“In the world’s oldest creation myths, the female god creates the world out of her own body. The Great Mother everywhere was the active and autonomous creatrix of the world . . . and, unlike the aloof and self-righteous patriarchal gods who only recently usurped her mountain-throne, the ancient Goddess was always there—alive, immanent—within her creation; no ontological scapegoater, she was wholly responsible for both the pain and the good of life.”
― Monica Sjöö, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth
Osho,
I heard you say that the effort to live in a man-oriented world has failed, utterly failed. And that if this continues, humanity’s future is doomed. That we have come to a cul-de-sac. You have proposed that man and woman have to merge their energies into one so that we can have a human world – neither male-oriented nor female-oriented, neither a patriarchy nor a matriarchy – simply human.
As another year passes, with so much contemporary reactivity against such an obviously progressive direction, can you say more about this?
“All the societies of the world, all the cultures, all the religions in different ways have been doing the same: reducing the woman to a secondary category of humanity not equal to man – so inferior that in China, for thousands of years, to kill your own wife was not even considered a crime….
“Almost all the religions have denied women the possibility of entering into paradise from the body of a woman. She can be virtuous. Her husband is her god. She should serve the husband with total commitment and devotion. This is the only religion as far as the woman is concerned….
“She has been enslaved. She has been reduced into producing children, taking care of them her whole life. She has not to be respected as a human being. She is just a reproductive mechanism. Man has done everything wrong that can be done, everything inhuman that can be done.”
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“Man has deprived woman of education, of financial independence. He has deprived her of social mobility because he is afraid. He knows she is superior, he knows she is beautiful, he knows that giving her independence will create danger. So down the centuries there has been no independence for women….
“Man is very egoistic. That’s why I call him male chauvinistic. Man has created this society, and in this society there is no place for the woman – and she has tremendous qualities of her own.”
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With these qualities of their own, would women create a different society?
“Man alone has been creating only wars. In three thousand years, five thousand wars. Is life just to fight? Is life just to kill, massacre, rape? Your whole history is full of murder and you call those murderers your great men. Alexander the Great… And you don’t see that small murderers are being jailed, sentenced to death, but big murderers become your heroes. It is because the woman has been completely cut off from contributing anything to life; otherwise there would not have been so many wars.
“No woman is interested in war, it is simply against the feminine nature. She is interested in love, she is interested in a beautiful house, she is interested in a beautiful garden around the house. She is interested in small things, but those small things make life worth living. She is not interested in creating atomic weapons, nuclear missiles. She cannot understand what man goes on doing. Is he insane or something?”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: The Materialist and the Spiritualist
Does that mean there are natural differences between men and women?
“Most of the differences between men and women are because of thousands of years of conditioning, they are not fundamental to nature.
“But there are a few differences which give them unique beauty, individuality. Those differences can be counted very easily.
“One is that 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 man is very weak as far as sexuality is concerned – he can have only one orgasm. The woman is infinitely superior – she can have multiple orgasms. And this has been one of the most troublesome matters. The man’s orgasm is local, confined to his genitals. The woman’s orgasm is total, not confined to the genitals. Her whole body is sexual, and she can have a beautiful orgasmic experience a thousandfold bigger, deeper, more enriching, more nourishing than a man can have.”
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“There are other differences. For example, a woman is more centered than a man; it starts happening even in the womb of the mother. An experienced mother who has given birth to two or three children can tell you after a few months of pregnancy whether the newcomer is going to be a girl or a boy, because the boy starts making a fuss, kicking in her womb, moving – he is on the way. But the girl remains absolutely silent. So that is not a question of conditioning.
“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.”
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With these differences, will men always feel inferior to women?
“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…. Differences should be maintained because they make men and women attractive to each other, but they should not be used as condemnation.“
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Seeing these differences as complementary sounds like a perfect solution
“Existence is dialectical. Everywhere, opposites are meeting. In you, birth and death are meeting. Everywhere, opposites are meeting – day and night, summer and winter. The thorn and the flower, they are meeting; they are on the same branch, they come out of the same source. Man and woman, youth and old age, beauty and ugliness, body and soul, the world and godliness – all are opposites. This is a symphony of the opposites. Opposites are not only meeting but creating a great symphony – only opposites can create a symphony….
“One thing is certain: that man puts his whole energy into war effort. The reason? – the reason is that man has been taught to be just man, his woman has been denied. So no man is whole. And so is the case with woman – no woman is whole. She has been denied her male part. When she was a small child she could not fight with boys, she could not climb the trees; she had to play with dolls, she had to ‘play house.’ This is a very, very distorted vision.
“Man is both, so is woman – and both are needed to create a real, harmonious human being. Existence is dialectical; and opposites are not only opposites, they are complementaries too.”
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Will there be a transition period as women naturally become more powerful?
“Women have not been in power for millennia. Man has always been in power, and his power has only created wars and destruction. It has not caused humanity to evolve, it has been in the service of death.
“I would like women to take power. For the time being there will be difficulties because so much is repressed in a woman that it will explode. She may move to the other extreme. It is just like a man who has been fasting for ten days and then you place delicious food before him. He is bound to eat more than is needed. He may fall sick. What fasting has not been able to do, the delicious food may be able to do – he may even die.
“There is an interim period which we will have to accept because of millions of years of repressed power. But this will subside; it will take some time but it will disappear. When the woman is certain of her power she will not be revengeful, she will not hate men. This is only for a time until the whole past is erased from the consciousness of woman.
“The woman is a better ruler for the simple reason that she has a more loving heart, is more human – she is more kind and more compassionate.”
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“If the world is run by women – and man can take his place more significantly in scientific research, in the service of life and creativity – and the governments and all other functional things are run by women, we will have a tremendous balance….
“We can make a better world together. Men and women should be really half-and-half of a whole. There are qualities which men have and women do not have; there are qualities which women have and men do not have. Both together, the human being will be richer in every possible way.”
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Are there any helpful steps you suggest women take?
“A woman can be helpful in many meaningful ways in a great revolution where the society of man comes closer to the divine. I have told you these few points in that revolution:
“A woman has to make the proclamation of her soul and her individuality.
“A woman should refuse to be just a piece of property.
“A woman has to declare that the laws which have been made by man are nullified and she has to decide what laws she should make for herself.
“A woman should declare that apart from love the whole system of life is immoral. Love is the fundamental mantra of morality. If this can happen, then the birth of a new woman can take place.”
To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Woman: Liberating Herself from Man’s Bondage
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