Organizing Society Around People’s Natural Inclinations (EBI*)
While eternally present the varnas manifest differently depending on the culture
* Essential Background Information
As mentioned in the previous post, the influence of the three gunas, and their various combinations, generates men of four different natures: brahmanas, ksatriyas, vaisyas and sudras. Now we’ll look at each in more detail. Here I will be speaking in general terms. It is important to note that in today’s artificial world and money economy such things are distorted from their ideal arrangement. Therefore, first I will describe the ideal concept and then contrast it with the manner in which it is perverted in modern society.
The Workers
We’ll begin with workers, or in Sanskrit, the sudras. These are the service workers, as well as those people who produce the things that society uses and enjoys, and they enjoy working primarily with things. They include laborers/builders, musicians, artists, craftsmen, metal workers, woodworkers, etc., and they make up the majority of the population – 75-80%. If they are given the support they require to live a decent life, they focus on perfecting their craft or activity and are peaceful and satisfied in doing so. However, these people generally lack the people and organizational skills necessary to pull together productive enterprise. That is done by the next group.
The Organizers
The vaisyas, or organizers, are endowed with more rajas that impels them to production. They take the raw materials that nature provides and transform them into useful and desirable items: be it lumber, houses and furniture from a forest, bricks from the earth, food from the earth, a symphonic performance and performing arts, buildings of great architecture, shoes and clothing, and all of the ordinary necessities of life. These are the people who organize the workers into productive enterprise, and they comprise some 10-12% of the population. They have the necessary intelligence to know what needs to be done, and the people skills to organize the workers and see to their needs so that the work is accomplished and things are produced.
Of course products alone are not sufficient for a fully-functioning society. A higher vision for the welfare of larger numbers of people is required, and that is the work of the administrators.
The Administrators
The vaisyas organize small groups of people, but society requires others who see and work with the larger picture and have broader, more complete vision for the entire village or town. When the numbers of people increase, someone must look after the greater welfare and arrange for such things as the building and maintenance of roads, education for the children, smooth commerce, adjudication of disputes, and physical protection. These people are the ksatriyas, and their numbers are smaller yet – just 5-8% of the population are so endowed. To successfully carry out responsibilities of this sort a person must be free from the dulling influence of tamas, and primarily influenced by rajas and sattva, which impel him to action for the greater good. The sudra is the father of his household, the vaisya acts as the father of all of his workers, and the ksatriyas are equivalent to the father of the entire village or town. By his nature he will take a leadership role and be the person in front, inspiring the others, seeing to it that they have a peaceful, stable environment in which to grow and develop. The leadership of such men is absolutely necessary for society to properly develop, and their role cannot be adequately fulfilled by vaisyas or sudras.
The Intelligentsia
Finally, society requires moral guidance and spiritual upliftment throughout life, and this is the role of the brahmanas. The brahmanas are intellectuals, priests and sages. Being situated in sattva and trained in religious principles from childhood, they are free from the bewildering and dulling influence of rajas and tamas. Thus, they can clearly distinguish between right and wrong, cause and effect, proper and improper action, etc. Just as children require the guidance of parents, all members of society, covered by the lower gunas require the guidance, correction and encouragement of those free from such influences. The brahmanas are also the counselors and advisors of the administrators. Being fixed in the spiritual purpose of human life, the role of the brahmanas is to guide the entire society in spiritual principles and morality, as well as in the practical application of spiritual principles in the material aspects of the society, in order to protect people from degrading influences, such as lying, cheating, graft, etc.
Dharma – Proper Action and Duty to Others
In this ideal Vedic culture, every person is inculcated from youth with the understanding that they have obligations to the other sections of society. Their life is not simply about themselves, and especially not themselves at the expense of others. Just as our physical body functions optimally when every part is healthy, working properly, and contributing to the whole, the social body functions nicely when all the parts do their specific task and work cooperatively together. In this spiritually-oriented society, everyone is trained in dharma, meaning proper action. Making spiritual emancipation their personal goal in life, everyone endeavors to their best ability to live according to their dharma – the spiritual principles and duties assigned to their position in life.
