Passage 13

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In plain words

Yācintā bhuvi nandanandana padadvandvāra vindekṣaṇe. It is enough to think of those two feet for a single moment. ‘So God has come into my hands. For coming here, I have won this,’ the woman rejoiced. Who is meant by the woman? Prakṛti itself. That itself is woman. So, since each and every one has taken on this form, all of them alike are simply women. You cannot say that one is a man merely because he wears trousers and a shirt, or that they are women merely because they wear saris.

Every person is none other than Ardhanārīśvara

‘Icchā rāmo bhavati, stabdho bhavati, matto bhavati, ātmā rāmo bhavati.’ That is, pumān, pumān. That is, the pura is the body. Those who have taken on a body, they too are nothing but women. The very power that moves through this body from toenail to the tip of the hair, this itself is consciousness; He Himself is the Puruṣa. So within is consciousness, without is inert matter. The oneness of the two, this body and this consciousness, is itself Ardhanārīśvara. Ardhanārīśvara does not mean that Īśvara alone has a half-body. Every person too is just such a half-body. The body is Prakṛti. The prāṇa is Īśvara. So humanness takes shape through the oneness of the two, and through that alone. That is why humanness does not mean merely something that has taken a single form. On this stage of the world's drama, everyone is wearing a costume. In it God too takes on a costume. But everyone, without exception, is only an actor. World is like a stage, all are actors, God is the only director. Only at His command do the costumes of all of these play out in that way. Merely because we have put on a costume, we cannot say male or female, or divide people so. There is a women's college; on that college's anniversary day they put on a play. In that play they take all sorts of parts like this: king, queen, maidservant, guard, minister, watchman, soldiers. All of these are women, and only women. They put on a king's costume; like a soldier they carried a sword. This whole world too is nothing but a stage. In it everyone has put on a costume. In everyone alike the power of the Ātma is one and the same. That is why you cannot strut about saying, ‘A job is the mark of a man.’