
What I am teaching here is really to turn the whole world feminine
excerpt
series:
The Book of Wisdom
Volume 1 / Chapter 7
Feb 17, 1979 Buddha Hall

388



The fifth question:
Bhagwan (Osho), I simply cannot understand your generalizations about male and female type.
Sometimes you acknowledge male and female principles regardless of gender. But most of the time you talk of woman being the "primitive" one, finding the "wolf" in the man.
What of the woman who finds herself naturally the initiator or sees the cat, not the wolf, in her man?
Some men are really longing to be passive. Some women may need to assert themselves to grow.
How can it be simply a matter of women's lib making women "sophisticated" and over-rational?
My statement that women are more primitive than men is not to condemn them, it is to condemn men. By “primitive” I mean more natural, more in tune with existence.
Civilization is a falsification, civilization is going astray from nature. The more man becomes civilized the less happy he is, the less true, authentic. The more man becomes civilized, the more he is hung up in the head; he loses contact with his heart.
The heart is still primitive. And it is good that the universities have not yet found a way to teach the heart and make it civilized. That is the only hope for humanity to survive. The woman is the only hope for humanity to survive. Up to now, man has been dominant, and man has been dominant for a very strange reason. The reason is that deep down man feels inferior. Out of inferiority, just to compensate for it, he started dominating the woman. Only in one sense is he stronger than the woman, and that is in muscular strength. In every other way the woman is far stronger than the man. The woman lives longer than the man, five to seven years longer. The woman suffers less through diseases, illnesses, than the man.
One hundred and ten boys are born to every hundred girls. But by the time they reach sexual maturity the number is equaled – ten boys have disappeared down the drain. The woman has more resistance to illnesses and diseases of all kinds. More men go mad, the number is almost double. And more men commit suicide; again the number is double.
In every possible way except the muscular, the woman is far superior. But to have muscular strength is not really something very superior; it is animalistic. In that sense a wolf is far superior, a tiger even more, a lion still more.
Man must have become aware of his inferiority millions of years ago. And this is one of the psychological mechanisms: whenever you become aware of a certain inferiority, you have to compensate for it. The ugly person tries to look beautiful, pretends to be beautiful in every possible way. He will try with clothes, with cosmetics, he will go to beauticians, to plastic surgeons. It is over-compensation; somehow he knows that he is not beautiful and he has to be beautiful. The inferior person tries to be superior. And because of muscular strength, the man could prove to be the master, and he has dominated the woman down the ages.
But the time has come now for a great change. The future belongs to women, not to men, because what man has done, down these ages, has been so ugly. Wars and wars and wars – that is his whole history. All the great that man has created is… Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong – people like these.
Yes, there have been a few men like Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Krishna – but have you noted one point? They all look feminine. In fact that was one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s criticisms of Buddha and Jesus Christ, that they look feminine, that they are womanish. Buddha certainly looks feminine. Whenever a man moves into the heart, something in him goes feminine. He becomes more round, more soft, more vulnerable.
Friedrich Nietzsche could not understand Gautama Buddha – because Nietzsche said that the most beautiful thing that ever happened to him, the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen, was not the stars, not the sunset or sunrise, not beautiful women, not roses and lotuses. No, nothing like that. You cannot imagine what was the most beautiful thing he had come across. He said that soldiers parading with naked swords, shining in the sunlight – that was his most beautiful experience, and the sound of their boots was the most musical thing he had ever come across – not Mozart, not Wagner, no, but the sound of those boots! And the regiment moving with naked swords shining in the sun, the most beautiful thing!
Of course he could not understand Buddha. It is Friedrich Nietzsche who has been the father of this century, and this century is one of the ugliest. He is the father of two world wars, and he may be waiting for the third, waiting to give birth to the third. He says war is the most beautiful thing in the world, because it brings that which is greatest in man to the surface.
He himself went mad, which seems very logical; such a man must go mad. And when he became mad he started signing his letters as “Anti-Christ Friedrich Nietzsche.” Even in his madness he could not forget one thing, that he was anti-Christ. Everything else was forgotten: he could not recognize his friends, he could not even recognize his own sister who had looked after him his whole life, but he could not forget one thing, that he was anti-Christ.
Yes, there have been a few buddhas. But if you look closely at them you will find they are more feminine than masculine. All the great artists of the world slowly, slowly start growing a quality of feminineness: grace, elegance, exquisiteness. A certain flavor of softness, relaxedness, calmness and quietness surrounds them. They are no longer feverish.
