Question – Beloved Osho, As women, our natural Creativity is expressed through the bearing and raising of children. What happens to that energy now that that area of expression is no longer viable?
Osho – Energy is always neutral. It has no program in it. It can save or it can mar, it can make or it can destroy. It is a great opportunity that is becoming available to women, now that they are freed from biological bondage. Of course, man has always praised them for their great creativity in having children. But what kind of children have you produced? Just look around the world: these are your children — what creativity!
All the animals are doing it, perhaps better than you. I have been in many jungles and mountains in India. I have never seen any deer which is too fat or too thin; they are all alike. They are not like man: one person is thin and one is so fat and ugly. I have watched all kinds of animals in the wild: nobody teaches them how to produce children.
They don’t have any schools, no maternity homes, no guidance from anybody. So don’t take much pride in the fact that you can produce children. Yes, man has been giving woman much juice about it: “You are a great creator because you give birth to a child.” It was really very tricky of man; it meant that the woman should continue to create children.
And in poor countries it is still happening — to have a dozen children is not rare. Some women have more than one dozen. I saw one woman who had twenty children. Now her whole life is wasted. Either she is pregnant or she is raising the children. And when the child is not even six months old, she is pregnant again. She is doing a double job.
I know about a man who had uniforms for his children. I asked him, “What nonsense this is! Why do you create uniforms for your children?”
He said, “Do you know how many children I have? Fifteen. Without their wearing uniforms I cannot recognize which my child is. So the uniform helps me in two ways. I have to take the children to the school and bring them back home. It helps me to recognize my children and sort them out. It also helps me to know if somebody else’s child has not entered into my fold and my child has gone with somebody else.”
I said, “Now it is time you should stop; fifteen is too much.”
He said, “It is God and his grace. I cannot go against God.” He was a very religious Hindu. “If God wants to give birth to more children, then who am I to prevent it?”
All the religions of the world are against birth control methods, the pill. They are against abortion. It means the woman remains biologically in bondage, and her energies continue to create only mediocre people, crowds to serve in the armies, navies, airforce, to be killed or to kill-at the most to be clerks, nurses, porters. What do you mean by creativity? You have created a porter. Do you feel proud? How much pride can it give to you?
Every parent should feel ashamed. You are creating like animals. Science has given you a chance today to get out of the bondage of biology-a great freedom so that sex becomes, for the first time, not a biological reproductive method; it becomes sheer play, joy.
You are asking me, if women’s energies are not poured into creating children, then what will happen to those energies? Why can’t you start…. There are thousands of ways to make this world more beautiful. Anything that makes the world more beautiful is creative. Landscape the garden around your house. Crossbreed plants; create new flowers that have never existed before. And of course, they will give new fragrances which the earth has never experienced.
And compete with men in every field. Prove to him that you are equal — not by the women’s liberation movement; prove by your actions that you are equal, perhaps superior. The women’s liberation movement is just idiotic. A few women will gather and just create anger and hatred against men, and they will all smoke continuously, and drink.
And they will all become lesbians because they hate men; they cannot love men, they can only love women. It is such a perversion, a woman loving another woman. I cannot conceive the idea of a man loving another man — and not just ordinary people: one of the popes before this pope was a homosexual. He was a bishop in Milan before he became pope.
The whole of Milan knew it, because he was always hanging around with his boyfriend. And when he became pope and went to the Vatican, the boyfriend went there as his secretary. And you know secretaries are just an escape from your wife, a refuge from your wife. If the pope is homosexual — and popes are infallible — it creates great suspicion, because Jesus was also hanging out with twelve boys. It may be something coming down from Jesus himself.
Monks are well-known homosexuals, and nuns are lesbians; but this is out of necessity. The monks have to live together in a monastery; the nuns have to live in a nunnery, separate — they cannot meet. Naturally, their sexuality starts taking some other forms. And I think it is intelligent, it is not unintelligent: if you cannot get the food you like, then you have to like the food you get. This is simple intelligence. In jungles animals are never homosexuals, never. But in zoos they become homosexuals. When I came to know about this, I started being really concerned about humanity: is it a zoo?
This women’s liberation movement has only turned women into lesbians. It has created hate towards men, but this is not going to give you equality. Equality has to be earned, it has to be deserved. So since the pill has released you from the bondage of biology, now you are free to use your energy.
