Women are the initiators of men
-
Is being a woman a blessing for you, or do you ever regret it?
I have always found it magnificent to be a woman. Not that being a man is a catastrophe, or an inferiority… […] Depending on whether one is a man or a woman, our mission differs, and it seems to me more and more that the woman's mission is to be the guardian of the Eternal through the path of love. The woman is a conduit of love and she embodies, or at least can, at her best, embody that verticality that connects the human being to God. -
What makes you say that this is his mission?
It cannot be explained rationally, biologically, or even psychologically. It is a matter of intuition and experience. Yet it is unsettling to see that all the great myths bequeathed by the oldest traditions—those of Egyptian civilization and even earlier, six thousand years ago, of Sumerian civilization, or of ancient China—converge to describe woman as the “Gate of Heaven” or the intermediary between heaven and earth. She is the keeper of celestial secrets, through whom the human being can trace the path back to the divine… -
Where do you think this mission of his comes from?
By its very nature. Today, many women feel shattered, fragmented. They wonder how to reconcile their lives as mothers, wives, and working women, but it seems to me that this discomfort stems from a confusion between social, family, and professional roles and the woman’s deep self. By scattering herself across all her functions, the woman has somewhat lost touch with herself, with her feminine nature. Early feminists would fiercely contest this notion of a feminine nature… But for me, what forms the very foundation of the eternal feminine is the woman’s capacity to love, her ability to transfigure the visible world and to show that it can take on another dimension through the love she embodies. -
Apparently, you give the word "love" a very strong meaning that not everyone necessarily shares…
We too often reduce love to its psychological dimension. If our era is unhappy, it is perhaps precisely because it errs by constantly reducing love to the level of psychology.
Love is of this order, as are jealousy, possession, or that form of love that we oppose to hatred... Each of these feelings belongs to the mental and the psyche, a dark, complicated domain, always subject to turmoil and torment... But the love I speak of is synonymous with the sacred, and when we experience it, we enter a dimension of eternity, of pure offering and pure praise. This is not a formula, but an experience that all mystics bear witness to and that man and woman can know in the act of love: in the moments of rapture of love, we become aware that our true nature is joy and that we are, by essence, beings of delight. -
Are you not afraid of causing offense by placing the physical relationship between a man and a woman on the same level as spirituality or mystical experience?
If I offend some, it is because we see everything in antinomic terms: we have tried to separate body and mind as if spirituality were of a mental order. As if it entailed renouncing sensations, emotions, and the most beautiful thing in this world: desire. That would be a eunuch’s spirituality. If we are alive, we are in this body that has been given to us, and love, then, passes through it. Now, perhaps because a woman has the possibility of harboring a child within her, she is less inclined than a man to dissociate body and soul. She has retained more than he has the memory that the body is sacred and infinitely precious. She remains the memory of that place of fullness and light that is paradise… -
But wasn’t it a woman, Eve, on the contrary, who caused man to be cast out of paradise?
Eve has been greatly slandered and unfairly judged, for in reality, Eve means “the living one.” Now, if there is one feminine characteristic par excellence, it is precisely this quality of being alive. It is to her that Woman, within the women we are, owes her dimension as initiator toward man. An initiation that has nothing to do with the Kamasutra or sexual games… It is Shakti dancing on Shiva’s body in the Hindu tradition, the woman dancing on the man’s body in ancient traditions… In the amorous act, the woman gives the man his own body as a gift; she gives him the meaning of his own body. Indeed, it is rare for a man to have a proper and friendly contact with his body. Even an athlete or a very active man is not truly in his body. He feels no gratitude toward it. But in the embrace, the man becomes aware that his body is infinitely more than just a body. He awakens to this dimension of eternity where everything meets: body, mind, and soul; heaven and earth; here and there… -
In the face of this eternal woman you evoke, capable of awakening man to life and to himself, how do you see women today?
Most women are unaware of the power of love they carry. They seek to be desired, loved, and pampered—things that are very pleasant and extremely important on the human level, but which do not engage their deepest nature... They should rediscover the role played by the courtly lady in the twelfth century with regard to the troubadour, the role embodied by the Lady and the Unicorn that we see at the Cluny Museum in Paris: it is not the woman who asks the man to stay by her side, to form a couple, and to have children with him. It is the one who holds up a mirror to the man and invites him to rise to the most beautiful, the rarest part of himself; the one who whispers to him that he must come into the world and discover within himself that being of light that he fundamentally is. It is a role that is both painful and exhilarating: she must constantly remind the man that he must not be content with being a good father, a good husband, and a businessman—which goes without saying, after all—but that he is also a pilgrim of wisdom and must not forget his soul... -
Do you think women will one day reconnect with their spiritual mission?
Yes, because they continue to embody love nonetheless. Even today, it remains the central concern of their lives, as it has been throughout time and in all societies. In the name of love, a woman is willing to burn all her boats and take all the risks, whereas a man holds back. Men are very strong at debating ideas, politics, economics, or technology, but they are reluctant to get involved. They have a terrible time talking about their emotions and cling to concepts. The modern man, efficient, profitable, and materialistic, takes refuge in a cerebral world, which many women also fall into, for that matter. Yet, even if they do not always perceive its sacred nature, you will notice that it is always women who speak of love, just as it is always they who bear witness to the body. I constantly observe this in conferences and symposia: even on scientific topics, women have a much more embodied voice. They speak from the place of their body and their heart. Their words are at once sensual, carnal, and perhaps violent, but always vibrant with emotion and life. -
Do you see in the fact that we now place greater value on feminine values a hope for our society?
Hope, I see it rather in that power capable of transfiguring everything, which is love. The mystics have never ceased to say it: love is everything. It is what creates the worlds. It is what brought us into being and made us emerge. Without it, we crumble to dust. It is not a relationship between two beings, between a man and a woman or a woman and a child; it is what makes any relationship possible. Love is the very purpose of the universe. And if we were more aware that love circulates in us like blood in our veins, I think we would be infinitely more respectful of ourselves, of our bodies, and of others. We would also have more gratitude toward life, for life is a gift of love.
Words by Jacqueline Kelen, recorded by Anik Doussau.