The most significant roles are those of the higher classes – the brahmanas, ksatriyas and vaisyas – brahmanas are considered the highest, then ksatriyas, and then vaisyas. The higher the varna, the greater their responsibility. If these roles are taken by the unqualified, the entire culture is threatened. This happened at the beginning of Kali-yuga when the brahmana class became unqualified, leading to their abuse of their position of leadership. They were then rejected, and the ksatriya kings took control of society. The degrading influence caused them to also abuse their authority, and they were then overthrown. At the present time, the vaisyas (mercantile class) have control of society (under the name of capitalism), and as we are now witnessing, they have badly abused their power, which will soon lead to the complete destruction of this modern civilization. Therefore, it is time to resurrect this spiritual culture to prepare for the coming spiritual age – the phoenix arising from the ashes.
The duties of the varnas are detailed in the Dharma Shastras – scriptures that specifically layout the duties for every varna and ashrama. There are 19 DharmaShastras, of which Manu Samhita and Yajnavalkhya Smriti are considered the primary texts, and further instructions are found throughout Vedic literature, such as Mahabharata.
Historical Vedic Culture
There are numerous examples of this properly functioning Vedic culture in classical Vedic literatures, such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana. We read there of great kingdoms where everyone had everything they needed and were happy to the extent that, in Ramachandra’s kingdom, there was not even death for those who did not want it.
Such examples are not limited to the ancient histories but are recounted in the recent history of India. Here’s an excerpt of that history from my Spiritual Economics book:
India was once a country of stupendous wealth. Nicolo Conti described that in the early fifteenth century the banks of the Ganges were lined with one prosperous city after another, each well designed, rich in gardens, and orchards, silver and gold, commerce and industry. Mount Stuart Elphinstone writes “The Hindu kingdoms overthrown by the Moslems, were so wealthy that Moslem historians tire of telling of the immense loot of jewels and gold captured by the invaders.”[1]
Although extensive trade with India had been going on for millennia, and almost any of her riches could be had by such legitimate means, the lust and envy of the invaders precluded this more reasonable method. Lust over her riches, and the covetousness of “I and mine” over her treasure was their desire.
The wealth of India was repeatedly sacked, but still when Shah Jahan was emperor, his treasury included two underground strong rooms, each some 150,000 cubic feet in capacity, that were almost entirely filled with silver and gold. But although the Moguls conquered India, they did not destroy her. The British historian Vincent Smith in his Akbar (Oxford, 1919 ed.) acknowledges that India prospered even into the 19th century:
“Contemporary testimonies permit no doubt that the urban population of the more important cities was well to do.” Indeed, travelers described Agra and Fatehpur Sikri as each greater and richer than London. Not only were the cities prosperous but the entire citizenry were as well, as reported by Anquetil-Duperron, who, journeying thru the Maratha districts in 1760, found himself “in the midst of the simplicity and happiness of the golden age...the people were cheerful, vigorous, and in high health.” Such prosperity continued into the later years of the Mogul reign, as Maria Graham who visited Pune in the early nineteenth century informs us: “Among the lower classes (castes) it is very common to see a man loaded with gold and silver on his hands, feet, waist, neck, ears and nose.” Robert Clive, the chief architect of the British empire in India, upon visiting Murshidabad in 1759, concluded that she “was a country of inexhaustible riches.”
The populace was active in all varieties of manufacturing, doing an active trade with the Roman Empire even at the beginning of the current era.[2] The Reverend Jabuz Sunderland chronicled: “This wealth, was created by the Hindus’ vast and varied industries. Nearly every kind of manufacture or product known to the civilized world—nearly every kind of creation of man’s brain and hand, existing anywhere, and prized either for its utility or beauty—had long, long been produced in India. India was a far greater industrial and manufacturing nation than any in Europe or than any other in Asia. Her textile goods—the fine products of her loom, in cotton, wool, linen, and silk—were famous over the civilized world; so were her exquisite jewelry and her precious stones, cut in every lovely form; so were her pottery, porcelains, ceramics of every kind, quality, color and beautiful shape; so were her fine works in metal – iron, steel, silver and gold. She had great architecture—equal in beauty to any in the world. She had great engineering works. She had great merchants, great business men, great bankers and financiers. Not only was she the greatest ship-building nation, but she had great commerce and trade by land and sea which extended to all known civilized countries. Such was the India which the British found when they came.”[3]
In 1750, her relative share of entire world’s manufacturing output was 24.5 percent, higher than the combined output of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Habsburg Empire, Italian states, and Russia. India was also a major producer and exporter of textiles. The city of Kasimbazar in Bengal alone produced over 2 million pounds of raw silk annually during the 1680s, more than eight times that of Europe’s foremost silk producer of the time, Sicily. The cotton weavers of Gujarat turned out almost 3 million pieces a year for export alone, dwarfing that of the largest textile enterprise in continental Europe which produced less than 100,000 pieces per year.[4]
India’s opulence was due to the fact that the populous, adhered to sattva, and the religious principles of dharma. The higher classes, not being envious, allowed all classes to prosper and share in the vast wealth.
