This is to compare and contrast the feminine mind which is not limited to people in female bodies with the masculine mind which is not limited to people in male bodies. The mind is very subtle: it is an expression of the soul, a capacity to produce thought. It holds emotion. It is where stillness resides. It is a subtle instrument of sense perception. It is a very refined creative instrument, capable of appreciating and interpreting music, art, and can recognise beauty and meaning. We can discern a difference between the feminine and masculine mind. The masculine mind is like an obelisk and the feminine mind is like a labyrinth. The masculine mind is more engaged in the external world and in going somewhere. It likes functional objects and instruments of transportation. It looks at time as an arrow and purpose as a series of goals. The feminine mind is more internal, concerned with cycles, sensitive to the mood, the earth, nature birth and death, and those unseen mysterious aspects of human life that reside in our inner landscape. The feminine mind orientates itself towards dreams and mysteries, psychic phenomena, love and healing.
Ideally, we have a good blend of both. We live in a culture dominated by the masculine mind, where the feminine aspects and attributes are considered less valuable due to not necessarily being quantifiable or remunerated financially. So values are considered in that way.
When I was researching values and spirituality I found that it was important to place spirituality in opposition with conventional morality, and that it is appropriate to challenge conventional morality on the grounds that it promotes double standards and hypocrisy, as well as punitive forms of correction, which don’t work. Punitive forms of correction continue to be applied, regardless of evidence that shows it to be ineffective.
The feminine mind looks around and checks whether something is real or authentic. It questions whether a course of action is actually taking us where we want to go, and if not, it would dispense with it.
When I was working with a group of brothers in retreat, they described a need and desire for fusion. Why does the male feel the need for the feminine? I am reminded of an extraordinary phenomenon in beehives, knows as “Queen essence”. The Brahma Kumari Dadis exude this. It is an energy that makes you feel as though you exist, that affirms the importance of your existence. It makes your existence have meaning and makes you want to carry on doing what you are doing, because it infuses it with meaning and a sense that it is important, that you belong and that you are loved. Among bees the queen sits in a particular place and all the family of bees come by on their way to doing whatever it is they do. They pick up this energy that bee keepers call queen essence. Dadi Prakashmani, who was the Administrative Head of the Brahma Kumaris before Dadi Janki, was absolutely the embodiment of this. She would sit in the courtyard of Pandav Bhawan, Mount Abu, which we call Madhuban, that means the forest of honey. She would sit there in the morning taking in the sun, and was 100% available to everyone in the organization, from the most simple to the most high ranking. In the evenings she would sit in a slightly different spot where she could watch the moon. She would encourage people to sit with her, to talk and to sing and enjoy each others company. In this way she somehow miraculously moved the organization from very small, limited to India to a global movement with about 9000 associated centres in 130 countries.
She had an extraordinary power to see the interior of a person. When she would see you, you would know that you had been seen. Otherwise normally you feel that no one has any idea who you are. They seem to just look at the surface of your body and evaluate you accordingly and in BK we call this body consciousness.
Soul consciousness is where you are really conscious of everything to do with your soul. You can see right through the physical covering and the ego mask into another being’s soul, and the relationship is soul to soul. This is different from anything that could be found on your CV or ID documents.
The feminine mind is capable of accomplishing massive tasks; of leadership, of being an inspiration, caring for and nurturing and playing many roles while doing a number of different activities all at once. The feminine mind is wholistic.
It is like a labyrinth is because it moves in a circular way towards the middle, the central essence of concepts, and then moves to a position with view of the whole picture. It maintains sight of both the periphery and the core. The masculine mind, however will begin somewhere, it does not matter where, and go somewhere, it tends to travel from one point to another more distant point, whether that is a place or an idea.
The feminine mind looks for hidden meaning and grounding. This is perhaps why the earth is always called a woman, and water is considered feminine. Anything can go into it and disappear. Water is also the symbol of the sub conscious. It seems that women in general, or the feminine minded, are more easy about going deep inside the self. The masculine minded person is afraid of things that lie beneath the surface.
The feminine is always very conscious of the family, and is inclusive of everyone in the family. It is different from the football team, or the army which is closer to the way of the masculine mind. In BK we also consider ourselves as a spiritual army. This is reflected in our capacity for discipline and getting large things done. For example Dadi Prakashmani once announced that she wants events all over India with minimum 100,000 participants, then and there. And she got it without very much fuss.
The feminine mind is also concerned with creating a pure mind. It likes to work with pure and powerful thoughts. Powerful thoughts are spiritual thoughts such as “I am light”. It is an extraordinarily simple thought which is true at any time in eternity. When the feminine mind is conscious of being an expression of the soul, it says “I am immortal, you cannot kill me. You can try. Thus the feminine mind can become immune to physical pain, emotional pain, psychological pain, financial pain, social pain, military pain. Within the feminine there is a tendency to transcend, to re-interpret and to transform, and turn situations into something else. The feminine is always creating, even out of what has been destroyed or rejected. History contains many examples of this.
The use of pure and powerful thought is terrifying for the materialistic mind-set. Because the materialistic world cannot control it. In our culture, the feminine dimension is considered to be dangerous and bad. Sometimes the carriers of feminine energy hold themselves back. I think we really should not hold ourselves back any more. When a woman has caught hold of her intrinsic power she becomes free. She is not hungry for power. She is powerful, but is not concerned whether anyone knows it, acknowledges it or tries to wrest it from her. When you are in your power, you can say that you have arrived. You don’t need to do anything about it. However, in a world where we see a lot of damage, violence, corruption, and incoherent and destructive behaviour, then it is time for the female energy to come together.
A woman can open up a space for men to enter into their femininity. Once I was working with a group of men who stated that they wanted to experience fusion. This was accomplished by entering into the tabernacle or sacred place within their being. A golden key is needed to gain entry there in order to experience fusion. This is an internal experience. Our culture does so much to devalue that sacred, secret, mysterious space which is of the soul. Yet there is such a hunger for it.
The feminine mind is naturally oriented towards that. However it is an uphill struggle because the world we live in tells us that if we want to be “successful” you have to sell your soul. When you get to the higher echelons of corporate life, you don’t find many women. Some women go there, and say “I don’t think I like this, see you later”. There is a visceral unwillingness to sit with the guys engaged in some highly destructive yet financially rewarding activity.
Yet, women have a lot of power, a lot of vision, the feminine mind has ways of working together such that there are 30 bodies but one soul. To merge together involves trust and seeing each other as one really is, then you can accomplish whatever you want. Pure thought is the instrument for this. To keep working together in the mind and arrive at a fusion of minds. In such connectedness, one thinks a thought and all the others feel that thought and the thought becomes a practical reality. No physical effort is required. Perhaps that is how the pyramids got built. This work is not done individually but requires a collective mental effort.
We can accomplish something like this using the process of dialogue, which was introduced in the 1980s by David Bohme. If you want to arrive at truth, you have to use mechanisms of communication that are truthful. There are rules: no generalizations, because they are never true, no accusations because they are arrogant, no speculations because they are hypothetical, no speeches because the communication must be authentic and intimate. Confidentiality of what is said must be maintained.
The group can take up any issue, keep on adding relevant statements into the space in the middle of the circle of participants. Ultimately you arrive at a truth about that particular issue. You also arrive at a fusion of the minds, where all are psychically at one with each other, on the same wave length. So the powerful thought of one goes right through the others like the string of a necklace of pearls. Twenty to thirty minds are synchronized with each other creating a greater mental power to accomplish any task, similar to the use of computers synchronised with each other to render the artwork in the creation of animation films such as Ratatouille and Shrek. None of those individuals could claim to have accomplished that particular task but would rather say: I was present and I watched it take birth.