30 Jun 2021
[Who all are the Brāhmiṇs those that came from face of Puruṣa & who all are those who became Brāhmiṇs by deeds (e.g. Kaushik Rishi…)? Are there name sake imposters who brag to be Brāhmiṇs also present, but don't do good to society?]
Swāmi replied: The soul having the quality of leading others to God (Brāhmaṇa) came from the face of God. It is not a reverse statement, which means that a soul coming from the face of God became Brāhmaṇa. The Vedic text says ‘Brāhmaṇo'sya mukha māsīt’. This means that the soul, which is already Brāhmaṇa came from His face. Face or head indicates intelligence or logic, which is necessary for spiritual preaching. The soul that came out is not a general soul, which was made Brāhmaṇa after its generation. This rejects the partiality of God to make one of the four souls only as Brāhmaṇa. Since the soul came from head, it got the required intelligence for preaching. This is not partiality of God because some soul has to be generated with such specific quality. A soul was generated from the face with that quality. Such soul was not picked up by God after creating all the four souls and hence, there is no question of partiality of God in this. Hence, the first soul that came from the face of God must have been already a real Brāhmaṇa. At the time of creating this first soul, other souls did not exist so that you can blame partiality on God! Later on, several souls came out from the first soul and all the latter souls might have been Brāhmaṇs or might not have been Brāhmaṇas.
From the point of the second generation, the caste system comes based on the qualities and deeds. The first Brāhmaṇa was also based on the qualities and deeds only because the first Brāhmaṇa was possessing the concerned qualities given by God and this is told in the Gītā (Cāturvarṇyaṃ mayā sṛṣṭam, Guṇa karma vibhāgaśaḥ). This verse speaks about the first Brāhmaṇa created by God based on the system of qualities and deeds. The first Brāhmaṇa had no option to change his qualities and deeds. But, the second Brāhmaṇa had the option to follow those qualities or not to follow those qualities. If the second Brāhmaṇa followed the qualities of first Brāhmaṇa, the second Brāhmaṇa was also a Brāhmaṇa like the first Brāhmaṇa. If the second Brāhmaṇa did not follow those qualities of the first Brāhmaṇa, the second Brāhmaṇa is only Brāhmaṇa by birth and belongs to other castes by qualities and actions. If this is the case of even second Brāhmaṇa, not to speak of any speciality about the other Brāhmaṇas following the second Brāhmaṇa. Hence, based on qualities and deeds only the caste system was fixed by God and was never fixed based on birth. God said clearly this point also that He is the establisher of the caste system based on qualities and deeds whereas He is not the establisher of the caste system based on birth (Tasya kartāramapi māṃ, viddhya kartāramavyayam – Gītā).
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