This degenerated process of procreation coming into vogue in the Copper Age renders it necessary to fuse higher magnetism into the lower castes, as well as to preserve the magnetism of each caste from deterioration. The means adapted for securing these ends is to allow the two higher castes men to marry girls of the lower castes, and towards the latter end of the Copper Age even Vaishyas are permitted to marry Sudra girls. The lower caste men, however, are never allowed to marry higher caste women, as it degenerates the breed, the seed being a far more potent factor in producing excellence of growth than the soil. The offsprings of these intermarriages form into castes distinct from those of their fathers and mothers, lower than their father's and higher than their mother's.
In order to preserve the magnetism and the hereditary talent and instincts from deteriorating, the castes are divided into sub-castes according to their general proclivities and professions of livelihood. Each sub-caste must marry within its own circle, and must eat food cooked by the hands of its own members. Heredity is now being believed in by the materealistic people of the modern world, and when that belief in heredity will have grown stronger in their minds, they will then take practical measures to preserve the good qualities of heredity from being spoilt by coming in contact with the bad magnetism of its lower traits.
This human magnetism is a subject which is worthy of the study of modern scientists. If they can find out what it is, ascertain its properties, power for good and evil, and how good magnetism can be conserved and transmitted and how bad magnetism can be purified, they will do humanity greater good than they have done by the discovery of steam and electricity, which, judged from the standpoint of the highest good, ought to be considered as very doubtful boons. Magnetism is not useful magnetism if it is purely physical. It is not worth preserving, it is injurious, and its contact ought to be avoided.
It is spiritual magnetism which is worth preserving. It is spirituality which is the medium which transmits good heredity from parent to progeny. The mind is the storehouse and battery of all human magnetism. The vibrations of the mind pervade every atom of the body and the mind's vibrations are generated by its principal and most powerful thoughts and sentiments. These vibrations are the essence of these thoughts and sentiments, and magnetism is that subtle essence impregnated with the potencies of the mind mixed with the subtle forces of the physical body.
Marrying, cooking and eating within the caste helps to conserve in the individual members thereof the spiritual and mental magnetism, generated by the performances of the religious duties and ceremonies and spiritual incantations which form the daily routine of household life enjoined by the Scriptures.
Thus wisdom, talent, traits, instincts are all ingrained in and transmitted through the blood from generation to generation of each caste. The caste is like a university, each home a school, and the instincts and talents, brought into being with the birth of each member, are the implanted principles of the knowledge of each profession of which it is the caste. A carpenter's caste is a guild for carpentry, a carpenter's home is a technical school for carpentry where the natural talent and love for the art are partly imbibed by the instincts of heredity and partly by observation which is the best system of training.
With these tendencies of material arts are born in the blood of the child the germs of the moral and spiritual culture of the parents. These germs shoot forth into healthy growth under the fostering care of the child's guardians, aided by the religious, social and domestic duties the growing child has to perform daily. The carpenter is as much a useful member of the four-caste society as the Brāhman. The householder Brāhman can no more do without a carpenter than a carpenter can do without a Brāhman. But the value of the Brāhman's help to the carpenter being more important to the development of his soul, which is the true aim and goal of earthly life, the obligations of the other castes to the Brāhman are greater and deeper than those of the Brāhman to the Sudra. The question may now be asked, has that carpenter no chance of becoming the equal of the Brāhman through spiritual culture? Yes and no. Yes, because Brāhmanhood is nobody's monopoly. Brāhmanhood is but a state of the human mind—the ensouled state of the human mind, and anybody who develops this state of mind, even though he be encased within a Pariah's flesh, lays legitimate claim to Brahmanhood. Only he must make that ensouled mental state perfect, only he must enter the fold of Brāhmanhood through the door of Nature, through the ingress of Rebirth. The maturity of a material or mental condition is best known to Nature. A mass of animal flesh, lying on the surface of Mother Earth, undergoes all the processes of disintegration and putrefaction, and when that disintegration is complete, Earth assimilates and absorbs it again; it becomes a part of her body, it becomes earth itself. What is true of material plane of Nature is true as well of her mental and spiritual planes. When a carpenter has developed full Brāhman consciousness, Nature opens to him wide the portals of the spiritual caste which had looked down upon him in his carpenter birth. Even in his carpenter birth, he does not go unrewarded. The case of the carpenter Rishi, called Suta, is a luminous instance in point. His spiritual culture was so great that the highest illuminated sages (Rishis) learned from him the lessons of the Purānas which he preached to them, sitting on a raised platform with their reverential permission. He was considered a knower of Brahm and so enjoyed the respect paid to the highest spiritual beings. A Sudra may not become a Brāhman, but may become through practical spiritual culture a higher being than a Brāhman even in his Sudra birth, and be born into a highly spiritual Brāhman family, by sheer dint of merit, the merit of developing spiritual consciousness—in the next birth. Similarly a Brāhman, born in the highest family of his clan, will, by developing Pariah qualities, be outclassed in his Brāhman birth and enter through the door of Nature into a Pariah family in a subsequent birth.
The above facts and truths are known to a child even of every caste. Even a child knows, either in the Copper Age or to-day among the four-caste people, that a caste-birth is dependent upon Karma (actions). A Sudra, therefore, takes the very fact of his birth as sufficient reason for his being placed in the lowest caste. He is reconciled to his fate, a fate with the potentialities of his actions in previous existences. And the little gloom of sadness that his lowly station of life casts upon his mind is illumined now and again by the silver lining of the consolation that it is in his power, if he so wills it, to be a high Brāhman in the next incarnation, if he succeeds in developing his higher soul-consciousness.
The Veda in the Copper Age has for the first time to be studied and its truths practised in two parts—the philosophical and the ceremonial parts. Men generally are degenerated so much in this age that they can no longer grasp the truths of the Upanishads without first purifying their body and through the purified body the mind. The Vedas are divided into Upanishads (Eternal Spiritual Truths) and the Mantras (incantations, hymns and ceremonies, the practice of which cleanses the impurities of the mind and body). In the Dwāpar Yuga, therefore, the performance of the ceremonials of the Veda is much in vogue. When the body and mind are purified, they are made fit for grasping the meanings of the higher philosophy of life and become receptive to the influences of the subtlest spiritual vibrations.