WOMEN WERE TREATED IN AN INHUMAN WAY IN THE WORLD FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS AND THOUSANDS OF THEM WERE BURNT ALIVE IN THE NAME OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY



TULSIDAS IN INDIA COMPARED WOMEN WITH ANIMALS AND IDIOTS BUT MOST INTRIGUING AND SURPRISING THING IS THAT EVEN INDIAN WOMEN DID NOT OBJECT FOR IT UPTILL NOW.

'Dhol, ganwar, sudra, pashu, nari, Ye sab tarn ke adhikari'……..(Tulsidas) {Drums, idiots, untouchables, animals and women are in absolute necessity of being tortured….Tulsidas}

"You will be surprised to know that in all old scriptures of religions – they are all written by men – they are condemnatory of women, utterly condemnatory. One of the most famous saints of the Hindus is Tulsidas, who is read the most all over the country. Even in the villages, the uneducated listen to Tulsidas. His attitude towards women is so ugly – but he conditions the mind of man, all over the country."

"He says that once in a while you have to beat the woman if you want to keep her in control. He categorizes woman with strange fellows: dhol, which means drum – unless you beat the drum it is useless; that's why the woman is categorized with the dhol. dhol; ganwar, idiots; and sudras, the untouchables, the people who cannot even live inside the city. They are so dirty, according to Hinduism, that they have to live outside the town. For centuries they have been exploited, and they are doing the worst work, the hardest work. And they are the poorest; they don't have the dignity of human beings. "dhol, ganwar, sudra, pashu" – and the animals. "dhol, ganwar, sudra, pashu, nari" – and the woman. "Ye sab tarn ke adhikari" – all these are in absolute necessity of being tortured."

"And this man Tulsidas is one of the most prominent saints of the Hindus! To me, just this small statement is enough to declare that this man is neither a saint nor even a human being. But he has been conditioning the mind of man for three hundred years in this land. And he is not alone, he is simply repeating the old heritage of other scriptures."

"The most intriguing and the most surprising thing is that women are his greatest audience. They listen to Tulsidas, they listen to such statements, and they don't revolt; they don't burn every book of Tulsidas, which they could do very easily. Tulsidas' books should be burned in every house – and every woman is capable at least of burning the books. His name should be erased from all over the country. But no, they worship his book as a holy book, and whatever he says as true."

"I have been issued summons by courts because I have condemned Tulsidas on this point – that I have hurt the feelings of the Hindus. It is such a strange world: this man is saying such ugly things and no women's feelings are hurt. And when I say something against this statement, immediately the court issues a summons against me, an arrest warrant: I have hurt the feelings of religious people. Strange, what kind of religious people are these? They should be hurt by Tulsidas, not by me!"

"But Tulsidas is a man, and he is nourishing the egos of other men. And woman has been so unconscious that she is following man and his ugly ideas against the woman herself. At least no woman should read or allow the book in her house. And women should drag the publishers of those books to the court and say, "This book should be banned. It cannot be published because it is against half of the population of the country; a book that hurts half of the population of the country is not worthy of being in circulation."

"But life as we have lived it up to now is mostly managed by man. It is a man-made society; it has no place for women. And the strangest fact is that women are not in sympathy with other women. Their minds are also conditioned in such a way that they are sympathetic to the man."

"And the women here are not uneducated. They are financially capable of being independent; they are as intelligent as any man. There is no need for them to be angry against men. If your mother was angry ... perhaps she was not educated, perhaps she was not financially able to be independent. She wanted to fly in the open sky, but she was encaged – you are not."

"This is one of the reasons why I cannot communicate to the vast majority of this country – because the man will not be willing to listen to me; it goes against his domination, his power. And the woman cannot understand me; she is not educated. Even if she can understand me, she is not financially able to be independent; she cannot revolt against the man-made society. In India there is nothing like a women's liberation movement – not even the talk of it. No woman ever thinks that there is any possibility of liberation. She has lost all hope."

"But your situation is different. You are coming from countries where you have received education, and education makes you financially able to be independent. You need not be a housewife; it is not necessary for you to be married. You can live with someone you love without any marriage." "The woman has to fight for it – the woman has to make marriage an absolutely personal affair in which the government, the state, the society, nobody has any business to interfere."