What I am teaching here is really to turn the whole world feminine. But you must be coming from that ugly movement called Women’s Lib. Not only is woman to be liberated, man also has to be liberated. The woman has to be liberated from her past, and the man has to be liberated from his past. We need liberation, we need a liberated human being. And remember, when I use the word man the woman is included. But women have become very touchy about it.
Once I was talking in a very sophisticated club of women in Calcutta. In some reference I made the statement “All men are brothers.” And some woman who must have been like you stood up, very angry, furious. And she said, “Why do you go on making statements only about men? All men are brothers – and what about women? Why don’t you say all women are sisters and sisterhood is strong?” I said to the woman, “Lady, I am sorry. I will make a compromise: I will say all men are sisters. What else can I do? If I say all women are sisters, some man may get angry at me.”
Don’t be foolish. When I am talking, try to be a little more sympathetic. You will not find any more sympathetic person than me, I make no distinctions between men and women; both have suffered. In fact suffering always comes like that, it is a double-edged sword. If you make somebody suffer, you have to suffer. If you make somebody a slave, you have to become a slave too; it is mutual.
The day women are liberated will be a great day of liberation for men too. But don’t make the whole thing ugly. Otherwise there is every possibility – I fear that the possibility is there, and it is a great possibility that in fighting with men, women may lose something which is valuable. Something which has not yet been crushed and destroyed by men may be destroyed by women themselves in fighting with men. If you fight ferociously you will lose the beauty of femininity; you yourself will become as ugly as men.
It has not to be decided by fighting, it has to be decided by understanding. Spread more and more understanding. Drop these ideas of being men and women! We are all human beings. To be a man or a woman is just a very superficial thing. Don’t make much fuss about it, it is not anything very important; don’t make it a big deal.
And whatsoever I say sometimes may look like generalizations, because each time I cannot put in all the conditions; otherwise my talking to you would become very much burdened with footnotes. And I hate books with footnotes! I simply don’t read them. The moment I see footnotes I throw the book away – it has been written by some pundit, some scholar, some foolish person.
You say, [“I simply cannot understand your generalizations about male and female type…”]
- I am always talking about types; the gender is not included. Whenever I say man I mean the man-type, and whenever I say woman I mean the woman-type. But I cannot each time say man-type, woman-type. And you are right that there are women who are not women, who are wolves; and there are men who are not wolves, who are cats. But then whatsoever I say about the man-type will be applicable to women who are wolves, and whatsoever I say about women will be applicable to men who are cats.
I am not talking about the biological distinction between man and woman, I am talking about the psychological one. Yes, there are men who are far more feminine than any woman, and there are women who are far more masculine than any man. But this is not a beautiful state; this is ugly, because this is creating a duality in you. If you have the body of a man and the mind of a woman, there will be a conflict, a social struggle in you, a civil war in you. You will be continuously in a tug of war, fighting, tense. If you are a woman physiologically, and you have the mind of a man, your life will dissipate much energy in unnecessary conflict. It is far better to be in tune. If a man in the body, then a man in the mind; if a woman in the body, then a woman in the mind.
And the Women’s Lib movement is creating unnecessary trouble. It is turning women into wolves, it is teaching them how to fight. Man is the enemy; how can you love the enemy? How can you be in an intimate relationship with the enemy?
The man is not the enemy. The woman, to be really a woman, has to be more and more feminine, has to touch the heights of softness and vulnerability. And the man, to be really a man, has to move into his masculinity as deeply as possible. When a real man comes in contact with a real woman, they are polar opposites, extremes. But only extremes can fall in love, and only extremes can enjoy intimacy. Only extremes attract each other.
What is happening now is a kind of unisex: men becoming more and more feminine, women becoming more and more masculine. Sooner or later, all distinctions will be lost. It will be a very colorless society, it will be boring.
I would like the woman to become as feminine as possible, only then can she flower; and the man to be as masculine as possible, only then can he flower. When they are polar opposites, a great attraction, a great magnetism, arises between them. And when they come close, when they meet in intimacy, they bring two different worlds, two different dimensions, two different richnesses, and the meeting is a tremendous blessing, a benediction.
Enough for today.
The Book of Wisdom
Volume 1 / Chapter 7