Osho Discourse on Men

Question: I always hear you saying nice things about the Women. Could you Not stick up for the Men once in a while?
Osho: It is a very difficult question. I could not sleep the whole night. I tried and tried hard to find something nice about men, but I have to admit to you there is nothing that can be said.

You can see for yourself. An interviewer for a ladies' magazine is questioning a famous British general about his sex life. "Excuse me, sir," she begins, "but can you recall the last time you had relations with your wife?"
His upper lip stiffens for a moment and then he says, "Yes, of course I can, it was nineteen forty-five."

After a moment's silence the woman says, "That was a long time ago."
The general glances at his watch and says, "Not so long really. It is only twenty-one fortynine."

Man is a funny thing. If any of you find anything nice about man, please inform me. I accept my failure absolutely. The world suffers too much from conflict because of male energy and the domination by it. The balance is needed. I am not saying that the male energy is not needed at all; it is needed, but in proportion. Right now, ninety-nine percent is male energy and the woman exists only on the margin. She is not the main current of life, hence there is strife, struggle, fight, war. That energy has brought humanity to the brink of total suicide.

It can happen any day, unless the feminine energy is released to balance it. That is the only hope. The third world war can be avoided only if feminine energy is released into the world to balance male energy; otherwise there is no way. It cannot be avoided by peace marches and protests against war, because that too is male energy! Have you not watched protesters? -- they are as violent as anybody can be, and each peace march turns into a riot. Sooner or later they are burning buses, throwing stones at the police.

They were there shouting for peace, but in their very shout is war. The masculine energy can talk about peace but can only prepare for war. It goes on saying that we have to fight to protect peace. Now look at the absurdity: we have to go to war, otherwise there will be no peace in the world. To attain peace we go into war. That's how we have been going into war down the ages and peace has not come. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars. Not a single day passes when there is not war somewhere or other.

Sometimes it is Vietnam, sometimes it is Israel, sometimes it is Kashmir, sometimes it is something else, but the war continues. And it is not only a question of changing the political ideology of the world -- that won't help because all those ideologies are masculine. The feminine energy has to be released. That can bring balance. The moon has been neglected too much, the sun has become too prominent. The moon has to be brought back to life. And with the moon is not only the woman: with the moon is all poetry too, all aesthetics, all love, and all that belongs to the heart, comes from the moon. All that is intuitive feeds on the moon.

Remember this. And in each being, man or woman, both energies exist -- the sun and the moon. The emphasis has to be towards the moon. We have leaned too much towards the sun; it is destroying us. Just to keep balance we have to lean to the opposite direction, and slowly slowly one has to be exactly in the middle -- the moon in one hand, the sun in the other, but both equal. I declare man and woman equal, not because of any political reason: I declare them equal for some existential reason. They have to be equal, otherwise life will be destroyed.

So find the woman in you. Feed it, nourish it, help it to grow. Don't be shy of it and don't think 'I am a man.' Nobody is simply a man and nobody is simply a woman; both are both. It has to be so: half of your being has been contributed by your father and half by your mother. You are the meeting of these two energies. You cannot be just man, you cannot be just woman.

Absorb the woman, enhance and help the woman; become more soft, receptive, passive, loving. Because meditation comes easy when one is passive. It is not an active approach towards life. It is just waiting in openness. Meditation comes -- it cannot be brought, it cannot be conquered. One has to surrender to it. That is the meaning of the feminine....

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