Question 2

QUESTIONER; LEGEND HAS IT THAT AHILYA, A WOMAN TURNED INTO STONE, HAD WAITED LONG ENOUGH FOR THE COMING OF RAMA TO RESURRECT HER, AND THAT ANOTHER ORDINARY WOMAN, KUBJA, PERSUADED KRISHNA TO MAKE LOVE TO HER. DO THESE STORIES HAVE SOME SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE?

Everything in existence happens in its own time, a time for which one has to wait with tremendous patience. Everything has its season; nothing happens out of season. Time and occasion have great importance in life. And it is necessary to go into it from different angles.

I don't believe that Ahilya had actually turned into stone; this is just a poetic way of saying that she lived a stony life, a dull and dreary life until she met Rama whose love transformed her life. It is possible a woman will come to her flowering only through a particular man like Rama, and that she will patiently wait for such a man to come into her life.

It is a poetic metaphor to say that Ahilya had turned into stone. It means to say that with the right opportunity, with real love, even stone comes alive. It also says that no one except Rama could have fulfilled her. The crux of the story is that everybody and everything has its own season, its own moment of fulfillment for which one must wait with patience. Until this moment comes, it is not going to happen. Only the touch of her lover, his warm hug can fulfill her.

Let us understand it in another way. Woman is passive; passive waiting is her way. She cannot be aggressive; she is receptive. She has not only a womb in her body, even her mind is like a womb. The English word woman, "wo-man", is very meaningful; it means a man with a womb. Woman's whole makeup is receptive, while man's makeup is active, aggressive. And although these two qualities, receptivity and aggressivity, seem to be contradictory, in reality they are complementary to each other. And as man and woman are complementary, so are their attributes. Man has what woman lacks and woman has what man lacks. That is how both together make a complete whole.

Woman's receptivity turns into waiting and man's aggressivity into search, into exploration. So while Ahilya will wait for Rama like a piece of stone, Rama will not do so. Instead, Rama will search many paths. It is interesting to note that a woman never takes the initiative in proposing love to a man, she always receives proposals from the man. She does not take the first step; it is man who takes it. Not that she does not begin loving someone, but her love is always a kind of waiting. Waiting is her way of love, and she can wait long -- for lives.

In fact, when a woman becomes aggressive she immediately loses a part of her femininity, she loses her feminine attraction, Her beauty, her significance, her very soul lies in passive waiting, in infinite waiting. She can wait endlessly; she can never be aggressive. She will not go to a man and tell him, "I love you." She will not say it even to a man she loves with all her heart. She will, on the contrary, want the man she loves to come to her and say that he loves her. Another beauty of feminine love is that it never says a straightforward yes when the man a woman loves comes to propose his love to her. While verbally she says no -- which means yes -- she says yes with her silent gestures, with her whole being turned into love. It is always man who takes the initiative.

A woman can wait endlessly for Krishna, she can never be fulfilled without him.

It is in this context that, in the past, we had an extraordinary rule, and it is good to know it and understand it. Women did not ordinarily propose love to men, but if once in a long while a woman came forward to propose her love to a man, he had to accept her; it was utterly immoral to say no to her. Since it happened rarely, it was ruled that such a proposal could not be turned down. If ever a man said no, it was thought that he had failed in his manhood. It was thought to be an insult to womanhood, which was so much respected in this country in the past.

There is an anecdote in the life of Arjuna which is worth mentioning here, Arjuna is under a vow of celibacy for one year. A beautiful young woman falls in love with the ascetic-looking young man, and tells him, "I wish I had a son like you." It is significant that when a woman makes a request, a proposal, she does not propose to be a beloved or a wife, but a mother. Arjuna was put into a dilemma. He was under a vow of celibacy which could not be broken before its time. And it was equally wrong to violate the rule which said it was immoral to say no to a woman who came with a proposal of love. Arjuna did not want to be that immoral. A male energy ceases to be male if a man turns down the request of a woman -- the receiving energy -- to make love to her.

Arjuna's difficulty was real. So he told the young woman, "I am ready, but how is it certain that our son will be like me? It is therefore better that you accept me as your son. I will become your son; this fulfills your desire."

A similar anecdote is recorded in the life of George Bernard Shaw. A French actress, the most beautiful actress of the times, made a similar proposal to Shaw. In a letter she wrote that she wanted to marry him. Although the western woman has moved a long way from being a woman, yet this French actress expressed a womanly desire to be a mother. She said in her letter that she wanted to have a son by Bernard Shaw, because this son would be something marvelous, combining her beauty and Shaw's intelligence.

I say that this western woman could not suppress the inherent feminine desire to be a mother, because motherhood is a woman's highest fulfillment. A woman does not feel guilty in becoming a mother, she feels great. And when a woman expresses her desire to be a mother, she is not transgressing her modesty, she is not demeaning herself, she is not falling behind man. To become a mother she makes use of man in a very small way; she does the rest of it all herself. But to be-a wife she needs the man the whole way.

Bernard Shaw was faced with the same difficulty as Arjuna, but Shaw could not answer the woman in the way Arjuna did. Since Arjuna belonged to the East, his answer was typically eastern. And Shaw's answer was clearly coarse and vulgar. Bernard Shaw wrote back asking the actress how she would feel if their son received his looks and her intelligence. No man in the East could say this; it is an insult to womanhood. Shaw not only turned down a woman's love, he did it in a very indecent manner.

Kubja has waited long for Krishna; she has waited for him for many lives. Krishna cannot say no to her, because no has no place in his life. Even if Kubja asks for love on the physical level, Krishna will not refuse her, because he is not opposed to the body. The body is as muck accepted as anything else; it has its own place in life The body is not everything, but it has its significance; it has its own juices and joys. The body has its own existence.

Krishna does not deny it He accepts both body and soul; he embraces both matter and God. He cannot insult womanhood by refusing sex on the physical level; he can go to any length to respect womanhood. He is prepared to fulfill every wish of Kubja's, and he will not have to persuade himself, strain himself in the matter. He will not have to make any effort to oblige Kubja; he will naturally and happily accept that which is.

For us it is difficult to think that Krishna would go in for physical sex; it seems outrageous. It is so because we are divided, we are dualists; we believe that the body and soul are separate, and while the soul is great the body is something lowly. But I don't view -- nor does Krishna -- the body and soul, sex and superconsciousness, matter and God as separate entities. They are all one and the same. The body is that part of the soul which is within the grasp of our senses -- like our eyes and hands -- and the soul is that part of the body which is beyond the grasp of our senses and intellect. The body is the visible soul and the soul is the invisible body. They are united and one; nowhere do they separate from each other or contradict each other. What is sexual joy at the physical level becomes ecstasy at the level of the soul. To Krishna's mind there is no conflict between sex and ecstasy. The joy of sex is nothing but a faint reflection, a faint trace of ecstasy, and therefore sex can become a door to ecstasy, to samadhi.