[Excerpts from: 'The Rebel'# 1]

"It is not strange that the VEDAS, which define this way of how life should be... Those VEDAS are written by hundreds of learned people -- not a single one was an enlightened soul. Even the so-called seers of the VEDAS not only have their married wives, but also have purchased women from the marketplace -- because women were still sold."

"Now what kind of seers were these people, who could purchase a woman like a commodity? And what respect could they have towards a commodity? Women were auctioned; hence, in Sanskrit, for `wife' there are two words -- people have forgotten the distinction. One is patni; patni means your married wife. Another is vadhu; vadhu means your purchased woman. You can use her as a wife, but her children will not be able to inherit anything from you because she is not your legal wife."

"Even the so-called seers living in the forests were doing all such things. I don't think any of them... I have looked very closely into each sentence in the VEDAS. I could not see that any one of them had reached to the heights of Gautam Buddha. In fact, ninety-eight percent seem to be very stupid people, very ordinary."

[Excerpts from: 'The Invitation'# 6]

"In China for centuries it has been thought that the woman has no soul. So if a husband kills his wife it is not a crime. It is just as if you want to destroy your chair, it is nobody else's business. The woman is a thing. Nobody in the whole history of China – which is the biggest nation in the world, one fourth the population of the world – never has a man been even punished for murdering his wife.

"So naturally, societies which are ruled by man cannot accept God as a 'she'. He cannot be so inferior as to be a woman."

"In the biblical story God created man first, which looks not very reasonable because man in himself cannot give birth. It would have been far more reasonable to create the woman first because she is capable of creating. She has the womb, she is going to be the mother. Man is secondary. His function in creation is nothing more than that of a syringe which is used for injections. Man is a syringe!"

"Strange, God created the syringe first – but it is a story written by a man – and then he created the woman because man was feeling alone. The woman is just an entertainment to help the man not feel bored, not feel alone. That is her function."

"God created man in a different way than he created the woman. He created the woman by taking a rib out of man's body. This is insulting, humiliating; the woman is nothing but a rib. Man is really the master – ribs cannot be masters."

"In all the religions the woman is humiliated in different ways. In Jainism, no woman can attain to enlightenment. All that she can do is – if she is virtuous, disciplined, follows the creed, the ritual – all that she can attain is birth as a man in the next life. More than that she cannot achieve as a woman." "Yes, when she becomes a man, then she can attain to enlightenment."

[Excerpts from: 'From Death to Deathlessness' # 21)

WOMEN WERE TREATED IN AN INHUMAN WAY IN INDIA BY THE HINDUS FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

"Hindus say that when the husband dies, the wife has to jump into the funeral pyre of her husband; then only does she prove that she was sincere towards her husband. For thousands of years, millions of women had to jump alive into the funeral pyre of a husband who had done nothing except beat them and make them pregnant continuously. And they were treated just like cattle."

"She should rejoice that that dodo is dead. On the contrary, she is forced.... And they had made arrangements, because alive... just think of yourself jumping into the fire – you will try to come out of it. So there were brahmin priests around the fire with burning torches to push her back. And so much purified butter was poured into the funeral pyre that there was smoke surrounding the whole area, so nobody could see what the priests were doing."

"In the second circle, there was another group of priests who were chanting the VEDAS so loudly that the poor woman's screams would be lost. Yes, you can find the authority for this in the Hindu scriptures, but the very thing is ugly, inhuman. And whoever has written that was not a man of sanity. He was a male chauvinist; he was not interested in human values."

"If the woman refused... and a few women were courageous enough to refuse, they didn't want to die. Yes, they loved their husband, but that does not mean that they had to die with the husband. They loved him, but they were not going to commit suicide."

These women were treated very badly. They could not marry again. Manu, the greatest Hindu authority on all kinds of things, says they cannot marry again."

"Strange – a man can marry again, and a man is not asked to jump into the funeral pyre of his wife. Anybody can see the point, that this is simply fascist on the part of men. This Manu is not a man of truth, a man of silence, a man of wisdom. You will be surprised, Manu's book is five thousand years old. Even Hindus who believe in it feel a little bit ashamed because there are many things in it which make them feel ashamed."

