A Life Lived in Entirety : Four Aims, Four Stages and Four Classes of Human Life – Part 1

[Anurag Jain]

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Dear Friends,

On Unsubscribing

My apologies for a jarring visual chaos right at the beginning of the mail. I have been getting more and more innovative in getting across this singular message to people since last one year. Last time I posted, I was happy till I got one more mail asking me to unsubscribe. I sent the person concerned, an email reply with the part in my article where I mentioned an intent of perverse pleasure could be the only reason for such an act after so many mails of mine. He promptly, silently unsubscribed and then sent me a further mail again with one line "I am not interested". To him I curtly responded, "You have already unsubscribed" because I had checked it out just after I had sent my mail to him.

Well, of course, why should I expect interest in these matters from everyone? On the contrary, I am really surprised that there are still around 1450 members on the mailing list who have been tolerating my mails. I am not sure : perhaps they have spammed mails from me, perhaps they just delete my mails as they come, perhaps they just let the mails sit in the inbox with an intent to read some day, or perhaps they just don't bother with any of this.

I have said this before and I am repeating it, I shall not know the moment you unsubscribe. I don't get any message when anyone unsubscribes. It just happens smoothly, swiftly and anonymously. If I have interest I shall have to go to my Groups page and manually check out your name to see whether you are still there or not. To be honest, I do this sometimes for someone who had been communicative and friendly in the past and who is not now. So if you wish to unsubscribe and are hesitating that I shall come to know and feel bad, just know that I wont come to know and I actually do not want you to be bothered. I don't want a single person in this group to stay in it, out of courtesy. The only courtesy I expect is that you don't ask me to unsubscribe and do it on your own, which is a simple click of a button

All this is actually just Lila - a sport for me. Nothing of this affects the fervor of my writing as this is a Nishkama karma, I am doing - an act without expectation of anything in return, an act of love. I shall write, even if no-one reads it.

Contents of the Article

I had planned to write this article in its entirety but then I saw that it required me to clear some ground before I go into the details. That is why I broke it into two parts. The first part clears some vital points about my outlook and style of writing. Without it, what I write may seem unintelligible if you are going to stick with me for a length of time in future.

The contents are

1. This Article Is Not Going To Be A Prescription But A Door To Understanding Oneself

2. The Four Aims of Life (Purusharthas)

3. A Re-visiting Of The Four Varnas/ Social Classes And My Evolutionary Style Of Writing

4. The Four Stages (Ashramas) of Hindu Society in Wikipedia

As usual, comments, suggestion and questions are invited. They help me form the basis of my writing as I am not writing entirely in solitude. I could have done that. I write so that I can have an interaction through the written medium. I learn along as I interact and write. I may not attempt writing an article on the basis of your suggestions immediately, but I shall file them and write about them as and when they figure in the development of my writing and inquiry. Or sometimes I may address your questions individually, in brief or in length depending upon the necessity I perceive.

Warm wishes,
Anurag

A Life Lived in Entirety : Four Aims, Four Stages and Four Classes of Human Life – Part 1

As a response to my previous article “Donning My New Identity as a Philosopher – A Discussion on Evolution of Consciousness and Personal Identities “ one of the readers asked me to write about the Hindu scheme of Four Ashramas (Four Stages of Human Life)

1. Brahmacharya (student)

2. Grihstha (householder)

3. Vanaprastha (retired)

4. Sannyasa (renunciate)

This scheme is embedded as part and parcel of every Indian. Perhaps the reader who requested a write-up from me on this, would have intuited the parallel between this scheme and the way I talked about evolution of consciousness and identities in my last article.

This Article Is Not Going To Be A Prescription But A Door To Understanding Oneself

The intent of my article here is not to give a prescription based on this scheme. Not only would it be a dead regurgitation of memory, it would add or reinforce prescriptions we have already accumulated from every single quarter of society. As a philosophical inquirer I want to throw light on matters concerning the human situation, not to leave the reader with a set of conclusions, but the spirit of free inquiry; not with dead thought but with a living fire that burns the false.

While we are on this, I also wish to caution something that may be assumed about me, even though I would have never made such a claim anywhere in my writings. All prescriptions are made on the basis of an identity assumed by oneself. My identity is that of a philosopher-inquirer so I give no prescriptions. A reader must understand that I have assumed no other identity for myself. I am not a Hindu, I am not an Indian, I am not a teacher and I am even not a philosopher advocating a system of philosophy.

