WOMEN IN THE NEW AGE

 
Meher Baba has said in the Discourses that in this particular New Age Eastern souls would be born into Western bodies, and Western souls into Eastern bodies. He has also mentioned that in the East the men are more spiritual and in the West the women are more spiritual. I'm just capsulating these statements that Meher Baba made in various places. Historically we are at the junction of a New Age, a new Avataric Cycle, and Meher Baba said it's a cycle of cycles — it's not only one of those 700 year to 1400 year jobs, it's an overcycle. So, it's a very critical juncture in man's evolution.

He has explained that, as at the time of Christ Jesus switched mankind so to speak, in general from instinct to reason, but now we have to go from reason to intuition. And there's where the role of women becomes most prominent, because in a feminine incarnation your intuition functions better than it does in a male incarnation. So, no matter how we all came into our own particular karma at this time, male or female, we still have to face this issue: that is, working to bring ourselves from reason to intuition. It's a very difficult transformation, and it will obviously take another whole series of cycles to work out.

This intuition is not an emotion or psychic thing; it's not imagination; in some sense it's developing a higher contact with Reality than that which reason gives us. You can see from our history over the last two thousand years, that reason has become very dominant and has created this fantastic civilization; all the scientific advances we're enjoying are the result of applying logic and reason, to the study of nature, and so forth, creating a tremendous technical advance. But now, what is the new advance? We have to go from reason to intuition, and in that role the role of women is very critical.

In the cultural sense the West has been the leader in reason and science, and the application of logic. That is probably why the role of women has to change in the West. Women's role in the past has been sub-dominant. It has been important but (we don't have to belabor the point) has been considered as being on a much lower level. Women have been treated in a certain way in the male-dominated cultures of the West. That has, of course, roots in our Judaic-Christian background of God the Father: the male was always emphasized. The Bible portrays the role of women as submissive. Really, up until very recent times, (and in different cultures at a different rate of growth), the male has been the dominating figure — in the culture, in the arts, in the family structure where it all begins — "daddy knows best." But that has to change.

As Carl Jung explains: "Woman's psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos. The concept of Eros could be expressed in modern terms as psychic relatedness and that of Logos as objective interest."* We have not only physically both male and female characteristics, (one is more dominant than the other) in each form, but also in our psyche we have, as Jung says, our inward "soul image". A woman has within her the male image, the animus, and of course it's the reverse for the male — he outwardly has a male body but within him he has his feminine side, his anima or soul.

The way you function is governed by the question, "Who am l?" as Meher Baba. said. That's the whole game. The whole push of evolution is to find out who you really are. In each incarnation, whichever sex you take, you're looking for who you are, and you're always trying to find that hidden part of yourself. So if you're a man, you're trying really to find your inner feminine self; however, you may not see it that way directly. In the same way a woman tries to balance her inner and outer selves.

You're always trying to balance — it's just the whole game of sanskaras, of opposites. When you're pushed way over here, the pendulum automatically tries to get over there, and this is why you swing back and forth between male and female incarnations. In each incarnation you are trying to find you inner self which, at the time of that incarnation, is the opposite of you. This creates the drive for human love, for wholeness, for union. Why do you fall in love? You only fall in love because you're trying to find and unite with that other opposite within you. In the final spiritual journey, you're not trying to find it in someone else; you are trying to balance it within yourself as your real identity.

In this New Age woman's search is being speeded up. Her search is not only to have the balance brought out by a personal relationship, but also in the deeper sense of her own individuality and identity, and this is where you get a little bit of growth, and growth is painful. That's the truth about everything — growing pains in physical growth and psychological growth to find out who you are.

The submissive, cliched female patterns of the past, which had their place, are going to change in the New Age. The men are very upset by this change in the women's role because it upsets who they are as males, but they have to go through it with the women. Accept women as your equal. They and you must go through this change. You're both going to be more open to your other inner self. Instead of repressing this inner image, you will bring it out and balance it, as it should be, in the final divine androgyne that Meher Baba is. In Himself He's perfect balance, perfect male and female. You can see that sometimes in the femininity of Meher Baba, it's as if He has both. Eventually we have to find that balance, and to achieve that means growth.

The more a woman feels her freedom and assertiveness (in the right way — remember there is a big difference between assertiveness and aggression), and feels that she has space to be creative in all directions, then also, the man responds. He shares the gain that she makes, and she shares the gain that he makes when he develops his feminine side. His part is to open up, to be more communicative, for example to show more of his emotions, to recognise he has feelings, to learn to share feelings with the people close to him. Eventually you both become more intuitive, and that's where you both have to head.