"But Friedrich Nietzsche – who was the philosophical source of Adolf Hitler's fascism – respects Manu as he respects nobody else. Adolf Hitler declared Manu one of the most significant authorities as far as morality is concerned. And these are not Hindus. You can see the relationship: these are fascists, and Manu approves of all kinds of fascism."

"The Hindu widow remains alive in a very ugly way – if she chooses to remain alive. Her hair is cut so that she does not look beautiful. She cannot use any ornaments, because the man for whom she was supposed to look beautiful is dead. She cannot use any colored clothes, only white. All her hair, which is one of the most beautiful parts of a woman – is shaved. That hair gives a certain individuality to each woman."

"She cannot use any cosmetics, she cannot use any ornaments. Even the cheapest glass bangles have to be broken. She has to hit her hands on the earth, on the wall, on the stone, to break the glass bangles. It brings blood to her hands. She cannot go in any place where celebration is happening. She cannot participate in any marriage, she cannot participate in any festival. She has to remain isolated, and she has to be treated just like a servant."

"She does all kinds of things like a servant – utterly degraded, deprived of her humanity. You cannot see such humiliation anywhere. It would have been far better to have jumped into the fire – within minutes things would have ended. Now this woman has to suffer perhaps fifty years, sixty years. She will be just a living corpse."

"If you ask the professor, as I used to ask, "What do you say?" – because Hindus believe Manu is a Maharishi, a great seer. And I say, "he must be the greatest blind man ever! Seer, my foot! This is the law that he has given to the Hindus. You go on finding approval in scriptures – and you don't know who wrote those scriptures, what kind of people they were."

[Excerpts from: 'From False to the Truth # 18]

"Just a week before (1987) in Rajasthan an eighteen-year-old girl became a widow – perhaps she may have been married six months before, or a year before -- and she jumped into the funeral pyre to perform the ancient Hindu ritual of being a sati. The word sati is beautiful; it means `one who can die for truth'. It comes from sat, and sat means truth. The connotation is that she loved the man so much that the man has become her god; without that man life is meaningless. But it is really committing suicide openly."

"It is against the Indian constitution, it is against Indian law. But millions of people are going there, and already a big village has become established. Tens upon tens are coming to worship, because the woman has done a great spiritual act. And rather than creating some legal action against the family, the government is making arrangements for the millions of people that are pouring in. Shops have opened, restaurants have opened, hotels have opened, caravanserais have opened. Soon it will become a big city, a memorial city, because an uneducated, highly conditioned young girl committed suicide, following ideals which are simply stupid."

"There is no spirituality in it. If there was spirituality in it, then why in ten thousand years has not one single man jumped into the funeral pyre of his wife? And these men are writing in the scriptures that this ritual is a great spiritual act -- but only for women?"

"It is not a spiritual act. It is a very cunning strategy to dominate. The man watches his wife continuously, keeps her a slave while he is alive. He is afraid... when he is dead, who knows? -- the wife may fall in love with somebody and he will not be able to do anything. It is better to create an ideology so that the wife also jumps in the funeral pyre; then that fool feels immensely contented because now there is no fear."

"And I am surprised... newspapers report it, the government officials are making arrangements, and nobody is bothered that it is illegal, it is unconstitutional, it is illogical. It is male chauvinist ideology. It is a domination beyond conception. You even want to dominate when you are dead! But misunderstanding goes on and on...."

[Excerpts from: 'The Great Pilgrimage'# 14]

THE HINDU CUSTOM FOR WOMEN TO USE TIKKA I.E. SINDHUR (RED MARK) ON THE FORHEAD OF MARRIED WOMEN WAS A STRATIGY TO DENY THEM THE SPIRITUAL ENERGY.

"The 'tikka' (red mark) on the third eye – just by the way, I remembered that in the East women have always used, or have been recommended by men to use it – is a red round mark exactly on the spot where the third eye is. They have persuaded the women, "This is the sign of your being married." But the truth is something else. It is again the long history of creating woman as a slave to man. The red mark on the third eye is preventing the woman from receiving the energy from a master. The color of energy is red, and the tika that has been recommended for the woman to put on her forehead is also red."

