent female, then the woman will have to be forty percent male.

For instance, if your perspective is seeing the sannyasi order only in terms of being in charge, you will never establish varnasrama in millions of millions of years. God does not work like this. God is male. He is the only male. How does God deal with His devotees? “As you surrender to Me, I reciprocate.” What does it mean? He deals with His devotees as they want to be dealt with. This is male—not ordering whatever one wants with the expectation that it should be done without any consideration. Mother Yasoda wants to feed Krishna now—what is Krishna doing? He is sitting down and eating. According to the modern hard-line male definition, that would be improper. That is because those hardcore males are all women. I will not go into much detail, but I can prove philosophically and psychologically that they are all women. Real men are very gentle, sensitive, and accommodative. All these so-called tough guys are women; they just happen to be of male gender. Women cannot get along with them because of this: two women vying for control cannot get along.

The real brahmacaris are those who do not need women, not those who do not like women. Some loathe women because “they do this, they do that, and they are nasty, materialistic, and self-absorbed” or whatever other reason there could be. If a man dislikes women, he cannot be brahmacari. The real brahmacari is the one who does not need women. Whether women are around or not does not bother him at all. A true brahmacari can serve prasada to women and not be disturbed; for him it does not matter whether woman or man—he is just serving prasada to devotees. The brahmacari who does not serve women because of aversion is the guy who is going to get married very soon. Talking big and saying “Women are trash” will not make you a brahmacari. When womanizers talk of women with other men, they talk about women just like that, as if women are garbage. Same with the top hardcore brahmacaris. Where are they now? Most of them are married or getting married.

The point is that the new grihasta, now being inspired by the wife, has to become humble and tolerant to make the grihasta life work. The women will demand that. Any successful grihasta man knows this fact. Anyone who denies this point does not know what he is talking about. I can boldly say that. Why? Because while the men may think that they are doing fine, I ask their wives and find out the real story. A grihasta performs his duty in the association of a woman to further his progress in Krishna consciousness. In other words, the naistiki-brahmacari, who heard and practiced the knowledge in the way of sädhana and menial service, sees no need for family life and remains brahmacari. The upakurvaëa-brahmacari has understood the same knowledge but not realized it yet. The naistiki, who has strong realizations, remains a brahmacari. Those who did not realize move on to grihasta life, and by interacting with the family in a progressive way remove the need for it—just like we use a thorn to remove another thorn. That is the function of the grihasta-asrama.

A varnasrama, who has dealt with the senses, now restrains from engaging them in various aspects of sense gratification and strives to engage them fully in the Lord’s service. Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that some engage the senses in the fire of sense objects; that is grihasta. The varnasrama reverses the process. He is to deal with the senses to control them. He creates a severe, harsh situation, where he becomes indifferent—because sannyasa means indifference. He may be in the renounced situation, but his mentality is indifference. The grihasta has to eat nice food; the brahmacari eats what is given. The grihasta makes arrangements to eat nice food, while the varnasrama makes arrangement not to eat nice food. The sannyasi could not care less whether it is nice or not—if it is nice, Krishna has given, and if it is not nice, it does not matter. That is varnasrama in a nutshell—how each one of them relates to each other. The twelfth chapter of the Manu-samhita explains it.

Now, some may think that of the last five chapters in the Seventh Canto, in the instructions of Närada to Yudhiñöhira, only the first two (“The Perfect Society: Four Social Classes” and “The Perfect Society: Four Spiritual Classes) explain varnasrama, and that basically the last three of them (“The Behavior of a Perfect Person,” “Ideal Family Life,” and “Instructions for Civilized Human Beings”) discuss only pure spiritual life and the paramahamsa, not varnasrama. That is a mistake. The whole idea of varnasrama is to reach the state of paramahamsa. Unless you know what a paramahamsa is, how will you get there? To reach the destination, you must know what the goal is: prayojana.

The devotees are unable to apply varnasrama because they cannot regulate the senses. In other words, with varnasrama, if you endeavor to make money you have to proceed in a way that will assist your God consciousness. When dealing with the senses, the problem is not sense engagement per se; it is that the senses are not engaged in the Lord’s service. A general misconception causes the devotees to avoid dealing with their senses out of fear of maya. The problem is that they do not engage them in the Lord’s service either. This dry renunciation creates a void, and socially we get huge problems. To solve their issues, the devotees turn their attention to karmé self-help books, seminars, and that kind of stuff, because they do not follow in depth their own philosophy and culture, because “It is maya to engage the senses.”

