A man, unless he is twice-born, he is a śūdra. Twice-born. How is that twice-born? Because by birth anyone, everyone has got some father and mother, because without father and mother, there is no question of birth. So the beast has also got father and mother, and the bird has also father and mother. Similarly, a human being has also got father and mother. So this birth by father and mother is not sufficient for becoming a dvija. He has to take his birth again.
So janmanā jāyate śūdraḥ saṁskārād bhaved dvijaḥ. Birth. Birth is not all, everything. The culture, saṁskāra. Saṁskāra means culture. One has to take his birth, rebirth, by culture, by education, by knowledge. That is called cultural birth. So unless one is in the cultural birth, he is to be considered the lower-grade person, or the śūdra.
So therefore the system in the . . . according to varṇāśrama-dharma, that not only by birth—before birth, when the father and mother is going to be combined to beget a child, there are cultural saṁskāra, or reformatory measures. How much carefully these things are. They wanted first-class son. Not sons like cats and dogs—first-class son. So there is some saṁskāra.
There is some purificatory measures, which is called garbhādhāna-saṁskāra. Garbhādhāna means pregnancy, the cultural ceremony before making the mother pregnant. And it is enjoined, you will find in the Bhāgavata, that any family, the brāhmins, the kṣatriyas and vaiśyas, if they give up this garbhādhāna-saṁskāra, I mean to say, birth-giving ceremony, then that family turns immediately to the classification of the śūdras.
So nowadays, at the present moment, this cultural program . . . I am speaking of India and everywhere. There is no such cultural program. That cultural program, that program to beget nice children, the whole program is, we must know, the whole Vedic system is to give the human life the greatest chance of self-realization and get free from these material miseries. That is the whole program. It is not . . . the Vedic culture does not mean that we shall be like cats and dogs, simply eating, sleeping, mating and defending. No. The human society is a systematic program to give everyone the chance of getting free from this material miseries.