Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1. 1936

Letter ID: 1620

Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar

May 4, 1936

Today D and I had a discussion on women. D said that by nature Indian women are very attached and devoted.

By habit and education, not by nature, except with a minority.

Whereas men, by nature, are quite the opposite.

What rash generalisations!

Look at K. How much the poor lady suffers for her attachment to her husband. But no way out.

For her sex-hysteria, sir! Note that when she is not suffering, as you say, she is offered the chance to go with him and she shouts quite as much as under the doctor’s touch “I don’t want! What do you mean? I never asked to go.”

Why is there this difference between man and woman? Why is man made more polygamous? why do his attachment, love, desire, fleet from one object to another, whereas woman’s nature is more one-pointed, devoted to one?

To one at a time perhaps, at least with the majority. There are plenty who are polyandrous by nature.

Why are we made up of so many contradictory elements: one aspect has aspiration towards Him, religion, morality, aesthetic qualities; the other, a tremendous pull towards baser elements, especially sex?

It takes many ingredients to make a nice pudding.

Is it that the path to the Divine can’t be made easy on account of the danger of a democratic aspiration which will thunder at God in his own citadel?

Perhaps it is to prevent the world from coming to a sudden end by a universal rush into beatitude.

Or is it for the preservation of the species?

The sex started as a preservation of species. Man has made a hotch-potch of what was in its origin simple in motive.