Srimad Bhagavatam has a lot of instructing stories for us in this regard. Would you say that most of the stories found in its pages are about grihastas, or celibates? Are Dhruva Maharaja, Prahlada Maharaja, Kasyapa Muni, Kardama Muni, Devahuti, and all the kings of the Tenth Canto celibate? No, they are grihastas. But they do talk philosophy. Would you say that Srimad Bhagavatam is a pure philosophical work that has no relevance to the culture of Krishna consciousness? No. But this is how most devotees look at it. You find two conversations where the same husband talks to two wives—Kasyapa is talking to Diti, then to Aditi. Basically, both of them are making demands that are unreasonable, improper, and unimportant. How does Kasyapa deal with them? You can read and understand the tone of voice and words he uses. That is the example of how a man should deal with his wife—not just by saying “That is nonsense” or “You do not know what you are talking about.”

Men generally deal with women improperly. The soul wants to be God so much; he must be the controller and enjoyer. Anything that does not make him a controller is not appreciated. Therefore if the man is sensitive and submissive to the needs of his family, it is taken as a sign of weakness. Even a so-called top grihasta would rebuke this idea. They all are like women! Real men are sensitive, gentle, and sense-controlled. But nowadays men cannot be gentle and sense-controlled, because they are untrained; so consequently they will be nasty and rough. Because that is what happens to women when they are told to be austere—they become nasty. If you put men in an austere environment, their mind and intelligence becomes submissive. So the brahmacari is placed in an austere environment, becomes submissive, and renders service to the guru. That is the way. That is masculine. Unless you are a brahmacari, you cannot really be a good grihasta. Of course, you could learn to be by training, but the point is that we do not have training.

Now, how does a brahmacari respect his own nature while dealing with the grihastas, as varnasramas, sannyasis, brahmanas, ksatryas, vaisyas, and sudras intermingle with each other? See, in varnasrama you should maintain your nature, and for that you have to be aware of your nature in the first place.

Bhagiratha Dasa: How do we recognize varnas in Kali-yuga? It seems very hard to sort them out.

Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami: It is very easy. But in the Age of Kali, because of false ego, no one will accept. Varnasrama sees the spectrum of human society. Some excel in economics, some in administration, some in knowledge. You start with the sudra as the common platform. Among those, the dvijas, the natural leaders of the common people, will stand out. Not that we start from the top downward, with the brahmana, and everybody else is sub-standard. No, it is the other way around. Everyone is human, but among humans we must find leadership and leaders in knowledge, administration, and wealth. Without those, nothing will work. If you do not know where to go, you will not get anywhere. Without administration or protection, a brahmana cannot study and a vaisya cannot prosper. If there is no economic development, nothing moves and the wheels stop. Varnasrama only appears to be different in the modern day.

How do we recognize varnas? Well, how do you maintain yourself? The first option is through education, by cultivating and disseminating knowledge. The second is by protecting your community and providing facilities for them to perform their respective religious duties. The third is by generating wealth, either through farming, dairy, business, or banking. If you are not under any of these three options, then you are a sudra. If you work for somebody or have a salary, you are a sudra. It is very simple. The same goes for the asramas. If you are unmarried and not planning to get married soon and live under the direction of the temple commander, what are you called?

Bhagiratha Dasa: Brahmacari.

Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami: If you have a wife or you want to get married, what are you called? A grihasta, is it not? Then, if you were married, gave it all up, are now retired and dedicate yourself full-time in service to progress in Krishna consciousness, what are you? A varnasrama. Then, if you dedicate yourself on a full-time basis but are not dependent like a brahmacari, what is your position? Sannyasi. If asrama is so simple, why then is varëa so difficult? It is simple, but no one wants think about it, because no one wants to be a sudra. That is the whole point. It is so easy, but there is a mental block. That is the problem in Kali-yuga. We are neither capable of understanding our identity, nor our relationships, nor our duty toward anyone else. That is the first mistake.

If you observe society now, you see educators, doctors, lawyers; you find administrators and politicians; you find businessmen and farmers; and everybody else works for those other three. So is not varnasrama already going on? That is the second difficulty in establishing varnasrama—we think that varnasrama is not going on because of Kali-yuga. This is not a scientific view. To make a parallel: let us say that a great cook is preparing a meal and that a layman also cooks something. Are you going to tell me that this changes the process of cooking, in itself, or that the universal principles of cooking are not at work? You have a pot, you put it on the stove, you turn it on, you put something in the pot, you heat it up, and it becomes soft for eating. Is there any difference in the principles used by the expert and by the other cook? No. The chef just understands the principles better, applies them more scientifically, and therefore his preparation comes out nice.

So varnasrama and its principles are in effect right now in the whole world, in every aspect of life. Even if you take a tribe—there is a king, there are warriors, and there is everybody else who assists. You have persons who go out and make things happen; they are your vaisyas. Are there no husbands and wives nowadays? Are there no males and females, no parents and children? Not only that—is the influence of Kali so extensive that in Kali-yuga water is not wet and fire not hot, that the sun does not rise in the east and set in the west anymore, that the wind does not blow and the rain does not fall, that people do not need to sleep, to breathe, to eat, and to go to the toilet, that they do not like sex as they used to, that children are not born from the wombs of women, that nothing works like that anymore?

