There are two approaches towards reality: one is logical. Of that approach, Aristotle is the father in the West. It simply moves in a line, a clear-cut line. It never allows the opposite; the opposite has to be discarded. This approach says A is A and never not A. A cannot be not A. This is the formulation of Aristotelian logic — and it looks perfectly right, because we have all been brought up with that logic in the schools, colleges, universities. The world is dominated by Aristotle: A is A and never not A.

 

The second approach towards reality is dialectical. In the West that approach is associated with the names of Heraclitus, Hegel. The dialectical process says: life moves through polarities, through opposites — just as a river flows through two banks which oppose each other, but those opposing banks keep the river flowing between them. This is more existential.

 

Electricity has two poles, positive and negative. If Aristotle’s logic is of existence, then electricity is very, very illogical. Then God himself is illogical, because he produces new life out of the meeting of a man and a woman, which are opposites — yin and yang, male and female. If God had been brought up by Aristotle in an Aristotelian logic, in the linear logic, then homosexuality would have been the norm and heterosexuality would have been perversion. Then man would love man and woman would love woman. Then opposites could not meet.

 

But God 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 God — 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.

 

Otherwise life would be a monotony, not a symphony. Life would be a boredom. If there were only one note continuously being repeated, it would be bound to create boredom. There are opposite notes: thesis meeting with the antithesis, creating a synthesis; and in its own turn, synthesis again becomes a thesis, creates an antithesis, and a higher synthesis evolves. That’s how life moves.

 

Thus Buddha’s approach is dialectical, and it is more existential, more true, more valid. A man loves a woman, a woman loves a man — then something else has to be understood too. Now biologists say, and psychologists agree, that man is not only man, he is woman too. And woman is not simply woman, she is man too. So when a man and a woman meet, there are not two persons meeting but four persons meeting. The man is meeting with the woman, but the man has a hidden woman in himself; so has the woman a hidden man in herself; they are also meeting. The meeting is on double planes. It is more intricate, more complex, more intertwined. A man is man and woman, both. Why? — because he comes out of both.

 

Something has been contributed to you by your father and something has been contributed to you by your mother, whosoever you are. A man flows in your blood and a woman too. You have to be both because you are the meeting of the polar opposites. You are a synthesis! It is impossible to deny one and just be the other. That’s what has been done.

 

Aristotle has been followed literally, in every way, and that has created many problems for man — and such problems which seem to be unsolvable if Aristotle is to be followed. A man has been taught to be just a man: never to show any feminine traits, never to show any softness of the heart, never to show any receptivity, always be aggressive. Man has been taught never to cry, never weep — because tears are feminine. Women have been taught never to be in any way like the male: never to show aggression, never show expression, to always remain passive, receptive. This is against reality, and this has crippled both.

 

In a better world, with better understanding, a man will be both, a woman will be both — because sometimes a man needs to be a woman. There are moments when he needs to be soft — tender moments, love-moments. And there are moments when a woman needs to be expressive and aggressive — in anger, in defense, in rebellion. If a woman is simply passive, then she will turn into a slave automatically. A passive woman is bound to become a slave — that’s what happened down the ages. And an aggressive man, emphatically aggressive and never tender, is bound to create wars, neurosis in the world, violence.

 

Man has been fighting, continuously fighting; it seems that man exists on the earth just to fight. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars! War continues somewhere or other, the earth is never whole and healthy… never a moment without war. Either it is in Korea, or it is in Vietnam, or it is in Israel, or India, Pakistan, or in Bangladesh; somewhere the massacre has to continue. Man has to kill. To remain man, he has to kill.

 

Seventy-five percent of energy is put into war effort, into creating more bombs, hydrogen bombs, neutron bombs, and so on and so forth. It seems that man’s whole purpose here on earth is war. The war heroes are respected the most. The war politicians become the great names in history: Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong — these names are going to remain. Why? — because they fought great wars, they destroyed. Whether in aggression or in defense — that is not the point — but these were the warmongers. And nobody ever knows who was aggressive — whether Germany was aggressive or not, it all depends on who writes the history. Whosoever wins will write the history, and he will prove the other was the aggressor.

 

History would be totally different if Adolf Hitler had been victorious. Yes, the Nuremburg trials would have been there, but the Americans and English and French generals and politicians would have been on trial. And history would have been written by Germans; naturally they would have a different vision.

 

Nobody knows what is true. 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 on 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. The existence is dialectical; and opposites are not only opposites, they are complementaries too.

 

- Osho, “The Heart Sutra, #3”