International Women’s Day

8^th of march is celebrated as International Women’s day every year around the world. It is a symbol of showing our respect and valuing their importance as a half part of this society.

Women is the unique half part of human consciousness and deserves total freedom. Osho says The woman is capable of producing life; man is not. In that way he is inferior, and that inferiority has played a great role in the domination of women by men but there is no need for man to feel inferior to woman, they belong to one humanity, and they both have complementary qualities. They both need each other, and only when they are together are they whole.

He says women has a quality of harmony, peace, serenity, patience, silence and man has the quality of courage, adventure, rebel, leadership, exploration. Both are incomplete as alone. A great society could be raised if both contribute together to it.

Osho Says….

OSHO,

I HAVE HEARD THAT BEHIND EACH SO-CALLED GREAT MAN — LIKE JULIUS CAESAR OR NAPOLEON, OR EVEN A REALLY GREAT MAN LIKE SOCRATES — THERE WAS A WOMAN IN CHARGE.

I HAVE ALWAYS MANAGED TO TURN FROM BEING AN ADMIRER OF WOMEN INTO A WOMAN’S FOOL. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET? YOU HAVE PUT MORE WOMEN IN CHARGE THAN IS REALLY POSSIBLE, AND YET YOU HAVE REMAINED FREE AND LOVED BY THEM ALL. AND I LOVE YOU TOO.

Prem Prasad, the so-called great men — Julius Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon and others — were certainly driven by women; they were trying to prove themselves. The woman has one very special quality about her: she is, in a way, very contented with small things. Just because she is a woman she has a natural capacity to create children; her desire for creativity is fulfilled — she becomes a creator naturally, biologically. There, man feels impotent: he cannot produce children. Something like an empty womb hurts inside. He wants to prove before the woman, particularly the woman he loves, that “I can also create,” that “I can also conquer,” that “I can also show the world that I am not just useless, just like an appendix,” that “I have also something to contribute to the world, to its beauty, to its power, to its art, to its music, to its dance. I have to prove it!”

That is a very unconscious longing in every man — to prove something. And the moment a person falls in love with a woman, immediately the question becomes of predominant importance. He starts proving himself by earning more money, by becoming a president or prime minister, by conquering the world. But whatsoever he does still remains incomplete — he cannot compete with the woman. She remains so round, so centered and grounded, that the man can go on to the very end of the world, but still he will not be grounded. He will go to Everest, he will go to the moon, he will become a world conqueror, he will discover great truths of science, he will fight wars, he will explore the unknown, but wherever he is he will find that something is missing. That missing link is biological.

Woman has a balanced biology; her chemistry is equally balanced. Man has a biology which is a little unbalanced: one part is heavier and the other part is a little lighter, and that creates an inner tension in him. That’s why more men go mad than women, more men commit suicide than women, more men commit murder than women. And if you look at the world you will see it is dominated by man for the simple reason that the woman is not interested in dominating; there is no need — she feels a certain kind of fulfillment in her innermost core. Man is always rushing, going somewhere, always on the go. All men are American, tourists! They cannot be here now.

And it starts even in the womb. An experienced mother who has given birth to one or two children knows perfectly well after a few months whether inside the womb there is a boy or a girl. The boy starts kicking, he starts becoming an Alexander the Great! The girl remains quiet, at ease, meditative; she does not create much disturbance. It is because of this that woman was easily dominated by man. It is not because of the superiority of man, it is not because of his power, that he was able to dominate the woman, it is just the opposite. The woman is superior in many ways, and because man suffers from inferiority he had to dominate the woman; only then could he get rid of a little bit of his inferiority.

Man has dominated the whole of history, he has in every possible way tried to enslave the woman. But he has not been successful: on the surface it may look as if he has succeeded, but each husband knows perfectly well that the moment he enters the home he is no longer the lion that he pretends to be on the outside. He suddenly becomes a dog, a poor dog, with its tail between its legs! When he goes out of the home he goes like thunder, when he comes home all the gas is lost! Somehow he enters afraid, trembling, and starts reading the same newspaper he has been reading the whole day just to avoid the woman. That newspaper is just a curtain. Even a small woman is enough to bring any Mohammed Ali the Great to his senses…The woman has a psychological grip.