What has changed? If in Kali-yuga varnasrama will not work, tell me what has changed? People are not following the Vedas, that’s all. But that does not mean that the nature of the living entity has changed. There are dogs in the Indian villages, in the Indian cities, and in New York. Is there any real difference between them? So the dogs, the birds, the water, the wind, and everything else are the same. Only human beings refuse to acknowledge their role—that is their change! The basic perversion is that women have become men and men have become women. But their natures are still underlying, and if you revert to operating it correctly, it will work. That is the beauty of it.

Varnasrama works despite the modern idea that it does not. It still goes on. We still need money, administration, and protection. The qualified brahmana, ksatrya, and vaisya know what is going on. They clearly see the reasons how to organize varnasrama. The businessman knows; he gets capital and makes money. A leader knows that you still have to organize people and give protection. Someone who reads books and studies acquires knowledge and teaches. What has changed? Nothing! The science still remains, and if you follow it, it still works today. It is nice to see all these examples that are handed down by the traditional system. That is science, and it works.

Varnasrama is not external. We wear dhoti and chadar. Why? Because it is Indian? No, because it is what Krishna wants us to wear. What is the underlying principle? It is gentle and cultured. Therefore, even if you have to wear non-devotional clothes you wear something that is cultured, and you still follow varnasrama. You will not wear stretch-jeans or a funky t-shirt. You dress appropriately, according to the situation. That is the rule of varnasrama: according to your age, your position, your relationship, and your situation, you dress appropriately. You do not dress outside of those parameters. That is varnasrama. So can we say that it does not apply now? A man going to the office wears a suit. Does he wear that suit at home? This is all varnasrama. But people do not know what varnasrama means anymore; therefore they cannot identify it.

Often someone who has suffered many divorces, because he was ignorant of the basic principles of family life, will conclude that marriage no longer works. The truth is that the majority of couples simply do not know what to do. We see others making it through due to some remnants of family traditions; for them, marriage still works. A loser will label tradition as obsolete, while others still apply it with success.

A varnasrama society can exist only if there is education. You have to train people in varnasrama. Varnasrama means to act as human beings; you do not train them as animals. Education basically comprises three stages: sravana, manana, and nididhyasana.

Sravana means to hear—you hear about the nature of God, the individual soul, and the material energy, as well as their interrelations. That is knowledge. Manana means to contemplate what was heard and put it to practice. It is not confined to thinking, but is combined with practice. Not to combine knowledge and application is a very grave and common mistake. And nididhyasana means realization. By practicing with knowledge one gains realization.

From that, we can understand that a true leader wants people to proceed with knowledge. He knows that this way the results will be greater and long lasting. People who are not real leaders are afraid that they will lose control, or their position, if people are educated. They think that the less others know, the easier it is to control them. But a real leader appreciates other people’s qualities and encourages them to do things with knowledge.

So you want to know what the obstacles are in our society. Well, consider the following: We know the wife is supposed to follow what the husband says, but she is a human being and will ask why—“human” means to inquire. So if the husband does not explain, or the parents do not explain, or the temple president never explains, and so forth, then it is not a human society. If an authority does not like the devotees to study and ask questions or ask the reason behind an instruction, then he is not acting as a human being. This is why varnasrama education does not manifest in our society. ISKCON is a society meant for human beings, but many of our leaders are happier with a bunch of sheep, because people who think are problems for bureaucrats.

Bureaucrats are not leaders; they are sudras. Sudra does not imply a guy with a big fat belly just good enough to do physical work. The brahmanas have their sudras. Even today, when you have a school are there not people who maintain the building, go around, and drive buses? In the modern context, we can say that they are sudras working for the brahmanas. Same goes for the hospital: doctor is a brahminical profession, so the nurses, the anesthetists, secretaries, cleaners, etc., are all sudras.

The ksatryas, the government, have their sudras. You have administrators, generals, ministers, and then the people who assist them. The foot soldiers, the policemen, the workers making the roads, and the secretaries sitting behind desks pushing papers are all sudras of ksatryas. That is why bureaucrats are sudras; they are maintained by the administration they serve. They do not generate money or power. If you are maintained by someone else you are a sudra. Bäs! Does it make sense?

If you go into a big shop in India, how many vaisyas are sitting in the shop? There is only one guy, at the cash counter, chewing pan and wearing a t-shirt. He is the vaisya, and everybody else, showing you the items and all, are sudras. Being a salesman does not make you a businessman.