"Colors work in such a way that if you have a red spot on your forehead, all colors will be absorbed except red. The red will be sent back. So what we see in the world is a very strange phenomenon. When you see somebody in blue clothes, the reality is those clothes are not blue, they are reflecting back the blue color. They are absorbing all the six colors of the rainbow from the sunrays, but not accepting the blue. Because the blue is not accepted, it falls on your eyes and you see the color of the clothes as blue. But it is very illusory – those clothes are not blue."

"And this was a strategy used for thousands of years in India. It shows that they knew how colors function. To put a red mark on the third eye means all colors can be absorbed, all kinds of energies can be absorbed, but not the energy that has a red color. The energy of the master has a red color; it is the color of blood, it is the color of life, it is the color of warmth."

"To prevent women from becoming disciples or, even if they did, not allowing them the privilege of being a disciple, a very cunning strategy has been used. So if you like the tika, use any color, but don't use red. It looks beautiful, but use the whole spectrum of colors except red. When the master touches the disciple's third eye, if the disciple is available – and that is a great if, which rarely happens – then suddenly a flow of warmth, life, consciousness starts hitting the point which for specific reasons we have called the third eye. It is the point that, if it opens, makes you a seer. Then you can see things about yourself, about others more clearly, more transparently – and your whole life will start changing with this new vision."

[Excerpts from: 'The Sword and the Lotus' # 17]

IN INDIA HINDUS HAVE BEEN BURNING ALIVE THOUSANDS OF WOMEN IN THE NAME OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY.

"In Hinduism, if the husband dies, the woman has to jump alive into his funeral pyre. She cannot live without a husband – she was just a shadow. Now what is she going to do without a husband? Man has been so possessive, that not only when he is alive should his woman remain his, but he is afraid even after death. When he is no more, who knows? – the woman may fall in love with someone else. He has taken every precaution. What works best is that she jumps into the fire with the dead body of her husband. It is not an easy job."

"Just put your finger in the flame of a candle, and you will know what it means to throw your whole body alive into a funeral pyre. But millions of women have done that – have been forced to do that."

"If they had chosen not to do it, that was a sure sign that they had betrayed their husband. They were condemned for the rest of their lives. So rather than living a condemned life it was better to suffer a respectful death. But it was such an agony that the brahmin priest had to manage it in such a way that nobody else became aware of the agony the woman was going through."

"Whenever a woman had to jump on a funeral pyre tons of ghee, purified butter, had to be poured over her and over the funeral pyre. This created great smoke, a cloud of smoke; nobody could see what was happening. And there were priests standing around the funeral pyre with long torches, burning. If the woman tried to escape – because that is human and natural that she may start getting out of the funeral pyre – they pushed her back into the funeral pyre, with those burning torches."

"And then there was always a crowd of musicians playing as loudly as possible on musical instruments so that you could not hear the screams of the living woman that you were burning."

"This was thought to be something spiritual. This is pure murder – and a very crude and primitive murder. For millions of years it was a great spiritual thing, but it is strange that the man never did such a great spiritual thing. No man in the whole of history has ever jumped into the funeral pyre of his dead wife. No Brahmin followed the rule that he has made for women."

"If it is true, then is it not very strange why the man is not doing the same? No, for the man things are totally different – a double standard of values. While the dead body of the wife is burning, people are thinking about the man – when he should get married again and to whom." "It was with difficulty that this ugly ritual of murdering people was stopped, although it still happens once in a while."

"You have to understand that in the past, man has not behaved compassionately, lovingly, respectfully with women. His behavior has been very criminal."

[Excerpts from 'The Sword and the Lotus']

IN CHRISTIANITY WOMEN ARE NOT TREATED EQUAL TO MEN

[According to Christianity] "God created the world, and in every church you will hear that he created Adam and Eve after he had created everything else. That's a lie. He created first Adam and Lilith, but it is not being told to people. There are reasons for not telling it."

"God created Adam and Lilith with the same mud. It is a myth, but it carries tremendous meaning. And this shows the utter stupidity of God, that he created a small single bed, only one bed, with the male chauvinist idea that Adam will sleep on the bed and Lilith will sleep on the floor. The woman cannot be equal to the man."

"From that very point the whole of Christianity has been against equality. If even God is against it, then equality, equal opportunity for all, cannot be accepted. That's why Christianity is against communism, against anarchism."

