Osho on Birth of a Mother
Women can wait, and they can wait infinitely, their patience is infinite. It has to be so, because a child has to be carried for nine months. Every day it becomes heavier and heavier and heavier, and more and more difficult. You have to be patient and wait, and nothing can be done about it. You have to love even your burden, and wait and dream that the child will be born. And look at a mother, a woman who is just about to be a mother: she becomes more beautiful, because when she waits she flowers. She attains a different type of grace, an aura surrounds her when she is going to become a mother, because now she is at her peak -- the basic function her body has been devised by nature to fulfill. Now she is blooming, soon she will flower.
And look at her dreams: no mother, or a woman about to be a mother, can think that an ordinary boy or girl is going to be born -- the unique child is always in her dreams. A few dreams have been recorded: Buddha's mother dreamed, Mahavira's mother dreamed, and in India they have a tradition of recording the dreams of the mother whenever an enlightened person is born. But I always suspect that this is how every mother dreams. You may not record her dreams, that's another thing, because they are not needed -- but every mother dreams she is going to give birth to a god. Otherwise is not possible. Buddha's mother's dream has been recorded, that's the only difference; your mother's has not been recorded. Otherwise you will come to know that she was also dreaming of a Buddha, a Jesus, something unique.... Because it is not a question of giving birth, she is going to be born through it.
Whenever a child is born, not only is the child born -- that is one part of it -- the mother is also born. Before that she was an ordinary woman; through the birth she becomes a mother. On one side the child is born, on the other side the mother is born. And a mother is totally different from a woman: a gap exists, her whole existence becomes qualitatively different. Before that she may have been a wife, a beloved, but suddenly that is no longer so important. A child is born, a new life has entered: she becomes a mother.
That's why husbands are always afraid of children. Basically they never like children because a third party enters into the relationship -- not only enters, but the third party becomes the center. And after that the woman is never the same wife, she is different. After that, if a husband really wants love he has to become just like a son, because this woman who has become a mother can never be an ordinary wife again. She has become a mother, you cannot do anything about it now. The only thing left is that you become a son to her. That is the only way you can get her love again, otherwise the love will be moving towards her son.
A mother has attained to the peak. It is as if the husband, the lover, was just a means to become a mother. Look at the difference: a woman is seeking to become a mother, waiting to become a mother; the husband, the lover, is just a means. For a husband children are not the goal; the man is seeking a woman to love, a beloved, and if children happen they are simply accidents. He has to tolerate them; they are by the side of the road, they are not the goal where the road ends.
-Osho, "The Mustard Seed: My Most Loved Gospel on Jesus, #18"
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[A sannyasin about his responsibilities as a father as he would be separating from his wife. His wife and he had arranged that the three boys would live with him, while the girl would live with her mother.]
Much will have to be done, because when the mother is not there, your responsibilities become greater, bigger. You will have to be both father and mother. But in a way it can be a great challenge and a growth for you.
When you are just a father, your innermost core is not involved in it... just the periphery. The father is a peripheral thing. It is institutional; it is not natural. Fathers exist only in human societies -- society has created it. It has no natural instinct; it is just a conditioning. So when you are a father, nothing much is involved in it. When a woman becomes a mother, something tremendously meaningful has happened to her. But nothing much happens to a man who becomes a father.
For a woman it is almost a new birth. Not only the child is born; the mother is also born. The mother gives birth to the child, the child gives birth to the mother. Just before it, the woman was just a woman. Now she is a mother. It is something which is very difficult for a man to understand unless you are creative.
If you have given birth to a painting or poetry or something, then just a little glimpse can happen to you. When a poet has given birth to a poem, he feels tremendously happy. Nobody else can understand what has happened just by composing a poem. But it is not just a poem. Much was in turmoil within him, and the poem has settled many things.
The poem is only the outermost expression of something. Some deep harmony has happened in him. The poem is just an indication that something has fallen in line within his being. The poem brings news to the world that a man has become a poet. It is just a very small fragment of the fragrance that has happened inside the poet. He is no more the same person. He is no ordinary mortal human being. He has competed with the gods. He has given birth to something . . . he has created.
But it is nothing compared to a woman when she becomes a mother -- nothing. A poem is a poem. The moment it is born it is already dead. When it is inside the poet it has life. The moment it is expressed it is a dead piece of furniture. You can hang it on the wall. You can throw it on the rubbish heap, or whatsoever you want, but it is no more alive.
When a woman gives birth to a child, it is life. When she looks into the eyes of the child, she looks into her own being. When the child starts growing, she grows with the child.
So up to now you have been just a father. It was a duty, but nothing much was involved. Now you will be both. You will have to be both -- mother also. And if you can be a mother to your children, then don't be bothered about responsibilities -- they will be fulfilled. Just start thinking in terms of being a mother. Become more feminine, more receptive.... You will have to become less and less a father, and more and more a mother. This is going to be a great challenge and a great transformation for you.
If you can use the opportunity, you can almost achieve to a great satori through it, a great samadhi. Through it your inside will come to a reconciliation. The reconciliation will be within you -- the man and the woman within you, the yin and the yang within you will come to a meeting, a crystallisation. And by and by you will lose the notion of who you are -- man or woman -- because you will be more motherly, and yet you will be a father. This can become a very alchemical situation.
And my whole effort is always to give you an insight, in whatsoever situation you are in, that can become a point of growth. So just try to look at your children as if you are a mother. If you cannot do it for twenty-four hours, then at least for a few hours. And then catch hold of the man. Because it is totally different.
When you are a father you would like to dominate the children. You would like to make them like you. You will become dictatorial. When you are a mother you would like to give them freedom to be themselves. You will not impose yourself upon them. You will be a help in need, but your deepest desire and your prayer will be that they should become themselves. You will not be ambitious through them -- a father is always. a mother, never.
She loves the child just for the being he or she is. There is no expectation. She is not going to fulfill any ambition through the child. In fact women are not ambitious at all. That is male aggression, male violence -- doing something, proving oneself.
But you can divide your time. You can have a certain programme in your mind -- that when the sun sets you will be a mother; up to sunrise. The whole day you can be a father, the whole night you be a mother. The woman is more like the night. She surrounds you... engulfs you... drowns you, and without huffing you, without even touching you. When darkness surrounds you, you cannot even touch it. It is there, but it is almost as if it is not. Its very presence is through absence.
So when you are a mother become as absent as possible. Don't try to prove anything. Just be a help -- and that too, very indirectly. Don't think in terms of responsibility. Think in terms of inner growth. Once you think in terms of responsibility, duty, you are already moving into anxiety. You are already losing a great opportunity. You have taken a wrong step.
Responsibility -- one feels burdened. Duty -- one feels one has to do it. Duty is a dirty word, a four-letter word. Love, not duty. You enjoy and you love.
And enjoy the whole situation that has happened. Then someday you may feel grateful to your wife that she left and allowed you to become a mother; otherwise it would have been impossible. And not only in this case -- in every situation in life, always try to find a way how to use it for growth, how to become more yourself through it.
A man is half and a woman is half. When both become one, the perfect man is born. And the whole is beautiful because it has grace. The whole is beautiful because it is at home. The whole is beautiful because it lacks nothing. The whole is beautiful because all the opposites have come to an inner reconciliation, a synthesis, a harmony. Then man is not a crowd but a crystallised being. Then all the noises inside have fallen into an orchestra.
And once you know how, you can slip from man into woman, because the inner soul is neither -- or both.
So drop the word duty, and forget all about responsibility. Love is enough.
And meditate deeply -- that will make you strong enough to face this situation and to grow out of it, mm?
-Osho, "Get Out of Your Own Way, #3"