It is interesting to note how Sri Aurobindo looks at caturvarņa from the point of view of the Vaishnava experience. It is as follows: Vishnu as the Sustainer of the Creation has four forms: Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha. Mahavira is the Brahmin possessing Knowledge and Light and Awareness; Balarama embodies Kshatriya quality of Force and Dynamism; Pradyumna the Vaishya is one who expresses the quality of Love and Beauty; Aniruddha is Shudra with competent service, and with the quality of organisation and execution in details; it was he who had prompted Brahma to do the Sarvahuta Yajna when Brahma had remained inactive. If this is a spirituality reality and not a mythology, if such is the origin of the four qualities, then how can these be disputed anywhere or at any time? In fact, their truth is present in all the four, in varying degrees in all the individuals and in all societies or functioning groups, including the corporate organisations.

What were the gifts received as a result of doing the Sarvahuta Yajna, the Offering of the All, the Yajna of the Purusha Sukta? Out of the sacrifice emerged, among many splendid things, Indra and Vayu and Agni. But who are they, these Gods? These are the Gods connected with Mind and Life and Matter, the mental, the vital, and the physical worlds, the Divine Mind, the Lord of Life, and the Seer-Will in Matter. In The Secret of the Veda Sri Aurobindo writes: “The sons of the Infinite have a twofold birth. They are born above in the divine Truth as creators of the worlds and guardians of the divine Law; they are born also here in the world itself and in man as cosmic and human powers of the Divine.” They are here in the cosmos, and they are here amidst us, helping us on the journey towards Truth-Light and Strength and Beauty and Excellence in work, founded in the Four Powers brought down by the Yajna of the Purusha Sukta. Their birth is the necessary foundation of the greater life; but the greater birth that is yet to come, the birth of the life divine, is in Aswapati’s Yoga-Yajna invoking the descent of the divine Savitri. She has incarnated and it is she who is executing in this creation the Will of the Supreme, executing it to give birth to that new world.

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