"And I say that God was utterly stupid, because when you create a couple, you should at least create a double bed."

"The first night was the beginning of a struggle that continues even today. Lilith wanted to sleep on the bed, and Adam wanted to sleep on the bed, and the bed could not contain the two. So Adam threw Lilith down, then Lilith jumped on Adam and she threw Adam down -- just because of a stupid God who could not think that a double bed was needed!"

"The whole night the fight continued -- the fight for equality that continues even today in every bedroom. Even though now there are double beds available, the fight continues, the pillow fight!"

"Next day Adam asked God not the right question -- "Why don't you give us a bigger bed?" -- which would have been so simple, logical; he asked God, "I cannot tolerate this woman who wants to be equal to me." And God killed Lilith, his own daughter."

"Neither was Adam asking for a bigger bed, nor did God suggest to him that "There is no problem. I have created the whole world, I can create a double bed. Just (THE MASTER SNAPS HIS FINGERS) like that ... a double bed!"

"But God was also a male chauvinist. He favored Adam, although it was unjust to Lilith, and the injustice goes even to the point of murder -- murdering his own daughter because she was asking for equality."

"To me, asking for equal opportunity is a fundamental religious principle. I don't say people are equal, I say people need equal opportunity to grow into their unequal uniquenesses."

"But a double bed! -- that proves absolutely that God was a Jew, and it is not an accident that he has chosen the Jews as his own people. Rather than making a double bed, he chose to kill his own daughter. But it is not only killing Lilith, it is killing the very idea of equality. And these Christian monks say religion has done great service to humanity! And the Christians have followed it, and all the other religions have followed it also."

"China does not believe that a woman has a soul. It is just as though she is furniture: since thousands of years in China, if a husband kills his wife, the husband is not committing a crime. The wife was his possession. You can destroy your chair, you can destroy anything that you possess, it is not a crime. Because the woman has no soul, nobody is murdered."

CHRISTIANS HAVE BURNT ALIVE AND KILLED MILLIONS OF WISE WOMEN CALLING THEM WITCHES.

"Thailand also believes there is no soul in the woman, and Christianity down the ages has been killing millions of women, burning them alive for a simple reason that was far more ancient than Christianity itself. They were called witches."

"Christianity has turned the word `witch' into an ugly thing. `Witch' means a wise woman, not a woman who is having intercourse with the devil. That is a Christian invention. They could not tolerate wise women, because wise women mean ... then what about the priest, and the bishop, and the cardinal, and the pope? A woman can be wise? -- never! Only man can be wise. And because those women were certainly wiser than men -- it was a long heritage -- the only way to destroy them was to find an excuse."

"Anybody could report to a special court, a grand jury, the pope had created; Anybody -- X,Y,Z -- could simply inform the court anonymously, "I suspect a certain woman in my neighborhood is a witch." That was enough. The woman would be caught, tortured for days on end, beaten, sexually abused, till she accepted that yes, she is having intercourse with the devil."

"Naturally, you cannot suffer infinitely. There comes a point when your spine is broken. And what is the point? These people will go on beating you, will go on torturing you, will go on not giving you food, not giving you water -- so what is the point? It is better to accept what they want. Death was better than to be in the prisons of the pope."

"They chose death knowing well that once you accept in the court that you are having a love affair with the devil, it is a very summary trial. The woman confesses, the judge immediately orders that this woman should be burnt alive in the marketplace so everybody can see, and everybody can find out if there are other witches in the village, in the town, in the city."

"Just the idea that a woman could be wise was unacceptable to man. And the root goes to God himself. God killed Lilith, and this time he did not make Eve from the same earth as he had made Adam, because that same earth had created the idea of equality."

"So this time he put Adam in a coma and took out -- the first surgery in existence -- a rib bone, and out of the rib bone he created Eve. She will never claim to be equal to man; she is just a rib bone. She will serve man, surrender to man, obey man, worship man."

"And every church goes on saying that God created Adam and Eve. Their own scriptures say something else, but that is not being told. Centuries of repetition that God created Adam and Eve in the beginning has made the lie appear, at least, as if it is the truth."

