• In :
• Personal Growth

April 2011

By Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

When music, art, love and care become as important as economics, women will probably have more of a role to play in the world than men

Never before in the history of humanity has a woman had the opportunities that she has today, simply because technology has levelled the playing field. When physical strength determined life, naturally the masculine dominated. Now that technology has leveled things, whether you are male or female, your physical strength is no more the deciding factor as to how far you can go.

We have magnified this simple biological difference which nature has created so much that what should have been only one aspect of our life has unfortunately seeped into every aspect. You don’t have to be a man or a woman in every aspect of life; you can just function as a human being. Women need to work themselves out of this cultural baggage that they have had for thousands of years. Woman should guard against trying to become like a man because she is carrying this cultural baggage and thinks everything that is masculine is somehow superior.

For the first time, humanity is at a point where we can relax our survival attitudes a little bit. Unfortunately, modern societies are not relaxing their survival instinct; whether it is a car or a home or whatever, we are just raising the bar. When money is the only important thing, the masculine becomes the most dominant part of our social structure. Unfortunately, the feminine is being totally obliterated in many ways, especially in the Western societies, and it is beginningto happen in India also.

Gender, the truth

Let’s look at masculine and feminine in terms of two qualities, not in terms of male and female because there are women who are more masculine than men, and men who are more feminine than women. If the feminine found a better expression on this planet, maybe our stock market would not hit 20,000, but generally people would smile more, be a little happier, a little more loving; life would be a little more beautiful. If these two aspects are in balance, we will go somewhere and we will also enjoy where we are right now.

If the feminine has to really flourish, if it has to flow, we need to create a society where our values are more spread out to all aspects of life. When music, art, love, care, become as important as economics, then woman have as much role or even more of a role in life than man. A home, a social structure, a nation, or humanity as a whole, are not complete unless the feminine also finds full expression. You must make this happen in your own lives and around you in society. Otherwise, we will live very incomplete, lopsided lives.