Neither is the Varna system a caste-oriented gradation of the superior and the inferior, nor the Ashrama pattern a social enactment. Both represent a spiritual necessity and the only way in which human society can exist and thrive in harmony, and the individual progress upward towards a gradual realisation of universality. There is no comparison in this system of stratification, but a necessary and just participation and healthy integration of social and personal life. The stages of evolution do not brook comparison. Each stage becomes as important as any other, when one finds oneself in it.
Life is an inward attainment of oneself with a cosmic conditioning.
The inwardness, being constituted of the different layers of personality, has to be taken into consideration in all its degrees when one attempts to live a life of perfection. The inwardness is of a graded form. There is no sudden contact of one level with the rest of reality, except through the necessary stages. The human individual is formed of several psychic vestures, each of which is to be treated well by paying its due, which is accomplished in the fourfold stratification of cooperation and the stages of life. Time is a movement towards eternity.