Gender, Enlightenment, and the Evolution of Culture

Q: What is the role of gender in the teaching of evolutionary enlightenment? Do you define different paths or expressions of enlightenment for men and women, or do you feel that gender differences need to be transcended?

A: In the teaching of evolutionary enlightenment, the ultimate goal is the same for men and women. But gender is an undeniable reality and fact of our existence. As much as I might want to, I can’t deny the fact that I’m a man, and as much as you might want to, you can’t deny the fact that you’re a woman. There is an inherent difference, but this is not in itself an obstacle to the realization of an ultimate goal that transcends all differences. The problem comes when the ego identifies with the fact of difference as a way to feel special, unique, or superior. If your ego or separate self sense identifies with your gender as a source of power, as a way to locate yourself in relationship to others, it becomes a problem, an obstacle to coming together in a higher impersonal consciousness beyond ego, which is what this teaching is all about. But if the fact of gender is acknowledged, faced, and embraced, but not used as a way to locate yourself in relationship to others, then even the fact of gender becomes transparent. On a human level, it doesn’t mean you’re avoiding the fact of gender or any of the enormous implications inherent in it. But it is no longer overly emphasized. When we meet any man or woman who is excessively identified with his or her own gender or sexuality, we can see how that aspect of the self becomes exaggerated, and the personality distorts around it. But if we meet an unusually enlightened person, what we will almost always find is that while they happen to be male or female, what’s actually attractive or compelling about them is the depth of their consciousness. And of course, the fact of gender is going to have an influence on the transmission of that consciousness, but it will always be secondary to the nature of consciousness itself, which is one and the same for all of us.

Enlightenment means consciousness beyond ego. So if we want to understand gender in an enlightenment context, we have to ask: What would a man be like if his ego no longer identified with his gender as a way to locate himself as separate from others? And what would a woman be like if she did the same? This is something we need to discover for ourselves. What would the expression of our humanity look like if the ego, in a deep and fundamental way, was no longer identifying with gender as an overly significant dimension of our selfhood, but at the same time not in any way denying it? What would it be like for a woman to be a woman, unmasked and free from the socially cultivated feminine persona that has so much power over men? What would it be like for a man to embody real transparency, self-possession, and soul-strength, free from the extremes of arrogance and weakness? Many of these traits that we associate with our gender are not necessarily inherent in our fundamental nature, but have been created by culture and sexual power dynamics. Culture, as I understand it, is the context of our relationships, so what I am speaking about here is really the evolution of culture.

It’s a delicate balancing act that men and women have to begin to take on if they want to be truly free, and it requires a revolutionary spirit. We would have to go against deeply ingrained tendencies that are related to our gender and sexuality. There’s a tremendous amount of biological and social conditioning that we would have to override in order to find out what an enlightened expression of our manhood or womanhood would be. Unless men and women do that, we are never going to be free as individuals. I am convinced it’s possible to liberate ourselves from these biological and cultural structures without in any way denying our sexual nature. But it’s a very rare human being who would be able to do this. Why? Because most people just don’t want to give up the illusion of difference.

I call this teaching “liberation without a face” and to me it represents a thrilling and virtually unexplored potential. Imagine what the evolving, mature human being would look like who had become transparent and authentic, dropping all the veils of false separation. How would that change the relationship between men and women? It’s a new arena, utterly different from most spiritual notions of relationship that are defined around polarities. This kind of relationship would express a radical transparency and authenticity, in which men and women would find a new kind of strength, but which most people would find absolutely terrifying because so much of the illusion of the created self would have to fall away. It’s the destruction of a whole cultural context and a creation of a completely new one, based on a kind of authenticity that is way too much for most of us. It’s a new world.

What’s exciting about this new world is that it doesn’t exist yet. It needs to be created. It exists only as an unmanifest potential that can be created by heroic individuals who are willing to take the enormous risk to actually transform themselves. But if a few of us are willing to do this, I believe that authenticity and transparency can become a habit, for men and women, just as our traditional gender roles have become habitually imprinted in us. Then this new world will no longer be merely a potential, but a living, real reference point in human development. To me, this is the next step for the evolution of our culture. Even this potential for men and women to come together in a completely new way exists only because of the time we’re living in and the extraordinary revolutions that have already taken place in our society. If we can bring together all of the social freedoms that have become available to us over the last forty years, in the context of liberated consciousness beyond ego, we don’t know what’s possible.

Through looking into these issues of sexuality and gender relations beyond ego, I think a whole new definition of an enlightened culture could come into being. But it’s an enormous challenge. These deep identifications are the glue that holds society together, so it’s no small matter to begin to dislodge them. The truth is that for most of us, the ego is so identified with our sexual nature and the culturally created emotional and psychological structures that are built around it that we tend to lose objectivity and awareness very quickly in this arena. So it takes a heroic interest in liberation to begin to enlighten this dimension of our being. It’s fascinating to consider that traditionally one of the roles of religion, as imperfect as it is, has been to help human beings to learn how to embrace a more civilized relationship to these primitive drives in our biological nature. So when we speak about bringing an enlightened context to issues of gender and sexuality, we’re actually speaking about a much higher level of that same evolutionary dynamic. And it needs a small but not insignificant number of revolutionary souls who are willing to do this together. That’s where the power is found: in our unity of purpose. That’s what can break open the structures of culture and create a new world at the very leading edge of the possible.

Related Writings