Text 6] Scheduled Incarnations with Specific Functions 347
attraction for the form of woman. Woman, or the fair sex, is the enchanting
principle for the living entities, and the male form, especially of the human
being, is meant for self-realization. The whole world is moving under the
spell of womanly attraction, and as soon as a man becomes united with a
woman, he at once becomes a victim of material bondage under a tight
knot. The desires for lording it over the material world, under the intoxi-
cation of a false sense of lordship, specifically begin just after the man’s
unification with a woman. The desires for acquiring a house, possessing
land, having children and becoming prominent in society, the affection for
community and the place of birth, and the hankering for wealth, which
are all like the phantasmagoria or illusory dreams of life, encumber a
human being, and he is thus impeded in his progress toward self-realization,
the real aim of life. The brahmacari, or a boy from the age of five years,
especially from the higher castes, namely from the scholarly parents (the
brahmanas), the administrative parents (the ksatriyas), or the mercantile
or productive parents (the vaisyas), is trained until twenty-five years of age
under the care of a bona fide guru or teacher, and under strict observance
of discipline he comes to understand the values of life along with taking
specific training for livelihood. The brahmacari is then allowed to go home
and enter householder life and get married to a suitable woman. But there
are many brahmacaris who do not go home to become householders but
continue the life of naisthika-brahmacaris, without any connection with
women. They accept the order of sannydsa, or the renounced order of
life, knowing well that combination with women is an unnecessary burden
that checks self-realization. Since sex desire is very strong at a certain stage
of life, the guru may allow the brahmacari to marry; this license is given
to a brahmacari who is unable to continue the way of naisthika-
brahmacarya, and such discriminations are possible for the bona fide guru.
A program of so-called family planning is needed. The householder who
associates with woman under scriptural restrictions, after a thorough
training of brahmacarya, cannot be a householder like cats and dogs. Such
a householder, after fifty years of age, would retire from the association
of woman as a vanaprastha to be trained up to live alone without the
association of woman. When the practice is complete, the same retired
householder becomes a sannyasi, strictly separate from woman, even from
his married wife. Studying the whole scheme of disassociation from women,
it appears that a woman is a stumbling block for self-realization, and the
Lord appeared as Narayana to teach the principle of womanly disassocia-
tion with a vow in life. The demigods, being envious of the austere life of
the rigid brahmacaris, would try to cause them to break their vows by dis-
