It seems there has always been a rivalry between man and woman. But they are equals; neither one is superior. Be proud of what you are in this life.
“In sleep, you do not know whether you are a man or a woman,” (Sri Yukteswar said). “Just as a man, impersonating a woman, does not become one, so the soul, impersonating both man and woman, remains changeless. The soul is the immutable, unqualified image of God.”
Do not even allow yourself to be limited to the consciousness that you are a man or a woman: You are a soul made in God’s image…. The wisest course is to remember always, “I am neither man nor woman; I am Spirit.” Then you will rid yourself of the limiting consciousness of both tendencies; you will realise your highest divine potential, whether you are a incarnate as a man or a woman.
God is both infinite wisdom and infinite feeling. When He manifested Himself in creation, God gave His wisdom a form in the father; and He gave His feeling a form in the mother…. Every father and every mother is potentially endowed with both the fatherly wisdom and the motherly tenderness of God. They have to perfect these endowments… The divine man develops both the fatherly and motherly qualities in himself.
Man argues that woman is emotional and cannot reason; and woman complains that man cannot feel. Both are incorrect. Woman can reason, but feeling is uppermost in her nature; and man can feel, but in him reason is predominant.
God created these physiological and mental differences in order to make some distinction between man and woman. The ideal spiritual union between them was meant to bring out the hidden feeling in man and to develop the hidden reason in woman. They were meant to aid each other in developing the pure divine qualities of perfect reason and feeling.
Each sex should strive toward a balance by learning from one another through friendship and understanding.
Unless man and woman understand each other’s nature, they ignorantly torture one another…. Each should strive for an inner balance of both reason and feeling, and so become a “whole” personality, a perfected human being.
By God-communion you bring about the harmony or balance of these two qualities within yourself.
In the great saints we see combined the ideal masculine and feminine qualities. Jesus was like that; so were all the masters. When you have attained that perfect reason-feeling equilibrium, you will have learned one of the major lessons for which you were sent here.
Mankind must realise that the basic nature of the soul is spiritual. For man and woman to look upon each other only as a means to satisfy lust is to court the destruction of happiness. Slowly, bit by bit, peace of mind will go.
Man should strive to see the God in woman, and to help her realise her spiritual nature. He should make her feel that she is with him not merely to satisfy his sensual appetite, but as a companion whom he respects and regards as an expression of the Divine. And woman should look upon man in the same way.
When man and woman genuinely and purely love one another, there is complete harmony between them in body, mind and soul. When their love is expressed in its highest form, it results in a perfect unity.
Extract from the book “Where There Is Light” by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda.