In this regard, Srila Prabhupada told a story to elucidate who is a vaisya. There is a particular group of vaisyas named suvarëa-mallika, who come from a village just outside Kolkata. At that time there was a man who was the prominent businessman from this mallika community. One day a young man came from the village to Kolkata to meet him. Being confident in his qualification and family reputation he asked, “I have a good business plan, and I come from the same community as yours. Please lend me some money for investment. I will surely return your money later, with interest.” The big businessman looked at the younger mallika straight in the eyes and challenged, “So you are a vaisya, huh?” The young man proudly said yes. “Okay,” the mallika said, “then come with me and I will show you your capital investment.” He got out of his chair and went over to the window. He pointed to a garbage bin on the street, where a dead rat was lying. At that time Kolkata was experiencing plague, and the government was giving two rupees per rat. That was a lot of money in those days. Prabhupäda said that one paisa would get you more vegetables then a man could carry—let alone two rupees. So the mallika said, “If you are a vaisya, go down, pick up that rat, get your two rupees, and start your business.” The young mallika did just that, and consequently became a very rich man in later years. That is a vaisya, not the guy who has been selling hats for the last twenty years. That is a salesman. A real vaisya will not be selling hats for so long. He gets hats, starts selling them, gets more hats—but at some point he grows and starts hiring sudras. That is a vaisya. Varnasrama is very straightforward, but because of his impersonal nature, modern man cannot appreciate relationships and their science. He simply looks at it from the angle of “I am the controller.” 

Let us look at the mother-and-child relationship. According to the modern viewpoint the mother is the absolute controller of the child. She is senior, she has knowledge, and what she says goes! Every law in the land will uphold that. Any adult will support it. Whatever she wants to do with the kid—how she wants to dress or feed him, what school he will attend—is absolutely, one hundred percent, in her hands. Dictatorial. Put like that, it sounds like the child is in a terrible position. But if a woman coldly acts just like that with her child, is she representing motherhood, the feminine manifestation of the parental position? How should mature women deal with their kids even though they have full control? Even though, in tattva, the mother is in control, in rasa, in the relationship, who is actually in charge, the kid or the mother? Will the mother feed the child whenever she wants, or when the child wants to eat? When the child is crying, the mother responds. When the child is tired, the mother makes some arrangement. When he is hungry or wants to go to the toilet, she attends to his need. So who is actually in charge here?

Bhagiratha Dasa: In this case, the child is in charge.

Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami: Yes, the child. That is varnasrama. But most devotees look at it the other way around. That is why they cannot establish the culture. That is why, in the sphere of interpersonal dealings, those devotees have no life—because they cannot accept the submission and sacrifices required in relationships. Good relations are based on trust, and in Kali-yuga nobody will trust anybody.

Can we say that at any point the mother lose her identity, or feeling of control, because she is one hundred percent for the child? And the more she is around the child, and the less she takes time for herself, do we not call her a better mother? Which woman would we consider the best mother—the dedicated one or the self-indulgent? The mother who is selfless is the best, anyone would agree. Now, does she lose her control or identity when she serves the kid? No. So why would a man lose his identity as a man if he does everything to meet the needs of the wife and children? This is the exact problem in our society. Most devotees—Western and even Indian—have no clear idea of who they are in regard to social dealings. They do not know what a male is, they do not know what a female is, and they do not know what parenting is.

“In case of any disagreement, the wife has to follow the husband”; “The wife has to be submissive”; “The wife has to serve the husband”—are there any more cliches? “The wife follows the husband and he is in control.” “The wife serves submissively and he is enjoying.” “Control” and “enjoy”—what is that? That is the false ego, the false identity that one is God. How can we accept ahaìkära as the working principle behind family life? Until we get rid of this so-called masculine nature we cannot establish true society, because around ninety percent of our society are grihastas.

Women are willing to be submissive and follow. Every movie, novel, or story depicts a man who is a man, who is going somewhere—powerful, accomplished, and gentle with ladies. Can you show me one woman who will resist, who will not be submissive to such a man, the noble knight on a white horse? If the man has no clue of who he is, how is the woman supposed to follow? So this is what the whole problem boils down to. If the man is trying to become a man, everything works. Then how do you train men to be men? You require teachers to train them, a gurukula. That means we need brahmanas. The soul is feminine by constitution; therefore one needs a lot of training to take the male position.

So brahmanas will train men to be real men. Out of those, some will be ksatryas and will reestablish social order, some will be vaisyas and will create prosperity. Everyone else is basically sudra. So all you have to do is create a class of qualified brahmanas who understand varnasrama and its application. Brahmanas comprehend the nature of man and woman, as well as the ideal platform for their interactions. If you do that, you will have varnasrama. That is the end of the discussion; it is that straightforward. But to do that is a lot of work. That is why education is so essential.