"A God who has created the whole world could not create a woman without taking a rib from Adam? It is very strange, but the idea is that the woman is nothing but a bone, nothing but a body, and she is secondary to man, and she has to be a slave to man. This idea is found in all the religions in different ways."

"The woman cannot go to heaven from the body of a woman. First she has to be virtuous, chaste, dedicated to the husband absolutely; then she may be born as a man in the next life -- out of this virtuousness of being a slave. Slavery is virtue! Obedience is virtue! The husband may be a drunkard, the husband may be a murderer, the husband may be a rapist, the husband may be doing all kinds of crimes, but the woman has to accept the husband as her god."

"This you call civilization?"

[Excerpts from: 'Christianity: The Deadliest Poison' # 4]

I WANT WOMEN TO BE LIBERATED, BUT NOT TO GO TO THE OTHER EXTREME

"The Eastern woman looks more contented because she is not aware of what she is missing. She is more graceful because she has not even started thinking of any liberation."

"But Western woman has had to pass through a very revolutionary period which destroyed her contentment, the grace that had always been hers. And it has led her to the extreme; she has started behaving in an ugly and nasty way. It is not a rebelliousness with understanding, it is just a reactionary attitude."

"Of the causes that marked the change between the Western woman and the Eastern, the first is Karl Marx. He proposed, and convinced the intelligentsia of the whole world, that poverty has nothing to do with any past life, or with fate, or with destiny; that it is not decided by God who should be poor and who should be rich. It is the social structure, the economic structure which decides who is going to be poor. And this structure can be changed, because it is not God-made – there is no God, as such – it is man-made."

"The Russian revolution proved Karl Marx right on an experimental basis – that the structure can be changed, that kings can become paupers and paupers can become kings. And no interference was made by God, "You cannot do this, it is my writing on their foreheads, you cannot change it."

"The Tsar's whole family in Russia – nineteen people, men and women, old, young, children, one small baby only six months old, and one man ninety-five years old – the whole royal family of nineteen people was massacred. They were cut into pieces, and God did not interfere saying, "What are you doing with this family? That is my decision. What are you doing with the people who I have made the owners of almost one-sixth of the world?" The Russian Empire was the biggest empire of those days, and the Tsar was the richest man in the world."

"So the first hammering came from Karl Marx. The second hammering came from Sigmund Freud. He declared that men and women are equal, belong to the same species, and any theories or philosophies which condemn women are simply inhuman and male chauvinistic. And then the third and the last hammering came from Masters and Johnson's researches, which brought to light that the woman has been deprived of orgasm for centuries. It proved that man has been really inhuman in his behavior. As far as his own sexual needs were concerned he used the woman, but he did not allow the woman to enjoy sex."

"These three things have changed the whole atmosphere in theWest; but these three things have not yet penetrated into the Eastern, traditional mind. As a result, the Western woman is on the warpath. But it is a reactionary phenomenon; hence I am not in favor of what goes on in the name of women's liberation."

"I want women to be liberated, but not to go to the other extreme. The women's liberation movement is going to the other extreme – it is trying to be revengeful, it is trying to do to man exactly what man has done to her."

"This is sheer stupidity. Past is past, it is no longer there and what man has done has been done unconsciously. It was not a conscious conspiracy against women. Neither he was aware, nor the woman was aware."

"The women's liberation movement is declaring that they don't want to have any relationship with men – cut off all relationships with men. They are promoting lesbianism, a parallel of homosexuality – that women should love only other women and boycott men. This is sheer perversion. And as a reaction, women should do everything to man that he has done to her: misbehave, mistreat, use dirty words as man has always done, smoke cigarettes as man has always done."

"Naturally, they are losing their grace, their beauty... dress just as man has always dressed. But it is a strange phenomenon that the way you dress changes so much. The Eastern woman's dress has a grace, and it gives a grace to her whole body. The Western woman is trying to compete with cowboys – blue jeans, stupid looking clothes, ugly hairdos."

"They think perhaps they are taking revenge – they are destroying themselves. But revenge always destroys you, reaction always destroys you. I would love to see them as rebels. A rebel knows that to err is human, and to forgive is more human."

"If she imitates man she will become only a carbon copy of man, she will lose her identity – and she is losing it. The body, in a subtle way, follows your mind. The Western woman's body is losing the old grace, the old contours. The Western woman does not have such beautiful breasts as she used to have."

