191. Is woman made for man and to serve him only? Did God create us for the kitchen and for procreation? Why should a woman play a secondary part? Why do you deny equal rights to women?

Woman is in no way inferior to man. The home is a cooperative organization. It flourishes on the principle of division of labour. If a man earns and the wife stays at home, it does not mean that the woman is a parasite and a slave. She is indeed the builder of the nation. To make noble citizens by training their children and to form the character of the whole human race is undoubtedly a power far greater than that which women could hope to exercise as voters or law-makers, as presidents, ministers or judges.

The idea that men and women are equals is purely a Western concept. The Indian or Hindu concept is that man and woman, Purusha and Sakti, are one and indivisible. Sita did not think herself as a separate entity. She was in and of Rama. The Indian woman always identifies herself completely with her husband in all domestic, religious and social life. She is the queen of the house. She illumines the home through the glory of motherhood. It is in the motherhood of woman that all her prerogative, glory, competency and jurisdiction are specially vested.

The West has seen women playing the man in every walk of life. But I ask: "Has this contributed more to human happiness and to the real prosperity and peace of the country? Surely it has brought more divorce courts, more unhappiness, more restlessness. This has only thickened the women's veil of ignorance and augmented their Rajasic element".

Even in the West, there are many persons who are not in favour of women claiming equality with men. Even those who were in favour of this movement are now seriously repenting for their wrong advocacy, because they are actually witnessing before their eyes its pernicious effects.

Loose life is not perfect freedom. Promiscuous mixing is not freedom. Some women of India have ruined themselves by taking advantage of this false freedom.

The ideal of the woman in the West should not be our ideal, for then we shall not only be denaturalized, but also denationalized. One nation cannot adopt the ideal and the social customs of another without undermining one's own rock-bottom base.

Women should become good mothers only. This is the function they will have to perform in the grand plan of God. This is what is meant in the divine plan. This is the will of God. Women have their own psychological traits, temperament, capacities, virtues, instincts and impulses. They have their own disadvantages in society. They cannot, and should not, compete with men.

192. Is married life not an obstruction to God-realization? How can a married man please both his wife and God simultaneously?

Married life can never be an obstruction to those who are endowed with dispassion and detachment to worldly objects and who consider that life is intended to mould one's own self by drawing lessons from the university of Nature. Study the lives of saints like Thyagaraja, Ekanath, Narsi Mehta, Bhadrachalam Ramdas, Tukaram, Namdev, Jayadeva, Chaitanya and Kabir. Probe deep into the world and the way in which the above-mentioned saints and a host of others actually led their lives.

It is disgraceful on the part of man if he tries to please himself by pleasing his wife. He who considers married life as intended to please his wife is worse than an abject slave. Be self-restrained. Let the wife be made aware of the aim and purpose of life and the ways and means of attaining it in and through Grihastha life. Do not yield to the lower impulses when prompted by your incorrigible nature or by the stubborn character of the other party, but arrange yourself in such a balanced way that the psychic and physical personality of neither is upset. Whatever actions you do, dedicate them to God and consider them not as yours. Pray for a self-purifying, contented and continent life. Resign yourself recklessly in the spiritual battlefield and make no retreat even if life happens to be at stake. Be a master over yourself and treat yourself as a servant of God, but not as a servant of your wife. Feign that you are one with your wedded partner, but be ever transcending in mental outlook. You can be on the safe side of life.