The sexuality of man and woman remains a fundamental factor of phenomenal existence. Being born means being born as female or as a male or somewhere in between with more or less of the feminine or masculine constituting elements.
The sexual attractions on which the world moves comes to be with these sexual differentiations at birth. This difference have been examined biologically, psychologically and so forth right from ancient times, sometimes scientifically, sometimes magically and sometimes even mythically.
It has been a topic that has preoccupied man quite extensively and for quite a long time. But the mystery still remains and sufficient light has not been thrown into it. And that despite even modern scientific studies of such sexual differentiations.
There is this genetical explanation in terms of the DNA structures. There is also the biological, that which looks at organismic and hormonal differences, how conception occurs and a child is brought into the world etc. There is also the psychological, how the thinking of man and woman differs and sometimes even how they are related to the hemispherical differentiations and brain specializations.
I am NOT denying the relevance and importance of such studies but certainly feel that the ROCK BOTTOM of such inquiries has NOT been reached and we can never, till we become metaphysical.
Of all the explanations the metaphysical is the most abstract, the deepest, the most profound and hence the most illuminating. Every earthly phenomena has its own metaphysical explanation which, I must mention here, belongs to the Hermeneutic Science, in the way I conceive it. One more important thing about this metaphysical - it is transcultural and hence universal.
The Western man cannot have a metaphysical explanation different from the Eastern man etc. The metaphysical explanations are NOT scientific theories that change according to the times with shifts in paradigms such as Kuhn and many others have observed.
The metaphysical level is a level of permanence and NO CHANGE and hence in a way can be only repetitive, requiring retelling the SAME OLD STUFF but clothed perhaps differently.
Sexuality has found such a metaphysical explanation and it is found in the Saivism of Tamils, Taoism of the Chinese and in the Analytical Psychology of Jung and so forth. They explain it in terms of TWO fundamental metaphysical structures, the Tatvas of Natham and Bindu, Yin and Yang the Sun and Moon principles and the Animus and Anima.
The meanings may differ slightly but the fundamental similarity remains. A psyche is born as male when there is an IMBALANCE created by the dominance of Natham and Suppression of Bindu. A psyche is born a Female, when the converse takes place. And this suppressing one to let another dominate belongs to the DANCE of BEING, the Civa Nadaraja, the way BEING plays with the existence of the psychic entities and that too in relation to its own karma. And most important of all , it is this fundamental imbalance that makes the man and woman SEXUAL!
The man lacking Bindu in his innermost psychical structure seeks a woman as his sexual mate to neutralize this fundamental imbalance and vice versa for the woman. The sexual union both at the physical and psychical level discloses the attainment and enjoyment of this neutralization, the androgyneity. The androgeneity thus attained, through love and marriage provides a STABILITY of a kind and hence a piece of mind that releases the man or woman for further action. Those who have attained it through marriage but later lost it through divorce seek to replace it with another man or woman at the lower stages of being just physical but with BEING itself when they are metaphysical. BEING appears as WOMAN for such males and MAN for such females and when we talk of Marriage with BEING, sexuality becomes Divine Sexuality , a kind of bakthi such as that ANdal, Karaikkaal Peyar, Namazvar, Manikkavasakar and a host of others.. The divinely sexual becomes because of this part of the genuinely religious life.
The enormous importance of this metaphysical insight is that it TELLS us how to OVERCOME sexuality. We CANNOT kill sexuality through dietary control such as spiceless tasteless vegetarian diet. We cannot also overcome it through Hatha Yoga or such severe kind of yoga practices that are stipulated for such purposes.
The sexual man has to LIVE with sexual woman and vice versa in order to attain the BALANCE in Natham Bindu composition. Through such an UNDERSTANDING, we also see that it can be overcome when the psyche becomes through co-habittance ANDROGYNOUS in itself. Saivism sees BEING itself as Ardhanari, the Ammaiyappar, a half male and half female archetype in order to project a psychical possibility that all psyches can own and finally BE. It is at this point that genuine asceticism comes to prevail, an asceticism that does NOT suppress and repress and hence full of inner struggles but rather NATURAL and SPONTANEOUS such as that of VaLLalar. At this point or at least at a level of development very close to this, marriage becomes not just unnecessary but rather a burden.
It is NOT an accident that only in genuine religious life that such an androgyneity is attainable . For genuine religious life, there is vital and immensely alive and thriving union with BEING and hence the enjoyment of this basic neutrality. The metaphysical life is the only life that can saturate the immensely deep sexual craving. Where the culture kills metaphysics through ridicule, misrepresentations and deliberate dilution of its DEPTHS, we have the emergence of the deviant sexuality. The solution lies in metaphysics, a religion that is genuinely metaphysical and hence that which allows the symbolical way of life.
ULLAGANAR
( picture taken from google with thanks )