Prasad, you ask me:

I HAVE HEARD THAT BEHIND EACH SO-CALLED GREAT MAN — LIKE JULIUS CAESAR OR NAPOLEON, OR EVEN A REALLY GREAT MAN LIKE SOCRATES — THERE WAS A WOMAN IN CHARGE.

It is true. About the so-called great men it is true because they were trying to be great just to compete with their wives, and about the really great men like Socrates it is also true.

A young man asked Socrates, “I am thinking to get married. What is your advice?”

He had heard all the stories about Socrates and his wife, Xanthippe. She must have been a really dangerous woman, an Amazon! She used to beat Socrates. Once she poured hot water, boiling hot water on him; she was boiling it for tea but became angry and poured it on Socrates’ face.

Socrates was an ugly man, very ugly — snub-nosed, nothing worth looking at, disgusting. Xanthippe made him more disgusting! Half of his face remained burned his whole life.

So this young man had come to the right person to ask: “You have experienced what it is to be a husband more than anybody else, and the whole of Athens is full of stories about your wife and you, and you are the wisest man, declared so by the Oracle of Delphi, so I have come to ask you — I am in a dilemma — should I get married or not?”

Socrates said, “You should get married.”

The young man could not believe it — he had not expected this answer. He said, “You are saying it after your whole experience of having Xanthippe as your wife?”

He said, “Yes. If you get a good wife she will make you succeed in life, she will put ambition in you. And you are young; you will need some ambition. If you get a wife like mine then you will become a philosopher. My wife has helped me immensely to learn the art of remaining unaffected. Whatsoever happens — success or failure, misery or happiness — it is all the same to me. She has made me centered. Either way you will not lose, so get married.”

There is a possibility — every possibility, in fact — that the whole credit for Buddha becoming enlightened goes to Yashodhara, his wife. The whole credit for Mohammed becoming the prophet of God MUST go to his nine wives. There is every possibility that these people were trying somehow not to be disturbed, not to be distracted, and they started searching for a beyond, they started searching for a within, the beyond within, so that they could forget the whole world. The wife, the woman is really the closest world around you: she surrounds you everywhere, from every nook and corner. So your so-called great men are indebted to women, and your many really great men are also indebted to women, although they have not accepted it. That is ugly.

Many times I am asked why women don’t become enlightened. The reason is, no man is capable of driving them to that extreme! It has nothing to do with women, it is just the impotence of the man — he cannot drive them to that point. Moreover, women are always grounded, centered, man is not grounded, not centered. He remains airy-fairy and he needs grounding, he needs centering…

I HAVE ALWAYS MANAGED TO TURN FROM BEING AN ADMIRER OF WOMEN INTO A WOMAN’S FOOL.

If you are an admirer of women you will inevitably turn into a woman’s fool, because admiration is illusory; admiration is possible only from a distance. The closer you come the more foolish you will look, and when you are caught by the woman you are bound to be turned into a damned fool. And you were trying in every possible way to be caught, so you cannot easily get out of it either. A mousetrap never runs after a mouse; the mousetrap simply sits centered, grounded. The mouse in his airy-fairy romanticism starts dreaming about the coziness inside the mousetrap, the smell of the food inside, the spaghetti and all that, and gets caught. It is easy to get caught, it is very difficult to be out again, because the mousetrap has only an entrance and no exit. So, Prasad, it is going to happen again and again!

I don’t admire any woman: I am not a romantic, I am very factual. Whatsoever I say about men or women is simply a fact — no fiction about it! And once you are caught you will be constantly in difficulty because there are other mousetraps all around which look cozier, warmer, more beautiful, more spicy. You ask me, Prasad: WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?

In my life there is no secret — or you can call it the open secret. I have nothing hidden: I don’t live like a fist, I live like an open hand. Nothing is hidden, nothing is esoteric, nothing is secret; all is simple and plain. You say: YOU HAVE PUT MORE WOMEN IN CHARGE THAN IS REALLY POSSIBLE, AND YET YOU HAVE REMAINED,FREE AND LOVED BY THEM ALL.

The open secret is that you can be free only if you have put too many women around you. Then they are so concerned with each other that they leave you absolutely alone; in fact they forget all about you! Their jealousies, their envies are enough to keep them occupied. If one wants to be really free of women, that’s the only way. This is my open secret! And they all love me for the simple reason that I am not possessed by anybody, nor do I possess anybody. If you possess some woman then there will be trouble, if you are possessed by some woman then there will be trouble. I don’t possess anybody, I am not possessed by anybody. I go on sitting doing my own business — which is nothing — and I keep the women going round and round. And they have so many problems, they can afford to forget all about me!

