14 THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION

very curious about: can the Vedas be taken symbolically as well as
literally?

Srila Prabhupada: No. They must be taken as they are, not symbolically.
That is why we are presenting the Bhagavad-gitd As It Is.

Ms. Nixon: Are you attempting to revive the ancient Indian caste
system in the West? The Gitd mentions the caste system...

Srila Prabhupada: Where does the Bhagavad-gitd mention the caste
system? Krsna says, cdtur-varnyam maya srstam guna-karma-vibhagasah:
‘I created four divisions of men according to their quality and work.”’
[Bg. 4.13] For instance, you can understand that there are engineers as
well as medical practitioners in society. Do you say they belong to
different castes—that one is in the engineer caste and the other is in the
medical caste? No. If a man has qualified himself in medical school, you
accept him as a doctor; and if another man has a degree in engineering,
you accept him as an engineer. Similarly, the Bhagavad-gita defines four
classes of men in society: a class of highly intelligent men, a class of ad-
ministrators, a class of productive men, and ordinary workers. These
divisions are natural. For example, one class of men is very intelligent.
But to actually meet the qualifications of first-class men as described in
the Bhagavad-gitd, they need to be trained, just as an intelligent boy re-
quires training in a college to become a qualified doctor. So in the Krsna
consciousness movement we are training the intelligent men how to con-
trol their minds, how to control their senses, how to become truthful,
how to become clean internally and externally, how to become wise, how
to apply their knowledge in practical life, and how to become God con-
scious. All these boys [gestures toward seated disciples] have first-class
intelligence, and now we are training them to use it properly.

We are not introducing the caste system, in which any rascal born in a
brahmana family is automatically a brahmana. He may have the habits of
a fifth-class man, but he is accepted as first class because of his birth in a
brahmana family. We don’t accept that. We recognize a man as first class
who is trained as a brdhmana. It doesn’t matter whether he is Indian,
European, or American; lowborn or highborn—it doesn’t matter. Any
intelligent man can be trained to adopt first-class habits. We want to stop
the nonsensical idea that we are imposing the Indian caste system on our
disciples. We are simply picking out men with first-class intelligence and
training them how to become first class in every respect.

Ms. Nixon: How do you feel about women’s liberation?
Srila Prabhupada: So-called equal rights for women means that the men
cheat the women. Suppose a woman and a man meet, they become
