:: CREATIVITY ::

THE CREATIVE POTENTIAL OF WOMEN

Osho says, “the need of the day is to divert women's creativity into new dimensions: into poetry into literature, into painting, into music, into architecture, into sculpture, into dancing. She should be allowed now the whole spectrum of creativity. To create a child now is dangerous. To overpopulate the earth now is suicidal; already we are more than are needed.”

Up to now the greatest creative act of the woman has been giving birth to a child, but it is not going to be so any more. The earth was not so populated in the past; it was a need, a great need, and the woman fulfilled it. But now she has to grow new dimensions of creativity, and only then will she be able to be equal to man. Otherwise, she has been in the past only a factory and man has used her only to create more children. Having more children was economically beneficial, it was business, because they help you in every possible way; they were not a burden in the past.

In poor countries still the old idea continues that the more children you have the better off you will be economically. In the past it was true -- it is absolutely false today. Mohammed married nine women and he allowed Mohammedans to marry four women, simply to create more Mohammedans, because there was constant war between the Mohammedans and the non-Mohammedans and it was a question of power -- the politics of numbers. Whoever was more powerful was going to win, and power belonged to numbers. Now it is simple arithmetic: if you marry nine women to a single man, a single man can produce nine children in a year. But do just vice versa -- marry one woman to nine men -- and you may not even have one child. They will mess around... they may even kill the woman!

So it was economically, politically significant that men should marry more women, and people were stealing women from each other's tribes. It was more significant to steal a woman than a man because man is not so reproductive; one man is enough to serve many women and one man can produce many children.

But now the whole thing has changed -- the world is overpopulated. Now the need of the day is to divert women's creativity into new dimensions: into poetry into literature, into painting, into music, into architecture, into sculpture, into dancing. She should be allowed now the whole spectrum of creativity. To create a child now is dangerous. To overpopulate the earth now is suicidal; already we are more than are needed.

In Cairo, a city which is suffering from a severe housing shortage, a man was drowning in the river Nile. He was screaming for help, and a passer-by walking across the bridge heard him and called out to the distressed man, "What's your name?"
"Never mind my name!" gasped the drowning man. "Just save me!"
"First your name, please!" insisted the man on the bridge.
"Mr. Hussein," blubbered the struggling unfortunate before he went under for the second time.
"Quick," urged the man on the bridge, "now your address!"
"Forty-nine Kasr el Nil Street," gasped the man with his last breath.
Hearing this, without hesitation the man on the bridge rushed off to the address mentioned, leaving the poor man to drown in the river. He located the owner of the apartment building and told him excitedly, "There's a vacant apartment in your house -- can I rent it?"

"Gone already," mumbled the apartment owner. "Sorry, but I just let it to the guy who pushed him in!"

Now giving birth to children is not creative, it is destructive! The whole context has changed and we have to learn new ways to live in a new context. And the woman could not create great poetry, great music, great art, great literature; she could not be a scientist, a mystic -- she could not do anything, because she was constantly pregnant in the past. She was undernourished, tortured by so many children, dozens of children, always pregnant, sick. She had not yet lived totally -- she had not time enough to live.

For the first time it is possible through contraceptives and birth control methods and sterilization that the woman can free herself from getting pregnant unnecessarily carrying the long long burden of giving birth to children, then raising them up. Her energies can be freed. Now she can also become a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Jesus, a Krishna. Now she can also create like Mozart, Wagner, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Kalidas, Rabindranath, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Dostoevsky.

And my feeling is: once the energies of the women are freed totally from giving birth to children she may be able to create greater Buddhas. Why? -- because she is a far more creative force than man. But her creativity has remained confined to giving birth to children, and that is not much of a creativity -- it is just biological. Animals are doing it perfectly well, so what is great about it? Giving birth to a child is not anything conscious, deliberate, meditative. You are just being used by nature, by biology as a means to propagate the race, the species.

Philosophia Ultima # 16