Osho on Feminine Qualities
- Love, trust, beauty, sincerity, truthfulness, authenticity -
Love, trust, beauty, sincerity, truthfulness, authenticity -- these are all feminine qualities, and they are far greater than any qualities that man has. But the whole past has been dominated by man and his qualities.
Naturally in war, love is of no use, truth is of no use, beauty is of no use, aesthetic sensibility is no use. In war, you need a heart which is more stony than stones. In war, you need simply hate, anger, a madness to destroy.
In three thousand years, man has fought five thousand wars. Yes, this is also strength but not worthy of human beings. This is strength derived from our animal inheritance. It belongs to the past, which is gone, and the feminine qualities belong to the future, which is coming. There is no need to feel yourself weak because of your feminine qualities. You should feel grateful to existence that what man has to earn, you have been given by nature as a gift.
Man has to learn how to love. Man has to learn how to let the heart be the master and the mind be just an obedient servant. Man has to learn these things. The woman brings these things with her, but we condemn all these qualities as weaknesses. Even if you have chosen women as great individuals, you can see what you have chosen -- you have chosen a man. Because you have chosen the qualities of man that were in the woman. For example, Joan of Arc had all the qualities of man. The Queen of Jhansi in India had all the qualities of man: she could fight with a naked sword, could kill people without any problem. Such women have been chosen in history and great tribute is paid to them by the historians. And they don't represent women. In fact, that is the reason why they have been chosen, because they are just carbon copies of men.
The women's liberation movement has to learn one fundamental thing: that is not to imitate man and not to listen what he says about feminine qualities, the feminine personality. The feminine qualities are clear.
Friedrich Nietzsche has a great insight into many areas of life, but he could not create a coherent, comprehensive system of philosophy. And the reason was not that he was not capable -- he was the most capable of all Western philosophers. The problem was, he had so much to give that it was not possible for him to make a whole system; otherwise, much would not be part of it. Hence, he chose an aphoristic style of writing. Just as you can write in a very condensed form, many things which ordinarily you would write in an essay, Friedrich Nietzsche would write in four lines or at the most in a paragraph. But that has created great misunderstanding about the poor man. Because it is too condensed -- unless you have the clarity to see into the density of his insight, into the far-reaching effects of his insights, into all the implications which are not said but are there... you will have to search for them and then you will be surprised.
Nietzsche is going to come back. Now is the time that he should be understood perfectly well. Adolf Hitler misunderstood him. His followers misunderstood him, his enemies misunderstood him. But to be misunderstood is a seal from human beings, that you had something really important. Otherwise, who cares to understand or misunderstand?
Nietzsche had this insight: that men have to suppress women. Otherwise, if things had gone naturally, it would be more possible that the woman would be the master and the man would be the servant, because his qualities are those of a servant -- of a soldier at the most. And the feminine qualities are almost divine. They have a royalty about them.
Drop all the ideas of man that he has been putting in your heads. And also drop the ideas of the women's liberation movement, because they are also putting nonsense into your minds. Their nonsense is that they are trying to prove that men and women are equal. They are not -- and when I say they are not, I don't mean that someone is superior and someone is inferior. I mean that they are unique.
Women are women and men are men; there is no question of comparison.
Equality is out of the question. They are not unequal and neither can they be equal. They are unique.
Rejoice in your feminine qualities, make a poetry of your feminine qualities. That is your great inheritance from nature. Don't throw it away, because the man does not have them. To be equal, you may start doing idiotic things.
And that's what is happening in the women's liberation movement. The women are smoking cigarettes or, if there is an opportunity, then a joint. Now in the East, the woman cannot even think -- neither can the man think... if you go home and find your wife relaxing on the sofa with a cigarette, you will not be able to believe what has happened.
We have a deep respect for feminine qualities and those qualities prohibit many things, encourage many other things. The woman should not try to imitate man, because even if you succeed.... It is difficult to succeed. Imitation is always imitation, it is never equal. But for argument's sake, if we accept that you can become exactly like a man, you will lose all that you have and you will not gain anything. Because even in the eyes of man, you will not be beautiful anymore, and in your own eyes, you will be shattered. It was better to be unequal than to be equal, because now the man takes no interest.
A woman should keep her separateness, should save all her feminine qualities and purify them. In this way she is going, according to her nature, towards enlightenment. Of course once you are enlightened, you have gone beyond the discrimination of sexes. Beyond enlightenment, you are simply human beings. But before that....
Nor should man try to imitate woman, which he has been doing. [....]
