Ones who felt that during their learning period they could not overcome their material desires (both mind and body what is called claim rights) addressed the other stage of life, domestic (grihastha ashram). Regularities of this stage will be discussed separately. But meanwhile we can say that at this very stage there was effective the social structure arranged in accordance with individual’s qualities. The majority of society was composed of family people. All other ashramas were under the care of this ashrama.
3) Partial renunciation. At the age of fifty, religious figures and leaders left their families and went to the forest to get to self-realization. That allowed to keep society constantly in hands of young people protecting it from rigidity (conservatism). Though it has to be said that certain conservatism is always needed for society not to lose its achievements, but from time to time even scriptures are commented according to time and circumstances. The key truth does not change, but methods of its presentation can be modified. The ways to do it without any distortion are known only by very lofty recanted persons. At this stage a man started his renouncement. He left his social duties (retired) and started his self-knowledge far from his family but he would receive food from it while undergoing adaptation. At this stage, a man could take his wife with him.
4) Renunciation.Via partial renouncement, a man got used to ascetic life and became a pilgrim. Walking around holy places, he met saints and got spiritual knowledge from them. Recanted persons communicated with people of the worldly mindset only for preaching purposes. The luckiest among them met the Lord.
The Bhagavad-Gita presents characteristics of different components of activity which our happiness and suffering depend on (Chapter 18, verses 18-28):
Knowledge, the object of knowledge and the knower are the three factors which motivate action; the senses, the work and the doer comprise the threefold basis of action.
In accordance with the three modes of material nature, there are three kinds of knowledge, action, and performers of action. Listen as I describe them.
That knowledge by which one undivided spiritual nature is seen in all existences, undivided in the divided, is knowledge in the mode of goodness.