This is a stanza that has been much misused in recent times by the upholders of the social crime styled as the caste system in India. Varna, meaning different shades of texture, or colour, is employed here in the Yogic-sense. In the Yoga Shastra, they attribute some definite colours to the triple gunas, which mean, as we have said earlier, “the mental temperaments.” Thus, Sattwa is considered as white, Rajas as red, and Tamas as black. Man is essentially the thoughts that he entertains. From individual to individual, even when the thoughts are superficially the same, there are clear distinctions recognizable from their temperaments.
On the basis of these temperamental distinctions, the entire mankind has been, for the purpose of spiritual study, classified into four “castes” of Varnas. Just as, in a metropolis, on the basis of trade or professions, we divide the people as doctors, advocates, professors, traders, politicians, tongawalas, etc., so too, on the basis of the different textures of thoughts entertained by the intelligent creatures, the four “castes” had been labelled in the past. From the standpoint of the State, a doctor and a tongawala are as much important as an advocate and a mechanic. So too, for the perfectly healthy life of a society, all “castes” should not be competitive but co-operative units, each being complementary to the others, never competing among themselves.
However, later on, in the power politics of the early middle-ages in India, this communal feeling cropped up in its present ugliness, and in the general ignorance among the ordinary people at that time, the cheap pandits could parade their assumed knowledge by quoting, IN BITS, stanzas like this one. The decadent Hindu-Brahmin found it very convenient to quote the first quarter of the stanza, and repeat “I CREATED THE FOUR varnas,” and give this tragic social vivisection a divine look having a godly sanction. They, who did this, were in fact, the greatest blasphemers that Hinduism ever had to reckon with. For Vyasa, in the very same line of the couplet, as though in the very same breath, describes the basis on which this classification was made, when he says, “BY THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE MENTAL QUALITY AND PHYSICAL ACTION (OF THE PEOPLE).”
This complete definition of the Varna not only removes our present misunderstanding but also provides us with some data to understand its true significance. Not by birth is man a Brahmana (Brahmin); by cultivating good intentions and noble thoughts alone can we ever aspire to Brahmana-hood; nor can we pose as Brahmana merely because of ourexternal physical marks, or bodily actions in the outer world. The definition insists that he alone is a Brahmana, whose thoughts are as much Sattwic, as his actions are. A Kshatriya is one who is Rajasic in his thoughts and actions. A Shudra is not only one whose thoughts are Tamasic, but also he who lives a life of low endeavours, for satisfying his base animal passions and flesh-appetites. The scientific attitude in which this definition has been declared, is clear from the exhaustive implications of the statement: “ACCORDING TO THE DIFFERENTIATION OF “guna” AND “karma.”
We had tried to explain how the Self, functioning through Its own self-forgetfulness (Maya) as it were, came to project forth temperamentally in three distinct conditions of mental and intellectual life: Unactivity, Activity and Inactivity. Through these triple channels flow the expressions of Life manifesting the different ideas, agitations and actions of the embodied-Life. None of the vagaries of existence would have been possible if the equipments were not tickled by the touch-of-Life.
Krishna, as the very Source of Life, emphatically asserts here, that He is the author of it all, in the sense that the ocean could say that it is the author of all the waves, ripples, foam, bubbles, etc., and gold can assert that it is the very creator and sustainer of all gold-ornaments in the world, inasmuch as no gold-ornament can exist when the gold element is removed from it.
But, at the same time the Infinite, being All-Pervading, as we have already explained, cannot participate in any action and therefore, the Lord, in one and the same breath, declares that though “HE IS THE AUTHOR OF IT,” in His own Real Nature,” HE IS AT THE SAME TIME A NON-DOER.”
Such contradictions in Vedanta become confusing to the students, as long as they are not initiated into the SECRETS OF ITS STUDY. In our conversation, we generally hear people say “that they reached their destination ten miles away by sitting in a bus;” “I caught a train and reached here.” Since we understand it in our usual routine conversation, we do not try to dissect such statements to discover the contradictions they contain. Sitting you cannot travel. By catching a train, none can cover distances. And yet it is so true. When we travel in a bus or a train, we donot move; we only sit and hang on to our seats! But stillwe cover the distance because the vehicle in which we sit, moves on. In other words, the motion of the vehicle is attributed to us. Similarly, the creation of the temperaments, which should be attributed to the mind and intellect, is attributed to the Lord. In fact, the Lord, in His Essential Nature, being Changeless and All-Pervading, is neither the Doer nor the Creator.
SINCE I AM NOT IN REALITY THE AUTHOR OF THOSE ACTIONS OF WHICH YOU THINK ME TO BE AN AUTHOR:
