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Date Posted: 14:37:07 02/15/05 Tue
Author: 1 - 27 Jan 2005
Subject: Re: The Ramakrishna Order and Yogananda
In reply to: H - 26 Jan 2005 's message, "Re: The Ramakrishna Order and Yogananda" on 14:23:51 02/15/05 Tue


Interesting article from wie.org

SA: I'm very thrilled to meet you, Vimalaji, because it seems to me that there are very few women teachers like yourself who are teaching real liberation in the world. I haven't met many. I've met more men, such as Krishnamurti and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. It seems that most of the women figures who are leaders in the arena of spirituality are kind of Divine Mother figures, and that's very different. They're apparently teaching unconditional love through the expression of who they are, in a sense. But there does not seem to be a real teaching of liberation there. So it's very inspiring for me to meet someone like yourself who has actually transcended the conditioning that we are speaking about. It seems to me to be unusual.

VT: My dear, it is unusual because, for example in India, Hinduism says woman can never be liberated in a woman's body. If she behaves, if she follows bhakti yoga, then she may be born again in a male body and then she will be liberated. Buddhists and Jains also never accept that a woman in a woman's body can be emancipated. Nor do the Catholics accept it. So at best a woman becomes a mother figure, such as Anandamayi Ma, or this figure or that figure. And she teaches as the Mother, not as an emancipated person.

Shall I tell you something? I was visiting Los Angeles in 1968 and I was staying at Ramakrishna Mission. I was asked to give a talk to the inmates of the ashram but they said, "You cannot speak in the chapel because you are a woman. Only sannyasins [monks] can speak there, and a woman cannot be a sannyasin." The Swamiji there was Swami Prabhavananda, who was a very powerful swami. He wrote books along with Christopher Isherwood on the Bhagavad Gita, and commentaries on the Gita. He knew J. Krishnamurti, and so on. He was a very fine person. I said to him, "Swamiji, excuse me. Will you please remove the photographs of Sarada Devi, Ramakrishna's wife, from the chapel?" There were two photographs there. So I said, "Since you tell me that I cannot give an address in this chapel, I will not give an address. But, will you please remove those photographs?"


Even in Ramakrishna Mission there is a differentiation. So who will stand up against all this and assert the humanness concealed in woman's body, the divinity concealed in woman's body, and demand equality on that level—not just on the physical and psychological levels?

http://www.wie.org/j10/vimala_challenge.asp?page=3&ifr=srch

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