And there is an unconscious reasoning, because the man feels women are beautiful -- perhaps if he also takes away the beard and the moustache, he may look more beautiful. He's a hundred percent wrong. It is one thing that women go on tolerating, him because it is a man's society and he develops ideas and enforces them on everybody else who is in some way dependent on him. But if women are free to express their feelings, a beard is as natural, a moustache is as natural as your nose. You don't shave it.
Be proud of your qualities. Increase them, refine them because they are the path towards godliness.
Man is not in a better position than woman as far as religious experience is concerned. But he has one quality and that is of the warrior. Once he gets a challenge, then he can grow any kind of qualities. Even the feminine qualities, he can grow better than any woman can. His fighting spirit balances things.
Women have qualities inborn. Man needs only to be provoked, given a challenge: these qualities have not been given to you -- you have to earn them. And if men and women both can live these qualities, the day is not far away when we can transform this world into a paradise.
Again, I remember Friedrich Nietzsche. He said that Jesus Christ, Gautam Buddha... these were not real men, because their qualities are feminine. Nobody else has said that; no follower, no enemy. But Nietzsche certainly has a knack of finding absolutely fresh insights. He is against Jesus and against Gautam Buddha, because if people follow them, everybody will become feminine. He loves the qualities of man -- particularly of the warrior. He says that in his life, the most remarkable, unforgettable experience happened in a strange way... and perhaps nobody will believe it.
He was sitting on the terrace of his house and a group of soldiers marched on the road by the side of the house with naked swords, their shining boots, walking in rhythm... a beautiful morning with the sun, no clouds.
Nietzsche said, "Those shining swords, that music of the soldiers' boots was the greatest aesthetic experience to me. I have never seen anything more beautiful, more musical."
He is for the qualities of man: the naked sword moving in the sun gives him the most beautiful experience. The sound of the boots gives him the greatest music. He is for the qualities of man.
I am for the qualities of women. Because of Nietzsche's insistence for man's qualities, Adolf Hitler was born. Adolf Hitler, Goebbels, and the whole bunch of criminals who surrounded him, are pygmies compared to Friedrich Nietzsche as far as intelligence is concerned. They misunderstood him completely. They took out portions that supported fascism, murder, invading innocent people, killing innocent people.
I am here to counter Nietzsche. I love the man, I love his insights, but that does not mean that I agree with him. I disagree with him.
I would like the whole world to be full of feminine qualities. Then only can wars disappear. Then only can marriage disappear. Then only can nations disappear. Then only can we have one world: a loving, a peaceful, a silent and beautiful world.
So drop all the conditionings man has given to you. Find your own qualities and develop them. You are not to imitate the man; neither is the man to imitate you. When I say he has to grow feminine qualities, I don't mean that he has to imitate women.
Every person, whether man or woman, is born of a father and of a mother. Half of his being is contributed by man and half by woman, so everybody is both. If you are a man, then the man is on top and underneath it, hidden, are all the feminine qualities, the contribution from your mother. If you are a woman, then your feminine qualities are on top and your male qualities are underneath it; that is the contribution of your father. And there is no need of any conflict between you, because you are man and woman together, simultaneously.
Rather than creating a conflict, my whole work is to indicate to you the path, how you can create an orchestra of all your qualities together. That will be your wholeness as a human being.
-Osho, "Sermons in Stones, #17, Q1"
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So there is a possibility, but the possibility has a basic condition to be fulfilled: you become more conscious, a witness, a watcher of all that goes on inside you. The watcher becomes immediately free from identification. Because he can see the emotions, it is an absolute certainty that "I am not the emotions."
He can see the thoughts; the simple conclusion is, "I am not my thought process."
"Then who am I?" -- a pure watcher, a witness. And you reach to the ultimate possibility of intelligence in you: You become a conscious man.
Amongst the whole world sleeping, you become awake, and once you are awake there is no problem. Your very awakening will start shifting things to their right places. The head has to be dethroned, and the heart has to be crowned again. This change amongst many people will bring a new society, a New Man in the world. It will change so many things, you cannot conceive.
Science will have a totally different flavor. It will not serve death anymore, it will not make weapons that are going to kill the whole of life on the earth. It will make life richer, discover energies which can make man more fulfilled, which can make man live in comfort, in luxury, because the values will have completely changed. It will still be mind functioning, but under the direction of the heart.
My way is the way of meditation.
I have to use language, unfortunately, that's why I say may way is the way of meditation: Neither of head nor of heart, but of a growing consciousness which is above both mind and heart.
This is the key to open the doors for a New Man to arrive on the earth.
-Osho, "From the False to the Truth, #31, Q1"