"What happened? The body follows the mind; she used to have a beautiful curvature, now she is becoming a straight line. And a woman without breasts, a straight line, no curves anywhere, is an ugly phenomenon – it will be such a disgrace. But her clothes will affect her body, her mental attitudes will affect her body."

"She has not to become a carbon copy of man. She has to become perfect as a woman and create as much difference between man and herself as possible. The bigger the difference the more the attraction, the more the beauty, the more the grace. She has to find her own identity."

[Excerpts from: 'The Rebel # 29]

THE STARS BELONG TO HER AS MUCH AS THEY BELONG TO MAN. SHE CAN COMPETE WITH MEN IN MANY DIMENSIONS OF CREATIVITY.

"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."

"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 be? 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."

"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!"

(Excerpts from: 'From Death to Deathlessness)

THE FREEDOM OF WOMAN IS GOING TO BE THE FREEDOM OF MAN TOO.

"If an enlightened man – one who is alert, awake, conscious of reality – can do things like Krishna or Mohammed or Jesus did, then I don't want even to be enlightened anymore."

"Mohammed married nine wives. It is criminal – the wives are not human beings, they are just cattle."

"But Mohammed is nothing compared to Krishna, who had sixteen thousand wives. And these were not women who had fallen in love with him: otherwise, I have no objection to it. These women were already married to somebody else. They were hijacked, forcibly taken away from their children, from their husbands, from their families."

"Sixteen thousand women? But a perfect incarnation of God cannot just have one wife like an ordinary man! I don't think that he could have even remembered the names of sixteen thousand women. And I don't know whether those sixteen thousand women made love to Krishna. If it happened, he must have been the most spent man in the whole world."

"Sixteen thousand women? – a sure way to commit suicide. No, I cannot do that. And don't think that this must be simply mythological, it is not. It is a historical fact. I used to think it must be just mythological, but when I went to Hyderabad, a Mohammedan state in India, the Nizam of Hyderabad – the king of Hyderabad state – had five hundred wives in the twentieth century! I told the Nizam, "It is good I came here, met you and came to know about your five hundred wives. Now I can believe in Krishna and his sixteen thousand."

"Sixteen thousand are only thirty-two times more. And if it can happen in the twentieth century, then five thousand years ago you can think anything is possible. Man is still so superstitious; how much more superstitious must he have been five thousand years ago. But this was a certificate... because it is written in the Hindu scriptures, "When God comes on the earth, he will have sixteen thousand wives." The scripture has to be fulfilled; only then will you be recognized by people as the complete incarnation of God."

"Because Rama, another incarnation of God, had only one wife, he is thought to be a partial incarnation – just a little bit of God in him. Strange, I think... is it the quantity of women that is used as a criterion of how much godliness is in you? Then I don't want this type of godliness. The woman is not a measurement. The woman is just like you."

"Have you ever thought about the word "woman"? It simply means a man with a womb. She has something more than you. If it is to be decided who is more, then the woman is more: she is a man with womb. And a womb is not an ordinary thing; it is something of immense value, because all life comes out of the womb."

"Man has always felt inferior to woman. Because he has felt inferior to woman, he has tried in every way to repress woman and make himself superior. It is a simple logic: only the inferior man wants to be superior. The superior is already superior, there is no question of wanting it. Unless man frees woman completely from all bondage – religious, political, social – he will never get rid of his own inferiority complex."

"The freedom of woman is going to be the freedom of man too. It is not only woman's liberation, it is as double-edged liberation. And science has given you all the means to be liberated now. The greatest revolution in human history, after the discovery of fire, was the pill. That makes you equal, unafraid of getting pregnant, unafraid of becoming dependent. And sex loses all the stupid ideas around it; it becomes simple, fun – neither sin nor virtue, but simply fun."

(Excerpts from: 'From False to the Truth')

THIS WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT HAS ONLY TURNED WOMEN INTO LESBIANS. IT HAS CREATED HATE TOWARDS MEN.

"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."

"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."

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?"

[Excerpts from: 'From Death to Deathlessness # 4]

Note: Osho International Foundation has the copyrights of all above Osho's quotations.

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