And you say: YOU HAVE PUT MORE WOMEN IN CHARGE THAN IS REALLY POSSIBLE…

No, you don’t know the limit. Even the sky is not the limit!

When the new commune happens you will see: I will put so many women in charge that even if I die it will take you years to discover that the man is no longer there! They will make so much fuss and dance and love and all kinds of foolish things that you will not even come to know whether I am still here or gone.

And I have put them in charge because they are more pragmatic than men, they have a greater capacity to cope with reality, they are earth-bound. Man leans more towards the sky and the woman is rooted in the earth. It is a very pragmatic arrangement…

I want my commune to be very earth-bound, because this is my experience, the observation of many lives: that the tree has first to go deep into the earth; the deeper the roots go, the higher the branches rise. If you want to touch the stars with your flowers then you have to go to the very rock-bottom of the earth.

All the religions of the world have remained a little foggy, confused, for the simple reason that they were all trying to reach the stars, the beyond, to the far away, without ever thinking about the roots. Buddha was against women, he was not willing to initiate women. He said that his religion would have lasted five thousand years, but because finally he agreed to initiate women his religion would disappear within five hundred years. My own observation is just the opposite: without women it would not have lasted even five hundred years, because the moment Buddha died all the men started quarrelling — ideological wars. Thirty-two sects were immediately born, the same day! Even Buddha’s body was not yet totally burnt and thirty-two philosophical schools, thirty-two interpretations arose. The war had started.

When Jesus was crucified, all those twelve fools disappeared. Three women were there to take his body from the cross but not a single man. Mary Magdalene was there, the prostitute, her sister was there, Martha, and Jesus’ mother Mary was there. And all those apostles, those fanatics, where had they gone? They were preparing for the Vatican, they were preparing for the future. Jesus was finished! Now the question was of theology, the philosophy, the ideology. But those three women were not concerned with theology or philosophy, they were concerned with his body. They were more pragmatic, they were more true, honest, sincere. They loved the man, they risked for the man, they were ready to be condemned. All those men had disappeared. One of the most educated of Jesus’ disciples was Judas; he betrayed him for only thirty silver coins. No woman could have done that. And he was the most intellectual amongst all of Jesus’ disciples. But intellectuals can betray very easily: they are the most renegade people in the world because their hearts are not in it, only their head — and the head is cunning, the head is calculating.

The woman lives through the heart. Hence, my commune is functioning in a totally new way: it has to be rooted first. That’s the way of all gardeners: first you have to give soil, manure, roots to the plant, and then flowers come of their own accord. Flowers will come, but they cannot come without roots. Roots and flowers are like two wings: if you have both wings then the whole sky is yours. But the most important thing, the first, the basic, the fundamental, is the root. The woman is the root of all life; man can at the most be a branch, a flowering branch, a beautiful branch — a longing, an aspiration to touch the stars. They have to go together.

That’s why, Prasad, I have put so many women here, and slowly slowly they will take over the whole soil and leave you free, leave men free to grow into flowers.

A real commune will have men and women in a deep synchronicity. All the past communes had to die because they depended only on men; they never took any care of the women. And no woman has ever been able to create a commune because she does not aspire to the stars. A commune means an aspiration, a longing, a tremendous longing to grow, an immense urge to explore. No woman can find reasons to put down the foundation stone for a commune. Man is always interested in the far away, so he becomes the original source of communes, but no man is capable of giving roots. And this has been the problem in the past: the woman can provide roots but she is not interested in flowers, and the man can provide flowers but he is not interested in roots. A deep synchronicity is needed, a deep harmony. That’s what I am trying to fulfill here.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: The Goose is Out

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Perfectly imperfect

5 March 1981 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘woman and feminine qualities such as love, compassion, creativity, grace, acceptance and many more’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Beyond Enlightenment
2. The Book of Wisdom
3. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7
4. From Death to Deathlessness
5. From the False to the Truth
6. The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here
7. The Invitation
8. The Path of the Mystic
9. Sat Chit Anand
10. The Tantra Vision, Vol 1, 2
11. YAA-HOO! The Mystic Rose
12. I Am the Gate
13. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra