Encyclopedia of Spiritual Knowledge

According to the scale of varnas, man on the first stage is called a shudra. He is too young in his psychogenesis and able of doing too little. His task now is to learn from people who are more mature evolutionary, helping them in their work. This is the student stage.

The next stage is represented by vaishyas. They are successful farmers, craftsmen, merchants, that is people who are successful in managing business.

Then they become kshatriyas — leaders. It is on this stage that such aspects of the Perfection as Wisdom and Power develop best, and the background for expansion of Love is created.

One has to master all these stages in order to become able to cognize Brahman (the Holy Spirit) and become thus a member of the brahman varna.

Many religious trends and Schools lack this idea of regularity of man’s development and attempt to bring all adepts immediately to the state of sannyasi (monk) which is only detrimental to them.

There are no stages leading to the Perfection other than these. That is why it is necessary to emphasize harmfulness of the tendency to abandon prematurely the social activity. After all, only by going through many “earthly” situations we can acquire that which is absolutely indispensable on the final stages of approaching the Creator.

It became historically established in India and in some other countries to hand down the varna membership by inheritance. Thus, it is quite obvious that not all people who assign themselves to the highest varna have high spiritual achievements.