And a woman has a more delicate body, a more flexible body. She can become a better dancer than any man can ever manage. The man, howsoever trained, is stiff. It is not his fault, his physiology is stiff. Women can become the best dancers in the world. A woman has a great imagination, but her imagination has remained confined to the home. The reason was children — children kept her in the home, and for millions of years, so it became almost second nature. Otherwise, I don’t see that there is any natural necessity for woman to confine her imagination within the walls of her home.
The stars belong to her as much as to any man. The sunrise and sunset — they are also her possessions. She has to spread her wings, her consciousness. She has to widen her vision, imagination, dreaming, beyond children. Right now, the woman goes on thinking about the child, “He should become a doctor, he should become an engineer, he should become this and that.”
Now the woman has to become what she used to project through the child. Become a doctor, become an engineer, become a pilot. What you imagined through the child… Why not directly encounter reality, and be yourself what you wanted your child to b
e? I don’t see that there is any problem.
Women are in many ways superior to men, and their superiority can be used for new dimensions of creativity. An experienced mother knows whether there is a boy or a girl in her womb. How does she come to know? Because the boy starts kicking, and the girl never does that. The girl remains more centered, the boy is already freaking out.
And you can see in children — girls will be sitting with their dolls in a corner silently enjoying their game, and boys will be creating all kinds of nuisance all over the neighborhood. What man has created is nothing if the woman comes into the field with her centeredness, with her roundedness, with her contentment, with her love. So move in any direction that feels fulfilling to you.
The day women start creating all kinds of things that men have been creating up to now…. I say to you, there is no need to ask for equality, because women are the superior sex — naturally, because nature has made the woman to create children. Man’s function in creating children is negligible. Any syringe can do what he is doing, just a plastic syringe, use it and throw it out.
Women are more resistant to diseases. From the very beginning, nature has an immense balancing power. If one hundred girls are born, then one hundred and fifteen boys are born, because by the time they reach marriageable age, fifteen boys will have disappeared. They are weaker — any sickness, any disease…. But those hundred girls will be there, so by the marriageable age the balance is equal; those fifteen extras are gone.
If nature were producing exactly the same number of girls and boys, there would be great difficulty. Soon the population of women would have gone far beyond the population of men. But nature has its own ways of balancing. Knowing that man has a much weaker body, in the sense that it cannot resist and fight with sickness, it creates fifteen extras.
The woman lives longer than the man — five years longer — in every country, in every race. And the woman suffers much, but still she survives. Man cannot survive as much suffering as woman manages to. So don’t be worried about your energies. You have more energy than men.
Man started suppressing women only because he felt inferior. His inferiority complex was the cause of his forcing women to become inferior, so he could cover up his wound and feel superior. It is stupid. And now because biology no longer has power over women, don’t waste your energy in being a lesbian. This is the time for you to be creative in every field, and you will be able to have your Picassos, your Mozarts, your Van Goghs, your Shakespeares.
There is no reason why not. Perhaps a little better, a little softer, and your sculpture is certainly going to be more alive. There is only one thing in which you will not find yourself equal to men — and please remember, don’t try to be equal in that area — that is muscles. Let men be superior as far as muscles are concerned, because if women start going to gymnasiums and creating muscular bodies, that will be the worst day in the history of humanity.
Just closing my eyes… if I see thousands of muscular women sitting here I am not going to come again! And there is a tendency to imitate. You know that man has imitated you; otherwise, what is the need to shave his beard and his mustache? It seems as though he wants to look as beautiful as a woman, but he forgets completely that to a woman, a man looks more beautiful with a beautiful beard and mustache. He is thinking from a man’s side, that a woman looks beautiful. Just think of it the other way: if a woman grows a beard and a mustache — do you think she is going to find a man to chase her?
But that’s what man has done, imitate. A simple argument, but without understanding. He feels that the woman is beautiful, and as it is so easy to remove the mustache and the beard, why not be as beautiful as the woman? He forgets the fact that for the woman you are losing much attraction.
Just look at my beard! I don’t think any of my sannyasins would like my beard to be shaved. Perhaps many of my women sannyasins are here just because of my gray beard. And anyway, whether I am saved spiritually or not, I am not going to shave my beard!