Question 3

QUESTIONER. YOU HAVE SAID THAT A MAN IS SIXTY PERCENT MALE AND FORTY PERCENT FEMALE, AND A WOMAN IS SIXTY PERCENT FEMALE AND FORTY PERCENT MALE. IN CASE THE RATIO IS ALTERED AND EQUALIZED, DO YOU THINK MALE AND FEMALE ENERGIES WILL NEUTRALIZE AND STERILIZE EACH OTHER? AND HOW IS IT GOD HAS BEEN CALLED ARDHANARISHWARA, HALF MAN AND HALF WOMAN?

I did not say that the proportion of male and female energy is fixed at sixty and forty percent. It can vary; it can be seventy and thirty, even ninety and ten. But in case it is fifty-fifty, it makes a man or woman asexual. Then he or she is out of the dialectics of sex, then he or she is neutral or impotent.

It is significant that in Sanskrit the word brahman or the supreme energy or God, is categorized as neuter gender. Is brahman male or female? No, it is neutral. What has been called omnipotent has been indicated in language as without gender. How can the supreme be male or female? That would make brahman partial. No, the ultimate being is impartial. This impartiality is possible only if the proportion of male and female energy is fifty-fifty.

The concept of ardhanarishwara is the symbol of brahman, the supreme, because the proportion of male and female in brahman is fifty-fifty. Brahman is both man and woman, or it is neither. If God were all male, then there would be no way for the female species to be. And if God were all female, then there would not be a male species on the earth. It is both together and therefore it is capable of creating both the species -- male and female.

And as long as we are man and woman, we are two separate fragments of God, broken away from him. That is why man and woman attract each other; this mutual attraction stems from their desire to be united and one. Separately they are half and incomplete. And everything incomplete strives to complete itself; that is the way of life.

Not only our concept of ardhanarishwara is unique, even the statue of ardhanarishwara that we have created is rare in the known history of mankind. There are many beautiful statues around the world. But the ardhanarishwara depicts a great psychological truth -- it is simply incomparable. This statue, this ancient symbol is a blend of male and female energies, because the statue is half male and half female. One of its sides is feminine and the other is masculine, or you can say it is a blending or the combination of the two. It can also be said to be beyond the two.

As I said, God is the median, the golden mean. Jesus has used a weird phrase, "eunuchs of God" to point to the same phenomenon. He says those who want to find God should become eunuchs of God, which really sounds outlandish. But )esus is right; those who want to find God should become like God: neither male nor female. And if you look attentively at men like Buddha and Krishna, who reflect godliness on this earth at its highest, you will find that they too are neither male nor female. Seen in their full glory and grandeur they are both or neither, or a blending of the two. In a way they reflect the transcendental sex, they have gone beyond the duality of the sexes.

As far as we are concerned, we are dual -- both male and female in different proportions.

You want to know why some people are born eunuchs who are neither men nor women, people who may be called a third sex. The reason is the same. If the child in its embryonic form in the mother's womb has both male and female elements in equal proportion, then he cannot grow into one sex clearly. Then the two equal elements will neutralize each other and the person will be a eunuch.

From time to time cases of sex-change have been reported. Usually their news is suppressed. It has happened that a young man slowly changed into a young woman and vice versa. It was thought to be accidental, a freak of nature. But now medical science knows how it happens, and is virtually in a position even to effect such changes clinically.

In the recent past a very sensational case came before a court of law in London. The case was that a young man and young woman were duly married as husband and wife. After they lived as husband and wife for a few years, the woman's sex underwent a change and she became a man. The crux of the com plaint was that the woman was never a woman, she was a man and that she deceived the young man by disguising her true sex.

The judges were in real difficulty to come to a correct judgment. The wife pleaded that she was always a woman and that the change came later. At the time of the hearing of this case even medical science was not clear about the matter. In the course of the last twenty-five or thirty years many cases of sex change have come to light and physicians accept that it is possible. And science is busy exploring this area with the help of such cases.

If the difference between one's male and female elements is very small or marginal -- say it is fifty-one to forty-nine, then a change of sex can take place any time. It is just a question of chemical changes taking place in one's physiology. And with the discovery of hormones and synthetic hormones, the day is not far off when medical science will bring about this change clinically.

Now it is not necessary that a man or woman should suffer the boredom of being man or woman for good. He or she can have a change any time they want. It is just a matter of manipulating the quantity of certain body chemicals and hormones. Soon we will see that a man turns into a woman and a woman into man if they choose to. In fact, there is not much difference between man and woman; the difference is rather quantitative.

The concept of God as ardhanarishwara says that the primeval source of creation is neither male nor female or it is both. But I don't say that a eunuch or an impotent person is nearer God as a result. I don't say so.