Aryans and We. Archi Devi Dasi (Ekmekchjan Adelaida)
and attributes offered to the Lord and the demigods. Gold is deemed to be a pure element and therefore for Vedic sacrifices it was needed in great amounts. During the process of sacrifice the Lord and demigods were offered gold, grains, melted butter, etc. In some cases there were sacrifices of a horse, a goat or a bull. But Vedic sacrifices were in principle different from modern ones. By sacrifice, not only material problems were solved but brahmanas proved their purity and the wonderful power coming from it. The peculiarity of the Aryan society was that it was God-centered on the basis not only of faith in God but the real communication with Him. This statement sounds for modern people as if mocking their life experience. But until this difference is understood we won’t be able to comprehend why the Aryan system of values and their social structure are more preferable. The unique trait of this society is in this very fact that it is in the position to assert the real connection with God and His servants (demigods) and solve arising problems with their help; this indeed makes the Aryans unique (not the type of the head, skin tone or heroism).
The life of the Aryans depended on meetings with God. For His satisfaction, the purity was required. Such purity was possessed by brahmanas (priests). For ordinary people, the idea of God is mysterious. Christ was “made” to work wonders all the time for his preaching to have any effect. Ordinary people manifesting desires for sense pleasure are egocentric and as a rule have got a limited focus of interest. It is a very hard labor to direct such people to the sphere of the spiritual life. The system of varnashrama-dharma is proposed to living beings inhabiting the material world by God Himself and it exists in order to provide a happy life and the minimal spiritual progress. Brahmanas’ duty is to establish the connection between the society and God by means of sacrifices. Ordinary people do not like to accept regulating principles of behavior. We can see that typically a religion cannot keep people within virtue limits (certainly if it is not done through violence). But they are greatly impacted by a miracle. In the Aryan society, there also took place such a miracle which kept all its members within the limits of certain behavior. During the sacrifice, a horse, a goat or a bull could be offered as a sacrifice. If this sacrifice was accepted, before everybody’s eyes the animal got a new body and came out of the fire.
One may raise an objection that it was simply fiction or fraud of cunning brahmanas striving for the power over people. But here it is important to consider that it was before the eyes of the whole society how brahmanas lived a completely pure and ascetic (full of deprivations) lives. They were usually very ascetic, lived in privacy and possessed otherworldly powers which removed the need for a lie or trick. They could simply affect people to get what they wanted like modern paranormalists do without showing any miracles. Then, there was no need for a lie. Here there is one very important circumstance. Material consciousness (strive for sense pleasure and power) requires a limiting factor. In the Aryan society, laborers-servants, producers-merchants were controlled by the power of leaders. Leaders were controlled by priests. And who controlled priests themselves? Priests were controlled by God. This point is very vulnerable. For hundreds of years, pseudo-religious persons made people unhappy in that very point. If a priest like a very common person is influenced by desires (attachments) and hatred (enmity), then religion is the most comfortable way to control people. All religious personalities did and do it this way except for ascetics. Ascetics take a renounced lifestyle and eventually their hearts are purified from binding ties of attachments and hatred. The Bhagavad-Gita describes the specific mood as the symptom of self-realization (chapter 2, verse 56):
One whose mind remains undisturbed amidst misery, who does not crave for pleasure, and who is free from attachment, fear, and anger, is called a sage of steady wisdom.
From the viewpoint of common values, this verse is very puzzling by offering to tolerate happiness just like suffering! At first sight, this proposal is very strange. Soul’s blissful nature instantly enjoys everything which brings us happiness and rejects suffering. What does Krishna mean? In fact, the material happiness delays the return of the soul to the spiritual world just as suffering. This verse suggests us that only one who is free from attachments and hatred can keep balance both in happiness and suffering.
Attachments appear in communication. An ascetic brings communication to the possible minimum. Due to it, ascetic’s heart becomes free from material impurity and gets a balanced nature. A human life can be entrusted only to this balance, while brahmanas were advisors of society and, consequently, they were responsible for the course and the result of a human life. When a brahmana reached the perfection in purity, sacrifices made by such brahmana were like a miracle, and this circumstance helped society to trust this brahmana. When the Lord together with the demigods visited the arena of sacrifice, He showed everyone that advices of this brahmana could be trusted. When the Lord or the demigods did not come, their dissatisfaction became obvious and society expected troubles. The Vedic literature also contains such stories. Hence, the chain of control became perfect, the assessment of the activity of all links in the social chain was given at that time. If the Lord was satisfied with the interchange of all society layers, He appeared and satisfied everybody’s desires. When a brahmana is not pure, such person is not able to invite the Lord, and then society has to satisfy its desires by material methods. Contest and fight begin, thus the balance is broken. How do these religious figures act to hide their own deficiency? They declare that to see God is not possible .
The Aryan society had such number of pure brahmanas of the highest qualification, thanks to them people saw the demigods and God, so that no question came up regarding His existence. The only problem was that everyone understood: the meeting with God was possible only thanks to the perfect purity which was provided by the perfect religious process. The Aryan society gained fantastic results only due to close relationships with demigods and the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The brahmanas’ power was the basis for the prosperity of the whole society.
With powers available, there is always the danger to misuse them (apply unjustly). Therefore, no brahmana can be considered a person who possesses superhuman powers but has no self-control. Self-control means not to use own capacities to satisfy personal attachments and hatred. Self-control helps a brahmana to develop the forgiving nature. Brahmanas, thus, were focused to reach the Supreme Personality. They reached perfection of self-realization by restoring their spiritual nature and could accompany ordinary people to God and their superhuman powers were by-products of their ascetism.
In the life of society, brahmana’s clairvoyance played a very important role. This is a factor without which no society can exist. In the material world, availability of superhuman powers is the undeniable fact. All that remains is to find the point of their correct application. A secular society also uses services of various clairvoyants whose advices are followed by many leaders. What is the difference between a typical clairvoyant and a brahmana? The difference is in the source of the power, the world view which is served by this power, the life style and respective results. Brahmanas affirmed in self-realization are persons who get their powers from demigods or the Lord. This is the guarantee of the truth of the received information.
Modern clairvoyants get their powers from ghosts or inhabitants of lower planets called asuras. Therefore, we can see that the life style of modern clairvoyants is no way different from the life style of ordinary people. All of them are under the influence of the gunas of ignorance and passion with respective habits and consciousness. Passion makes them have personal interests and ignorance makes them lie and do violence to satisfy these interests. A modern clairvoyant makes the best efforts for anyone who has got in his/her hands to feel the constant need for his/her services like a drug addict. At first, to get one proved in their powers, they very often make such person free from suffering and later entail new troubles for a person to repeatedly resort to them and be dependent on them. It becomes possible because society allows clairvoyants to live a secular life.
Brahmanas lived ascetic lives and the state of their minds was the proper one for religious people. As mentioned above, such life style allowed to become free from the impact of lower gunas of the material nature which in turn was the guarantee for their honesty and impartiality. The Aryan society required a very pious behavior from clairvoyants (priests). Those with superhuman powers but with low inclinations were expelled by society as dangerous persons bringing troubles. As a rule, such persons became “ornaments” of the demon society. The Mahabharata contains an interesting episode relating to this topic. Prior to the frequently mentioned battle