However inexhaustible India’s wealth might have appeared, it was intolerable to the envious British who made it their policy to eliminate her manufacturing competition and make her an agricultural colony only, bringing the once productive and prosperous India to destitution and dependency. The methods they used to accomplish this ignoble feat are tried and true, and have been repeated all over the globe for hundreds of years since the earliest times of colonization, and even before that on a lesser scale with neighboring countries, cities and even villages. The process continues to this very day on a planetary-wide scale under the seemingly benign, even beneficial, concept of Global Free Trade.
We see the influence of tamas in the mentality and actions of the British, who, out of envy, were unable to tolerate the wealth of India and destroyed the culture that produced such prosperity. The envy and greed stemming from tamas is visible everywhere in the world today, especially with the coming CBDCs of all Central Banks, which are intended to control not only the buying and selling of every single person, but their behavior as well. The demonic who control today’s world have arranged their economic system to usurp the wealth of the many and concentrate it in the hands of the few. Today just 2% of the people own 80% of the wealth – wealth far beyond their ability to use–which is why we do not see ordinary people today loaded with gold and silver on their hands, feet, waist, neck, ears and nose. All of that wealth has been sucked up by the extremely narcissistic controllers of society.
The Varnas in Our Modern Day
As we have recounted earlier, modern society is controlled by the demonic who have created a culture in which the primary focus is immediate and unlimited pleasure and sense gratification of any and all varieties. This is made possible by the economic system that produces “money” out of thin air and by a market economy where an unlimited number of goods are immediately available in any quantity.
The materialistic nature of our present culture has greatly perverted the manner in which the varnas function. Any sense of following dharma has vanished, as has any consideration of duty to others. Due to the modern concept that we are all equal, anyone is allowed to occupy any position regardless of their moral qualification. Greedy, self-interested persons of the most degraded character (far below sudras) have taken control of the government, the banks and economy, while those humble, high-minded souls with true understanding (brahmanas) are rejected for speaking truths that expose the cheating and are forced to take menial positions to maintain themselves. Those of a ksatriya nature satisfy their nature by participating in gangs, the mafia, or the military, and rather than being trained to protect, they apply force, violence and death to extract submission, all too often killing the innocent in unjust wars. The vaisyas fulfill their natural inclinations as businessmen, but, without instruction and guidance of proper brahmanas, they increasingly focus on producing profits by using inferior ingredients and by cheating their suppliers, employees and customers wherever possible.
The consequence of the rampant influence of tamas has all but eliminated the influence of sattva, to the point where in today’s world doctors destroy health, lawyers and judges destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and banks destroy prosperity.
The objective of this blog is to explain the difference between our modern culture and a truly spiritual culture. The understanding of the gunas plays an immense role in understanding how cultures can be either degraded or uplifted. The promotion of sattva, elimination of tamas (as far as possible), and tempering of rajas are absolutely necessary to develop a truly advanced and superior civilization in which everyone can be happy, prosperous, and spiritually progressive.
Having covered this background material, we are now prepared to discuss the functioning of the material aspects of a spiritual culture, which we shall begin in the next post.
Rest assured, there is a better way to live.
[1] Mount Stuart Elphinstone, History of India, 1916 ed
[2] Anand Parthasarathy, as reported in The Hindu, 6-14-2002, and July 2002 in the scientific journal Sahara.
[3] Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland, India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom, p. 61
[4] Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers