One of the decrees of our Acharyas based on shastraic edicts is that
women must not vocalise the pranava. Instead they should say um. The
elucidation of the pranava which runs into days of discouses begins
with splitting it into a,u, and m. A stands for Vishnu m for the
individual soul, jeevathma and the middle u for acharyan and/or
Lakshmi. When women say um they are deprived of the benefits of
enunciating the very essential a in the pranava. Why this inequity?
As far as individual souls are concerned the sex doesn't matter. The
jeevatma is sexless. It is the prarabdha that determines what type of
body the soul is going to inhabit, but by itself it is neither male
nor female. That being so why cant the soul in the female shell say
the pranava? In one interpretattion all souls are females and
Purushottama is the only male, in which case all of us should be
saying um.
Once Nanjeeyar asked Bhattar whether Lakshmi had done the correct
thing by ascending on to Narayana's chest admist all the males at the
end of the episode of churning of the ocean of milk. As the First
Lady (nareenam utthama vadhuh) so to say, she did not feel shy to get
attached to Narayana so publicly. To this Bhattar replied in his
classic style. Why should she be ashamed when she was going to the
only male present. A lady may feel shy when in company of males but
when the whole gathering is female she need not feel ashamed. A
surprised Nanjeeyar asked what about the 33 crores of devas and the
far more numerous asuras. Bhattar's unforgettable reply was that as
far as Narayana is concerned He is the only male and all jivatmas are
female whether they be the denizens of heavens, earth or the nether
worlds.
I humbly request some enlightened soul to explain this conundrum.
Dr.S.Sundar Rajan, Trichy
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