Question : Why has there never been a single Woman Enlightened Master?
Osho : A woman cannot be a Master — it is not possible. When a woman arrives she becomes a Mistress, not a Master. The fulfilment of a woman is love. The flowering of a woman is love. Mastery is not the goal of the feminine mind; they don’t become Masters, they become Mistresses. To be a Master is basically a male effort.
Awareness is the way of man, love is the way Or woman. On the path of awareness it is possible to teach; one can become a Master. On the path of love, how can you teach love? You can flower, you can bloom in love, but how can you teach it? Yes, if somebody wants to learn from you, he will learn it, but you will not be a Master.
And such women have existed: Rabiya, Meera, Mallibai, Magdalen, Teresa. Such women have existed: Sahajo, Daya, Lalla. Many women have existed, but they were not Masters. They were so surrendered to God that they became Mistresses.
Meera says ‘I am a mistress to you. My Lord’ — a mistress to Krishna, to God himself. She sings the song of the glory of her Lord, she dances. If somebody can catch something from her, it is overflowing; but she cannot be a teacher. She is surrendered, her surrender is absolute. Yes, if you are in her company, you will learn what surrender is… but you will have to learn, she will not teach. A woman cannot be a teacher.
To teach, a certain different quality of energy is needed. Let me say it in this way, this is my experience: it is very difficult for a man to become a disciple, very difficult for a man to become a disciple. Even if he becomes, he becomes reluctantly. Surrender is difficult. How to surrender the will? Even if he surrenders, he only surrenders conditionally, in order to become a Master one day. He becomes a disciple in order to become a Master.
It is difficult for a man to surrender; it is very simple for a woman to surrender. It is very simple for a woman to become a disciple, it is very difficult for a woman to become a Master. Even after she has arrived, she remains surrendered. And for the man, even when he has not arrived, he remains deep down unsurrendered. On the surface he will show surrender, but deep down somewhere the ego persists.
A man can become a good Master. A woman can become a good disciple because to become a disciple means to become a receiver, to be receptive, to become a womb. To become a Master means to become a giver.
The same phenomenon continues… as it is there on the biological level, it remains on the spiritual level. Biologically, a woman is ready to receive the sperm from the man she loves. The man cannot become a mother, he can only become a father. He can trigger the process: the woman will become the mother, she will carry the child in her womb for nine months, she will nourish the child with her blood and her being, she will be carrying the pregnancy. The same happens on the spiritual level too.
When a woman comes to a Master she is immediately ready to surrender. If sometimes it happens otherwise — sometimes there are women who are very reluctant to surrender that simply shows they have lost contact with their womanhood. They don’t know who they are, they have become distracted from their centre. They don’t know how to surrender because they don’t know how to be a woman. If you know how to be a woman, if you are a woman, surrender is so simple, it comes so easily.
All the great disciples in the world were women. Buddha had thousands of disciples, but the proportion has always been the same: three women, one man. So was the proportion with Mahavir. He had forty thousand sannyasins: ten thousand men, thirty thousand women. And so was the case with Jesus.
The really devoted people around him were not the men but the women. When he was crucified, all the men escaped, there was not a single man. All those so-called ‘apostles’ had all disappeared, but the women were there. Three women were there: they had no fear, they were ready to sacrifice themselves.
When Jesus was taken down from the cross, it was not by men — those disciples had gone far away, and one or two were there but they were hiding in the crowd women took down the body. And it is very significant that when Jesus appeared after three days, resurrected, he appeared first to Mary Magdalen, not to a man.
This is very significant. Why? What about those twelve apostles? Why to Mary Magdalen? And she immediately recognised him, and she rushed to him and she said ‘So, My Lord, you are still alive!’ And when Jesus appeared to the disciples, male disciples, they would not recognise him, they thought ‘It seems tricky. How can this man come back?’
It is said that when he appeared before two disciples, male disciples, he walked with them for hours and they would not recognise him. And they continued talking about Jesus and Jesus was walking by their side. They were a little puzzled about the appearance of this man — he looked like Jesus but how could he be? ‘Just appearance? — one should not be deceived by appearance alone.’ For two hours they walked together.
When they went to an inn, all three sat there to eat their dinner and when Jesus broke his bread, THEN they recognised. Very materialistic mind. Suddenly they saw… because Jesus’ every act, his every gesture, was his, authentically his. Now they recognised because he was breaking the bread in the same way that they had seen Jesus break bread for years — then they recognised. But for two hours, the presence was not recognised. Magdalen recognised immediately.
When she went to tell the male disciples that Jesus was resurrected, they laughed. They said ‘Woman, you are hallucinating.’ And they laughed and they said ‘This is how women always are — imaginative, dreaming, romantic. Now look at this foolish woman. Jesus is dead. We have seen him die on the cross with our own eyes.’ But she cried and she said ‘Listen to me. I have seen him.’ But they would not listen.
A woman can be a perfect disciple, and this is how it should be. Woman is receptive, an opening, a womb. They have never been Masters in the sense that men have been Masters — like Mahavir, Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu. No, they have never been Masters like that. But there have never been disciples like women; no man has ever been able to equal them as far as disciplehood is concerned.
And let me tell you this, that as far as this division of male and female is concerned, the female mind is more blessed. Because the real thing is to receive the truth, the real thing is not to give it that is secondary. And a woman is always more total than a man. Whenever she receives the truth, she becomes luminous: her whole body, her whole being shows it; she carries an aura.
Have you not seen a woman who is pregnant, how beautiful she becomes? Her face glows, she is carrying a new life within her. And this is nothing compared to a woman who really becomes a disciple. She is carrying God himself within her. Her glory is infinite. So don’t be worried why women don’t become Masters. There is no need. If you can become disciples, that is natural and you will always remain true to nature.