-Letters on Yoga Vol 24

All movements are in the mass movements of Nature's cosmic forces, they are movements of universal Nature.  The individual receives something of them, a wave or pressure of some cosmic force, and is driven by it; he thinks it is his own, generated in himself separately, but it is not so, it is part of a general movement which works just in the same way in others.  Sex, for instance, is a movement of general Nature seeking for its play and it uses this or that one - a man vitally or physically "in love" as it is called with a woman is simply repeating and satisfying the world-movement of sex; if it had not been that woman, it would have been another; he is simply an instrument in Nature's machinery, it is not an independent movement.  So it is with anger and other Nature-motives.

-Letters on Yoga Vol 23

Cannot one admire the beauty of women without any special sex attraction?

If one admires all beautiful things, not  women only without desire - then there would be no harm.  But specially applied to women, it is a relic of the "sex appeal".

- Guidance from Sri Aurobindo

It is of course the universal sex-force that acts, but certain people are more full of it than others, have the sex-appeal as they now say in Europe.  This sex-appeal is exercised especially by women even without any conscious intention of putting it on a particular person.  Consciously they May turn se itself on many it on a particular person, but it may exercise itself on many others whom they do not wish particularly to capture.  All women have not the sex-appeal, but some force of sex-pull there is in most.  There is of course a similar pull in men for women.

-Letters on Yoga Vol 24

A smile or any movement, appearance or action of the woman can be the starting-point for these vibrations.  I don't suppose it is anything inherent in the smile itself, but all these things have been the habitual means by which sex has been excited in men (havabhava) and the woman uses them, often unconsciously and by mere habit when coming into contact with man - whether she has or has not any intention of pleasing or moving the man, it still comes up as an instinctive movement.... But even when the woman smiles quite casually and without even the habitual instinctive movement, still ion on the man's side owing to the there may be the vibratition on the man's side owing to the habit of response in him to feminine attraction. These things are almost mechanical in their starting. As I wrote before it is the automatic answer of the physical or vital mind (imagination etc ,) that prolongs it and makes it effective. otherwise the vibrations would die away after a time.

-Letters on Yoga Vol 24

Dress has always been used by woman as an aid to her "sex-appeal" as it is now called and man has always been susceptible to it; women also often find dress in man a cause of attraction.  (e.g. soldier's uniform).  There are also particular tastes in dress – that a sari of a particular should attract  is quite normal. The attraction works on the sense and the vital, while it is  the mind that dislikes the psychological defects and gets cooled down by their exposure; but this repulsion of the mind cannot last as against the stronger vital attraction.

-Letters on Yoga Vol 24

It seems that in Yoga women have one advantage, the sex instinct in them is not as strong as in men.

There is no universal rule.  Women can be as sexual as men or more.  But there are numbers of women who dislike sex and there are very few men.  One Sukdev in a million, but many Dianas and Pallas Athenes.  The virgin is really a feminine conception; men are repelled by the idea of eternal virginity.  Many women would remain without any waking of the sexual instinct if men did not thrust it on them and that cannot be said of many, perhaps of any man.  But there is another side to the picture.  Women are perhaps less physically sexual than men on the whole, - but what about vital sexuality, the instinct of possessing and being possessed etc., etc. ?

Apropos of our discussion, let me put before you Mother's opinion on the matter She says that women are not more bound to the vital and material consciousness than men.  On the contrary, as they do not have the arrogant mental pretensions of men, it is easier for them to discover their psychic being and be guided by it.

No doubt, they can discover their psychic being more easily, - but that is not enough.  It is the first step.  The next is to live in the psychic.  The third is to make the psychic the ruler of the being.  The fourth is to rise beyond the mind.  The fifth is to bring what is beyond into the lower nature.  I don't say that it is always done in that order, but all that has to be done.

- Correspondance with Sri Aurobindo