It’s true that I have written more about Hindu concepts in my last article and in this article, I do so only because of the wide familiarity of these concepts to Indians and am always keen to bring out the general human condition in these classifications rather than to do with any particular culture, class or race.

What I had presented earlier was the Hindu concept of evolution of identity in the social scale; called the Chaturvarna – Four Varnas/Classes. And then I tied it with the evolution of identity on the personal scale with Anodea Judith’s psychological stage which employ a modern outlook as well as the three Hindu psychological mind states – the three Gunas. So I move seamlessly through different concepts in different systems. Of course being human, I am not beyond preferences and style, so please don’t lay a charge on me if I do tend to lean one way or the other: I am not infinite :-)

What I can say is that there is nothing false for me, though I shall use this term extensively and out rightly. (As I used in one instance above) Wherever I use the word false, it must be read as “partially true”. This is because I see life as evolution, a fluid movement, rather than being boxed up in compartments. And this is what I call Integral Living. It is cumbersome for me to write “partially true” everywhere, every time, so I shall stick to the word false. Perhaps I should start documenting my own lexicon somewhere.

The Four Aims of Life (Purusharthas)

While the Hindus had a scheme for evolution of identities on the individual scale and social scale, they also had a scheme of evolution of Four Aims of Human Life (Purusharthas)

1. Dharma (piety, morality, duties)

2. Artha (wealth, health, means of life),

3. Kama (pleasure, relationships, emotions)

4. Moksha (liberation, freedom, self-realization)

(English translations from Wikipedia, which I liked very much. I made except one change – instead of love, I have used pleasure in Kama)

Before I get into the interrelationship between the four different schemes of Hindus – The three Mind States (Gunas), the four Aims ( Purusharthas), the four Ashramas (Stages) and the four Varnas (Classes), I would like to revisit what I wrote last time.

A Re-visiting Of The Four Varnas/ Social Classes And My Evolutionary Style Of Writing

1. Sudra - Employee

2. Vaishya - Social Manager/Sustainer

3. Kshatriya - Social Policy Maker/Administrator - Kshatriya,

4. Brahmin - Social Transformer /Inquirer (Please note, not Social Worker, Social Entrepreneur or Social Revolutionary.....all these would come under Kshatriyas in my categorization)
   

Those who would have gone through my previous post in this regard would notice that I have translated the Hindu terms more compactly in English this time and with a minute change of flavour. Being an inquiring philosopher and an evolutionary, I do not believe in having fixed conclusions but rather allow for newer insights and forms to emerge. Like life, a true philosopher never stops evolving. This is something my readers have to expect in all that I write. So the best way to read me is to see the last that I have written on any matter.

This automatically does not suggests that what I had written previously was totally false or serves little value. Life exists on several parallel planes - if we speak hierarchically - or in different modes, if we wish to speak without any hierarchy. Not all people are having the same consciousness at any given moment of time. So what appeals to a person at a certain time, at a certain level of maturity will show great variation. Depending upon the inclination and maturity of individuals my older writings may hold more attraction and make more sense than my newer ones.

As noted earlier I am not a scholar or a pedantic given to establishing historical meanings of the words; not that these functions are invalid - they are - for some people, at some time. But my interest is not to establish exact meanings of words. I am not dependent on words to provide me with meaning. Without doubt one does start that way but eventually an inquirer becomes more plastic with the meaning of words. For him they are starting point of inquiry rather than a concrete fact. For him a word can convey multiple meanings at multiple levels of consciousness in multiple contexts. So the meaning of word for an inquirer is extracted in the context he wishes to explore, with the level of consciousness he has in that instant. All this may sound a bit perplexing to a beginner of self inquiry but I thought that I should make a mention here and develop this theme in detail in my later writings. I don’t want my readers to expect a mathematical consistency in my writings.

What I am saying is not novel, at least historically. Any reader of history in any field would recognize that over time the meanings of words have kept changing through different minds in different ages and different cultures. Oh my and what feuds have erupted on them!

The Four Stages (Ashramas) of Hindu Society in Wikipedia

Anyone, who is interested in the details of this scheme would do well to read this concise but very well presented article in Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashrama_(stage)

Since the description of this is found on Wikipedia I would not be spending much time discussing it’s details; rather I would like to present my own view tying it also with my previous article, in Part 2 of my article.