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.

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. The inferiority complex works in this way: it pretends to be superior –to deceive oneself and to deceive the whole world. So man down the ages has been destroying the woman’s genius, talents, capacities, so that he can prove himself superior –to himself and to the world.

Because the woman gives birth, she remains for nine months or more absolutely vulnerable, dependent on a man. Men have exploited this in a very ugly way. And that is a physiological difference; it makes no difference at all. The psychology of the woman is corrupted by the man telling her things which are not true, making her a slave to man, reducing her to a secondary citizen of the world. And the reason for that was that he is muscularly more powerful. But the muscular power is part of animality. If that is going to decide the superiority, then any animal is more muscular than a man.

But the real differences are certainly there, and we have to search for them behind the pile of invented differences. One difference I see is that

a woman is more capable of love than a man is. A man’s love is more or less a physical necessity; a woman’s love is not. It is something greater and higher; it is a spiritual experience. That’s why the woman is monogamous and man is polygamous. The man would like to have all the world’s women and still he would not be satisfied. His discontent is infinite. The woman can be satisfied with one love, utterly fulfilled, because she does not look at the body of the man, she looks at the innermost qualities. She does not fall in love with a man who has a beautiful muscular body, she falls in love with a man who has a charisma –something indefinable but immensely attractive –who has a mystery to be explored. She wants her man not to be just a man, but an adventure in discovering consciousness…

The female is more serene, more silent, more patient, is capable of waiting. Perhaps because of these qualities she has more resistance to diseases and she lives longer than a man. Because of her serenity, her delicateness, she can fulfill a man’s life immensely. She can surround man’s life in a very soothing, cozy atmosphere. But the man is afraid –he does not want to be surrounded by the woman, he does not want to let her create a cozy warmth around him. He is afraid because that way he will become dependent.

So for centuries he has been keeping her at a distance. And he is afraid because he knows deep down that the woman is more than he is. She can give birth to life. Nature has chosen her to reproduce, not man. Man’s function in reproduction is almost nil. This inferiority has created the greatest problem –man started cutting the woman’s wings. He started in every way reducing her, condemning her, so that he could at least believe that he is superior. He has treated women as cattle — even worse…

Man and woman are two strings of one harp, but both are in suffering separate from each other. And because they are suffering and do not know the reason, they start taking revenge on each other.

The woman can be of immense help in creating an organic society. She is different from man, but not unequal. She is as equal to a man as any other man. She has talents of her own which are absolutely needed.

It is not enough to earn money, it is not enough to become a success in the world; more necessary is a beautiful home, and the woman has the capacity to change any house into a home. She can fill it with love; she has that sensitivity. She can rejuvenate man, help him relax.

 In the Upanishads there is a very strange blessing for new couples. A new couple comes to the seer of the Upanishads and he gives his blessing. He says to the girl specifically, “I hope you will become a mother of ten children, and finally, your husband will be your eleventh child. And unless you become a mother to your husband, you have not succeeded in being a true wife.” It is very strange but has immense psychological insight in it, because this is what the modern psychology finds, that every man is looking in the woman for his mother, and every woman is looking in the man for her father. That’s why every marriage is a failure: you cannot find your mother. The woman you have married has not come to your house to be your mother, she wants to be your wife, a lover. But the Upanishadic blessing, almost five thousand or six thousand years old, gives an insight to the modern psychology. A woman, whatsoever she is, is basically a mother. A father is an invented institution, it is not natural. And soon the father may become out of date.

Once the science of genetics develops, the more scientific, more clinical, more hygienic way will be that fathers donate sperm to the hospital, and the medical experts choose the right living sperm that can be injected into the woman. Every man should not be allowed to be a father. Because of this accidental fatherhood, the earth is full of blind people, lame people, crazy people, mad people, retarded people… It cannot be left accidental. The sperm may have come from somebody else; you have to be generous in favor of the children so they will not be blind, will not suffer their lives as cripples. And moreover, you will be able to ask the medical expert for the kind of child that you want. The basic sperm shows all the qualities that will manifest later on. If you want a scientist it can be seen that this person is going to become one –or a great poet, or an engineer, or a doctor, or just a vagabond. So the accidental birth can disappear and a planned birth can take its place. It will just take a little time for stupid human minds to get accustomed to the new idea. But the mother will remain indispensable. They have tried experiments: they have given children all the facilities, medication, all the food… every perfection from different branches of science, but strangely the children go on shrinking and will die within three months. Then they discovered that the mother’s body and her warmth is an absolute necessity for life to grow. That warmth in this vast cold universe is absolutely necessary in the beginning, otherwise the child will feel abandoned. He will shrink and die.

There is no need for man to feel inferior to woman. The whole idea arises because you take man and woman as two species. 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…Man and woman are neither equal nor unequal, they are unique. And the meeting of two unique beings brings something miraculous into existence.

Source:

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

Discourse name:

The Sword and the Lotus

Chapter title: Something of the sacred
Chapter #5
24 January 1986 am in

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘woman and her qualities such as love, compassion, 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