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Bhakta Matt writes:

"The biggest thing keeping my heart from surrender is a statement in a purport on page 19 of the Gita that says women are less intelligent and therefore not trustworthy. I am not a woman myself, but still this statement troubled me, and I can understand how women might get mistreated now and then in a society whose purport seems to state such an unfair view of women."

Reply: I have a suggestion about how to understand this from the point of view of Ayurveda, the traditional Indian medicine.

First, intelligence here doesn’t refer to particular brain functions as such. It is to be understood in terms of the mode of goodness, characterized by the ability to control emotions.

For men, the discharge of semen has a similar debilitating effect for the intelligence to act in the mode of goodness as for women the menstrual cycle. Women don’t experience similar loss by repeatedly having sex. Consequently, men who discharge semen more often than once a month are wasting their capacity for intelligence (in goodness). Nowadays, therefore, it is often seen, than women are actually more intelligent.

Therefore, as a class, men in general have a higher capacity for sattvic intelligence than women, but only if they practice celibacy. By discharging semen more often than once a month the situation is reversed, as is actually oftentimes the situation.

Also, it shouldn’t be understood that all women are less intelligent than all men. Simply, due to different workings of their physical bodies, there is higher potentiality, which is only actualized by practicing celibacy.

Your anonymous servant

© CHAKRA 28 May 2002