Spirituality

Paramhansa Yogananda – Gender Bias? What’s That?

“The 20th Century’s first Superstar Guru” and “Father of the Yoga in the West” are just a couple phrases Paramhansa Yogananda is known by. His book, ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ is known as “The book that changed the lives of millions”. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs had ordered 500 copies of the book for his own memorial, for each guest to be given a copy. The Guru needs no introduction. Hence, this blog is about the ahead of their time fundamentals he taught. 

In his book and his teachings, he referred to all humanity as Man and never addressed any person as ‘him’ or ‘her’. He never discriminated against or treated men and women as superior or inferior to the other. The times he lived in however, gender bias was not even a term. Men and women were treated differently and everyone thought that’s how things are supposed to be. No one even questioned the bias because the consciousness of bias wasn’t present. He didn’t revolt against the bias either; he simply started treating all genders as equal. 

His reason behind the equal treatment and disregarding gender was purely spiritual. According to him, the word ‘Man’ is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Atman’ which means the soul and the self and the soul has no gender. 

Fun Fact, Paramhansa Yogananda was born to Bengali parents, and Bengali as a language doesn’t have different terms for gender. A Boy is a Him and so is a Girl. This also goes on to tell us how the languages we speak condition our minds in different ways. 

In his own words – “Understanding is a balance of calm intelligence and purity of heart.  Emotion is not love; emotion is a distorted feeling that will lead you to do the wrong thing. And understanding that is guided solely by the intellect is coldblooded; it too will teach you to do wrong….Men sometimes become intellectually ossified, and women occasionally become emotionally unreasonable. You must have a balanced understanding. If your understanding is governed by both heart and head, then you have a clearvision to see yourself and others”

However, we often observe that some men are more feminine and some women more masculine. The reason behind this is that all of us have feminine and masculine qualities amongst us and a misbalance between the two leads to someone being extremely masculine or feminine. The soul however has no gender. So a man acting feminine has either been a woman in one of his recent lives or has gone through conditioning and nurturing that was mostly feminine and vice versa. 

Paramhansa Yogananda destroyed gender bias before the term’s inception and that’s what makes him a Guru who was far ahead of his time. 

This takes us back to the understanding of the Ardhanareshwara where Shiva and Parvati and merged, each embracing the feminine and masculine in them and balancing it out.  

We hope you found this blog interesting. To learn how to balance your feminine and masculine qualities, write into us at info@chamundaswamiji.com