Late Night Chat with Jeff: the Masculine and Feminine within us, Feb 9, 2025, live on Baba Zoom

Dear folks of Baba,

I have heard serious concerns from Baba lovers representing a variety of gender identifications about this overly male dominated world and its poignant lack of empathy and compassion, the feminine qualities. Society has become increasingly impersonal nowadays, and I have often thought in this advent, Baba has emphasized God in human form, the personal, which is desperately needed to counteract the domination of the mind and its impersonal achievements. In some of His previous advents He has directed us to the impersonal, formless manifestations of the Divine, such as Allah, Nirvana, Yezdan and Jehovah, an orientation that I assume was appropriate and necessary during those periods of human history.

The terms masculine and feminine can easily evoke a gender conflict, but Baba asserts that both of these qualities are in each one of us. If our identification with the gender of our body is too strong, that is, if we identify as strictly male, then the feminine qualities in us get repressed. The same is true for the feminine. Baba says when both the masculine and feminine are fully developed in us, we are approaching Realization.

Baba says broadly that the masculine in us "excels in qualities of head and will", and the feminine "in qualities of the heart". Those who balance both qualities in himself or herself will have a more integrated experience of themselves.

Speaking very simplistically, the masculine in us is generally considered assertive and goal-oriented, while the feminine is receptive and relationship-oriented. The masculine, in Baba’s words, relies on the mind with its “sound judgment", “steadfast purpose,” and “will”, and the feminine on the heart with its feelings, empathy and intuitions; they are “capable of intense love,” “devotion" and “any sacrifice”. The masculine in us, in my view, tends to seek Baba in oneself, and the feminine seeks to find Baba in each other. Helen Dahm, the woman who painted the murals in His tomb back in the late 1930s, early 40s, complained to Baba about her emotional discomfort in being among so many other women mandali at Upper Meherabad. She tended to be anti-social, but He told her, “The path is through people.” And in His last message on the alphabet board in October 1954, Baba said that His lovers would “realize the Truth by being bound to each other with internal links.” To me this means that during this period in history Baba is encouraging us to find Him in each other, the feminine and personal, and He would refer to us as His Baba family.

Paradoxically, it is possible for a woman to be very masculine and a man to be quite feminine. Neither gender has a monopoly on the expression of the masculine and the feminine. Baba has said that an effort has to be made to balance these gender qualities within. While seeking this balance, in the case of a man, Baba says it is important that he “tries to understand a woman, not through the eyes of the male, but through an imaginative reaching out toward what the woman feels herself to be, in her own personal experience.” The same is true for women.

Over recent decades, there seem to be two concurrent paths: the traditional stereotypical male and female gender roles alongside growing trends of individual expression.

Could it be that the current questioning and expression of gender today is the soul's attempt to balance the masculine and feminine qualities within?

Have you been affected adversely by the stereotypical definition of your gender? In what ways? How does the societal culture of your country play into the experience of your gender?

Could Baba be making an invaluable distinction between masculine and feminine qualities, rather than the more limiting male and female genders? In that case, is there more room for acceptable overlap—for example, a strong-minded take-charge woman, or a receptive, devotional man? Haven't we already begun loosening the ways we see others? What role does detachment from gender play in balancing out our inner nature?

The mind with all its creations: the development of new inventions, societal hierarchies, the whole digital world and labor-saving devices has not brought us closer to each other. It may be that simple personal love and interest in each other, from heart to heart as Baba has expressed, may be what saves us from the alienation and isolation that is so rampant in the world today. What is needed as an antidote to this growing trend, as Baba has said, is a “fusion” of impersonal love (our sense of duty) and personal love (for those who receive our intimate attention), which He says ultimately culminates in “Divine love.”

In His love, Jeff