Women and spirituality

[Guest guest]

Women and spirituality

By Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

 

Just because women are physically weaker than men, man has done

everything to make them psychologically weaker than himself,

spiritually lost and financially nowhere. This attitude of people has

continued for thousands of years. I think it has been for too long.

It is time people stood up and did something about it. Until we learn

to respect our women, until every man learns to respect a woman, he

will never know himself; there is no way, because half of him is just

that.

Indian spirituality has always been a rich mixture of men and women

reaching the heights of their consciousness. It is proved beyond

doubt that a woman is as much capable as a man when it comes to the

inner nature. It is only the peel that you can call a man or a woman.

The Self is the same. Either you wear a masculine peel or a feminine

peel. That is all it is. The peel does not decide what your spiritual

capabilities are.

 

Maybe there are certain biological disadvantages, but as we see now,

psychologically, women are better equipped. Right from the Vedic

times there have been many women who have been great saints, who

reached the very heights of consciousness. The earliest form of

worship always started as worshipping the Divine as a mother, holding

the Ultimate Divinity as the mother. Even today worship of the

feminine aspect as mother is more dominant than worshipping masculine

gods. Today, when all gods fail them, men go to the Amman temple to

get quick results.

 

During the Vedic times, a woman also wore the sacred thread as a

Brahmin wears today. She was also eligible to wear the thread,

because without the thread you are not supposed to read the Vedas and

the Upanishads. Spirituality was not available only to men; even a

woman wore the sacred thread.

 

During the Vedic times, a woman was on a par with a man in every way

as far as spirituality was concerned. These were well-settled

societies. Right from the year 3000 BCE that we know of history, a

woman was on a par with a man in India. Then, barbarian hordes

invaded the country from parts of Asia like Mongolia, Central China

and Indo-China. They were outsiders who were totally gross, whose

ways were to grab things and leave. So, men started becoming

protective. Then somewhere along the way, in this atmosphere, women

slowly lost their freedom.

 

Slowly, the process became so biased that they started changing the

rules, and rewrote the Shastras, the Smruthis. The first let-down for

a woman was when they declared that a woman cannot wear a sacred

thread. They went further, saying that the only way a woman could

attain mukti or her Ultimate Nature was by serving her husband. There

was no other way, they decided.

 

During the Vedic times, a woman could dissolve her family whenever

she wanted. As a man had the freedom, a woman also had this same

freedom. Once she felt she had grown out of the need, she left it,

the same way a man was doing. This was perfectly accepted during the

Vedic times. Somewhere along the way, somebody fixed it that only a

man could renounce.

 

Unfortunately, even today, in the twenty-first century, the same

continues. It has been made clear that the moment you are born as a

woman, you are born either to serve your father or your husband.

Beyond that, you have nothing else. This has been taught by people

who are talking about advaitha, the non-duality of existence, that

everything is one, but a woman is less. I don't know what sense it

made to them. Nobody can be an advaithist, nobody can be a non-dual

person if he cannot even accept a sexual difference out of which he

has come. He knows his existence depends upon the woman and if he

cannot accept her, his accepting all the dualities in existence is

simply out of question.

 

Now, it is not about a woman going out and doing what a man is doing.

That will become obscene. This is happening in the West and to some

extent here also. Women are trying to become like men. If that

happens, the damage will be even greater. If a woman loses her

femininity, her feminine nature, she will become ugly. Why does she

want to become like a man? Because somewhere she still thinks that

she is inferior and man is superior, so she wants to become like him.

 

The question of inferiority or superiority only comes in a prejudiced

mind. It is just a question of two qualities. It is not a question of

who is inferior and who is superior.

 

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Isha Yoga Centre

New No.55, Moosa Street

T Nagar

Chennai - 600 017

Ph: 91-44- 24333185, 24348732

 

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is a realised master, Yogi and a profound

mystic of our times. Sadhguru developed Isha Yoga - Yoga of the

Divine, a scientifically structured programme, as the vehicle to

transmit a deep experience of the Self that changed his life

completely about two decades ago.

 

Belonging to no particular tradition, Sadhguru incorporates what is

most valid for the modern seeker. Isha Yoga flourishes today as a

spiritual science for hundreds of thousands of initiates around the

world.

 

An accomplished poet and an author of several books, his latest book -

'Mystics Musings' - is one of the most candid unveiling of the

mystical dimensions of life.

 

Isha Foundation, founded by the Sadhguru, also administers the

Dhyanalinga multi-religious temple and meditation shrine, an ashram,

and a yogic hospital at the Isha Yoga Centre, located on 50 acres at

the foothills of the Velliangiri Mountains, 30 km from Coimbatore.

 

For More details, contact:

 

Isha Yoga Center,

Velliangiri Foothills, Semmedu (PO)

Coimbatore - 641 114, India

Phone: 91-422-2615345

Email: yogacentre

Website: www.ishafoundation.org

 

http://www.chennaionline.com/health/yoga/2005/12yoga68.asp