THE THEOLOGY OF WOMANHHOD

ARDANARISHWARA! Lord Shiva, is Ardanarishwara, that is, His other half is Parvati. Shiva is the male principle, Parvati the female principle. And thus, when a Westerner moves out of the cultural space of the Semitic religions of the Middle East (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) where God is man only, his mind contemplates a most profound change in the trinity of the spiritual pantheon.

Before the creation, in the total Oneness of the Parabrahma, there was no space for anything but solid divinity, no space for our cosmos. Creation of the Universe, explains Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, started when He and She separated in order to share their love with a creation yet to emerge. In other words, the space for the Universe to exist was generated by the space they put between themselves. In short, they separated for the love of us, to enable us to exist.

In that separation there is already an aspect of renouncement. It is typical of Divine love that, from the onset, it expresses self-sacrifice in a grand movement of generosity to share love. Various incarnations show this. Sita is abducted by Ravanna so that this would eventually lead to the destruction of his evil kingdom and relieve the earth from his rule. Radha has to let Krishna go as he leaves Gokul and Vrindhavan to assert dharma in the world of the warring princes. Mary sees Christ on the cross and he tells John "behold the Mother": behold how much She shared and gave so that Her son could open the narrow gate.

Our divine parents are reflected at all levels, including in the dance of particles and waves within matter. They are spirit (purusha) and matter (prakriti). But what about their representation at our level as human beings? They are of course the Self (Atma) and the Energy (kundalini). But most of us unfortunately have not experienced Self-realisation and thus we ignore this.

If we would know that God is also a Woman, what would it mean to us?

Could it be that, we men, would truly respect women?
And those women would be respectable?
Wouldn't this lead to equal and fulfilling relationships between man and woman?
Wouldn't this prepare the foundation for happy families?
Wouldn't these families provide the basis for harmonious and healthy societies?

There is a price to pay for messing up with theology.

This price is the one dimensional, one-legged male world and its legacy of conflicts.

The divine parents separated to create the space for us to exist and evolve. May be we are all meant to join to find our way back to them. Man and woman, families and nations.

May be this will be possible when we will find that we are also built within like them; we are sun and moon, yin and yang, male and female, we have it all within as cryptically stated in the apocrypha evangel of Saint Thomas.

A concluding footnote: spiritual oneness is of the consciousness. It is beyond sex. Freud and the tantrikas were pathetic: they got it all wrong. And, by the way, for a man, finding his feminine self does not mean he has to become gay. It means being loving and compassionate, giving and generous, sustaining and sharing. He feeds others, like a real mother does. Awakening our feminine side means being in touch with our emotions.