on Male Ego - man insensitivity towards Woman
Question 4:
Beloved Osho,
A woman friend of mine often uses the words "male ego" about Me, which I feel is not true about me.
From the very beginning i have been open and vulnerable to Feminine energy, which is teaching me to become a disciple every Day. Moreover, I have felt that when she used this word there Was some kind of hatred towards men.
Osho, can you explain what the "male ego" is, and what it means When a woman uses this expression about a man?
The ego is simply the ego, it is neither male nor female.
But man has been very inhuman towards women for centuries, continuously. And the strange thing is that the man has been so cruel and inhuman towards women because he feels a deep inferiority complex in comparison to them.
The greatest problem has been that the woman is capable of becoming a mother; she is capable of giving birth to life, and man is not. That was the beginning of the feeling of inferiority -- that nature depends on woman, not on man.
Moreover, he has found that she is in many ways stronger than him.
Women are more patient, more tolerant than men. Men are very impatient and very intolerant. Women are less violent than men. Women don't commit murders; it is the man who commits murders, who wages crusades, who is always getting ready for war, who invents all kinds of deadly weapons -- atomic bombs, nuclear weapons.
The woman is completely out of this whole game of death. Hence it was no coincidence that man started feeling somehow inferior.
And nobody wants to be inferior; the only way was to force the woman in artificial ways to become inferior. For example, not to allow her education, not to allow her economic freedom, not to allow her to move out of the house, but confine her to an imprisonment.
It seems almost unbelievable what man has done to woman just to get rid of his inferiority. He has made the woman artificially inferior.
In China, for five thousand years it was thought that women had no soul. Of course all the writers were men; they proposed the idea that a woman is only a machine, a reproductive machine. And the idea gained so much influence that it even entered the justice system of China.
If a man murdered his wife, he was not a criminal -- because he had simply broken a chair, a table... at the most a television. But it was his property, and he had the right to destroy it.
So in China, thousands of women were killed by their husbands. But the husbands could not be punished by the government or the courts, because the basic principle that the woman had a soul was denied.
In India for ten thousand years the woman was told that even to dream of some other man is a sin. The same was not said to the man. The woman had to live a very virtuous life while for the man there was freedom. Man created prostitutes for his freedom.
And this possessiveness in India took on almost insane proportions. When a man died, his wife had to die with him. She had to jump alive onto the funeral pyre -- and for ten thousand years that continued. If some woman was afraid -- anybody would be afraid to jump alive into a funeral pyre -- then she was condemned as immoral. The husband's wish was that she should die with him because he could not trust her -- when he is gone, she may start having some love affair with somebody else, and this cannot be tolerated.
But the strange thing is that the same rule was not applicable to men, that when the wife dies the husband should jump into the funeral pyre. No, man was a higher quality of being.
The way they used to do it brings tears... because to burn a woman alive is not an easy task. First they would make the funeral pyre, put the dead body of the husband on it, force the woman to lie down next to the dead body. Then they would put more wood on top of both of them and pour refined butter all over the funeral pyre, so that the fire would get going fast, strong -- and not only fast and strong, but it would create so much smoke that nobody could see what was happening there, because sometimes the woman would try to jump out of the funeral pyre.
There were priests standing around the funeral pyre with burning torches in their hands. If the woman tried to jump out, they would force her, with the burning torches, back into the funeral pyre. Hence so much smoke was needed, so nobody could see what the priest was doing.
The woman was bound to cry and scream. Her screams should not be heard, so there was an arrangement: behind the priests, there was another row of thousands of people playing music, dancing, singing, shouting as loudly as possible just to drown out the screams of the woman coming from the funeral pyre. And they were celebrating, because one woman had proved her love, her trust by committing suicide.
She was forced; she did not come to do it willingly, she was brought there.
And the same situation has happened all over the world. In different ways, they have been cutting woman's wings, her abilities, her talents, her genius.
It is not only a question for you. When your woman is telling you that you have a male ego, she is simply representing all women, and you are nothing but a representative of all men. Your forefathers have done so much harm that there is no way to come to a balance.
So when your woman says that this is male ego, try to understand -- perhaps she is right. Most probably she is right -- because the male has accepted himself as superior for so long that he does not feel that it is his ego. It is the woman who feels it.
Don't deny her feeling. Be grateful to her, and ask her where she feels the ego so that you can drop it. Take her help.
You are simply denying it; you don't feel that you have any male ego. But it is simply a traditional heritage.
Every small boy has a male ego -- just a small boy, if he starts crying you immediately say, "Why are you crying like a girl? A girl is allowed to cry because she is subhuman. You are going to be a big male chauvinist; you are not supposed to cry or weep." And small boys start stopping their tears. It is very rare to find men who are as ready to cry and allow tears to flow as women are.
Remember, you both have the same size tear glands in your eyes, so nature does not make any difference. Listen to the woman. You have suppressed the woman and oppressed the woman so much, it is time that she should be listened to and things should be corrected. At least in your personal life do as much as you can to allow the woman as much freedom as possible -- the same freedom that you allow yourself. Help her to stand up so that she can blossom again.
We will have a more beautiful world if all women -- and women are half of the world -- are allowed to grow their talents, their genius. It is not a question at all... nobody is higher, nobody is lower. Women are women, men are men; they have differences, but differences don't make anybody higher or lower. Their differences create their attraction.
Just think of a world where there are only men. It will be so ugly, everywhere Morarji Desai... Morarji Desai... all drinking their urine, nothing else to do.
Life is rich because there are differences, different attitudes, different opinions. Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior. People are simply different.
Accept this, and help your woman to be free from ten thousand years of repression. Be a friend to her. Much harm has been done; she has been wounded so much that if you can do some healing with your love, you will be contributing to the whole world, to the whole world consciousness.
Don't feel bad if your woman says "this is male ego." It is there in a subtle form, unrecognizeable because it has been there for so long; you have forgotten that this is ego. Take her help so that you can recognize it and destroy it.
-Osho, "Beyond Enlightenment, #17, Q4"