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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

On Feminism
18 May 1955

This talk is based upon Mother's article "The Problem of Woman."(1)

Now, no questions! I have nothing to add. I have said everything.

You wanted to ask something?

You have given the title "The Problem of Woman", but you speak equally about the problem of man.

Yes, because it is difficult to separate them. I didn't mean that it is a problem that women have to solve; I meant that it is the problem which life on earth has posed because of women.

Men, until not very long ago, were perfectly satisfied with themselves and what they had done. It is a little more than a century ago that women began to protest. Before, they seemed to say nothing or in any case they had no opportunity to say something. However, quite recently--it is not so long ago--women began to say, "Excuse us, but we indeed are not satisfied." Formerly, if ever they dared to say such a thing, probably they received a knock and were told, "Keep quiet, it's no business of yours." Yet things went on in spite of everything, and it was at the end of the century that there began a public protest of women against the way men treated them; because all the laws made by men were to man's advantage, and all the social organisations made by men were to man's advantage, and woman always had a lower position and sometimes an absolutely detestable one. In certain countries it is still like that...

However, till then, if they had protested it must have been either individually or in a rather hidden fashion, because it did not become a public question. But at the end of the last century there was a movement called feminism and women began to protest violently against things as they were, saying, "Excuse us, we find that you have failed in all your affairs, and you have not managed anything well. All that you have done seems absolutely bad. You have not succeeded in doing anything, except in fighting among yourselves, killing one another and making life unbearable for everybody. We are beginning to say that we have something to say, and we mean that this won't do and that it must improve." That is how it began. Then, you see, protestations, fights, mockery... They tried to stifle them with ridicule. But it was the men who made fools of themselves, it was not the women (Mother laughs), and finally, they gained one thing: they can now put in their word in the affairs of State.

It began... it was a frightful scandal but now it is a recognised fact, and we even find that in certain countries, slightly less backward than others, women are admitted in the government. And I must say that, as far as I know, the first country where this happened was Sweden. I knew it at the beginning of this century. It was then that it happened. Women were admitted into Parliament in Sweden, and in the government, and the first thing they did, that they managed to do, was to abolish drunkenness.

That is...?

Drunkenness, you don't know what drunkenness is? Drunkenness means to drink alcohol, and it is something very widespread, unfortunately, over the whole earth, and it is men who drink, usually. Among the working classes, as soon as they have received their pay they go and drink away more than half of it, and when the wife goes to ask them for money to get food for them, she gets a beating. That's how things usually occur. And the Swedish Government had tried for a very long time, because these people were quite reasonable and found that it was one of the things which most harmed social peace; but they had never succeeded. But it seems that within something like two or three years of government, women succeeded in doing it. And it was finished, one heard no more about it. How they did it I don't remember now. Someone had told me then. Naturally, not by prohibition, because wherever that has been tried, it has never succeeded. But they succeeded. It is there. Now it is there. It took more than half a century to spread. Now there are many countries in which women are in the Government.

(To Pavitra) Are there any in France? Are there women members of Parliament?

(Pavitra) Yes.

There are?

(Pavitra) Yes. Ministers. There was one.

No. Secretary of State, not minister. There were some, they have tried.

(Pavitra) There is a Minister of Education.

No, not that, but Secretary of State; there was one. In fact I say this because France was one of the most backward countries, and it is still so. And this is something very interesting: it is perhaps the country which had the most advanced ideas from the political point of view; it is from France that the ideas of Equality, Fraternity and Liberty have come; it is there that this has taken birth and from there it has spread over the world, but from the point of view of the relations between man and woman, it was certainly the most backward of all. There are psychological reasons for this, but I don't want to speak about them here. There, then!

Sweet Mother, here it is said: "All men are feminine in many respects and all women are masculine in many traits, especially in modern societies."

Yes, there is no pure type.

Then why is there a complex still?

Because they don't know themselves. They don't know themselves and then they are the slaves of their form. Because when they look at themselves in a mirror they see that they are men, and the women see that they are women--and they are slaves of the physical form. It is only because of that.

But moreover, I have often met men who were extremely feminine from certain points of view, but not in a very pleasant way, and it was they who asserted most their masculine rights and had most the sense of their superiority. Besides, I have also met, especially at the beginning of the feminist movement... all the women who wanted to take part in feminism used to wear false collars, cravats, vests, they cut their hair, they looked... they tried to look as masculine as they could. But they were deplorably feminine, deplorably! (Laughter) They wanted to please, wanted to attract attention; and if by ill-luck a man treated them like men, they were extremely angry. (Laughter) For this--much time is needed to be transformed.

And then?

Sweet Mother, here you speak of the Supreme Mother. Is she the same as the one Sri Aurobindo speaks of in "The Mother"?

Yes.

Then the conception of the Supreme Mother is purely human? Or she too in her origin has no gender?

No.

But I have never said that it was purely human. I said that it was the formulation which was human. I haven't said that it was purely human; nowhere have I said that it was purely human. One could say that this explanation is a little too human but I don't mean that she is purely human.

Then in her origin she has a gender?

Beyond the manifestation there is no differentiation, that is, there are not two, there is only one. It was at the moment of creation that it became two. But before that it was one, and there was no difference; as it was one, it was only one. There were countless possibilities, but it was one, in fact it was one, and it was only in the creation that it became two. The differentiation is not something eternal and co-existent. It is for the creation, and in fact for the creation of this world only. There were perhaps many worlds created in an absolutely different way from this our universe. Not only were they there, but perhaps at this moment there are countless universes with which we have no contact and of which therefore we are totally ignorant and which may exist.

Are there any, Sweet Mother?

I am telling you it is possible. (Laughter) We can say nothing about it. We know nothing about it. All that we know, if we know it at all, is our own universe, that's all. But there is no reason why there could not be others--one can't say, "There aren't any others", one knows nothing about it--where all things are absolutely different, perhaps so different that we have no relation. What I say at the end is this, isn't it? I say at the end that... There will be a new creation, the supramental creation. Well, there's no reason why this creation may not have... may not take a different form from the one which has been here up till now. And as for me, what I say there is that this is the only solution to the problem, that instead of there being this division, it may be a creation, a being which will be... which will unite "conception and execution, vision and creation in one single consciousness and action"--because that's what has produced the differentiation, the fact that there was the conception and then the execution of this conception, the vision of what had to be and the creation of this vision, that is, the objective realisation of this vision; well, there is no reason why it should be divided; the two things can be done by the same being and therefore there should be only one single being.

Instead of there being two lines, one masculine and one feminine, there should be one single being, and that's what I conceive as the solution of all problems--all problems, not only this one--and as the prototype of the supramental creation.

Note:

(1) First published in the Bulletin of April 1955, now published in On Education, Cent. Vol. 12.