--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Interesting Q&A session, interesting question. For what > it's worth, Rama (Frederick Lenz) used to give a very > strong talk entitled, "Why don't more women attain > enlightenment?" A strong part of his focus was on the > enlightenment of women, and he had some equally strong > opinions on the subject. I'll gloss over a few of them > here, for anyone who is interested. > > First, he said that from his perspective women should > *theoretically* be more able to realize enlightenment > than men, because of the more refined qualities of their > subtle bodies. So it's a puzzler when you look at his- > torical records and discover that so few women actually > *did* realize enlightenment. His explanation for why > this is was twofold -- because of men and because of > women. > > Men have pretty much always suppressed women, socially > and spiritually. The interview you posted, even though > Swami Bharati Tirtha did his best to dodge the subject, > made the case that the very scriptures his religion is > based on and the structures of the religious hierarchies > within that religion are inherently biased against > women. Add to that the social realities of being a > woman in many eras of history -- the foremost being > unable to work for pay, and thus being dependent on > either finding a man to support them or living with > their birth family for life -- and you have an envir- > onment that was hardly conducive to the study of > enlightenment. > > *Because of* the need to attract a > man to support them, (in Rama's view) women attained > a higher proficiency with the occult arts than men > did. They became adept at the mini-siddhis that make > up the "science of attraction," the ability to "make > someone fall in love with you." In his view almost > every romantic relationship was initiated by women, > and most of the time involved them using their occult > abilities to (at the very least) attract the man' > s attention and get him to focus on her. And, as he > pointed out, there is really "no harm, no foul" in > doing this, because women *had very few alternatives*.
Just curiously, would "mini-siddhis" and "occult abilities" include, say, the release of pheromones?
