Osho discourse on Women’s Menopause

Question : Can you say something about Women’s Menopause?
Osho: In each person's life the time of change comes. And one of the greatest things to remember is that when you change a certain pattern of life, you have to change naturally. It is not in your hands. Biology makes you capable of sex at the age of thirteen or fourteen; it is not your doing. At a certain age, as you are coming closer to forty or forty-two, the biology's purpose is finished. All those hormones that have been propelling you are disappearing. To accept this change is very difficult. You suddenly start thinking as if you are no longer beautiful, that you need a face-lift.

I have heard about a woman who was saying to the plastic surgeon, "I need a face-lift."
The surgeon looked at her and he said, "There is nothing wrong; it is just age. Don't be worried about it. Why unnecessarily go to the trouble? But the woman was insistent, so the doctor said, "Okay, but it will cost five thousand dollars."
The woman said, "That much money I don't have. Can't you suggest something cheaper?"
The doctor said, "Yes. You can purchase a veil."

It is one of the Western problems. In the East no woman is worried. Things are accepted as they come. Acceptance has been the basic foundation of Eastern life. The West is continuously imposing on nature, demanding how things should be. Nobody wants to become old, so when the time of transition from one stage of life comes, a very strange phenomenon happens -- and that is what is happening to Shunyo. I did not say it because I did not want to hurt her.

It is going to happen whether I say anything about it or not, just as a candle comes to the very end, has only a few seconds more before it will be gone. At the last moment the candle suddenly becomes bigger with all its power. Nobody wants to go. It is a well-known fact to medical science that people at the time of death suddenly become completely healthy; all their diseases disappear. This is the last effort of their life -- to resist death. The people who are related to them feel very happy that suddenly all diseases have disappeared.

The person has become calm and quiet, but they don't know that it signifies death. The diseases have disappeared because their function is fulfilled: they have killed the man. Now it is the last spurt of life. The same happens with every biological change in life. When sex is becoming irrelevant, you start thinking of sex more than ever, and suddenly a great spurt... That is what is giving her the idea that it seems she is sexually repressed -- because so much sexuality is suddenly overwhelming the mind.

The mind can only understand logically, rationally one thing: from where is this sexuality coming? -- it must be coming from the repressed unconscious. That is what Sigmund Freud and their followers have been teaching to the whole world. They are right on many points; they are wrong on many points. Particularly about this point, the transition when you are no longer young and the hormones in you are going to disappear, and the interest in sex is going to die -- before dying it will explode with its full force.

If you go to a psychoanalyst, he will say that you are sexually repressed. I cannot say that, because I know that this sudden overwhelming sexuality will be gone by itself, you don't have to do anything. It is the signal that life is passing through a change. Now, life will be more calm and more quiet. You are really entering into a better state. Sex is a little childish. As you become more and more mature, sex loses the grip over you -- and it is a good sign. It is something to be happy about; it is not a problem to be solved.

It is something to celebrate. In the East no woman ever feels the trouble of the transition from youth to old age. In fact, she feels immensely happy that now that old demon is gone and life can be more peaceful. But the West has been living under many illusions. One is the illusion that there is only one life. That creates immense trouble. If there is only one life and sex is disappearing, so you are finished. Now, there is no more opportunity; there will not be any more excitement in life.

Nobody is going to say, "You are beautiful and I love you and I will love you forever." So first, the illusion of one life creates a problem. Second, the psychoanalysts and other therapists have created another illusion that sex is almost synonymous to life. The more sexual you are, the more alive you are. So when sex starts disappearing one starts feeling like a used cartridge: now there is no point to live; life ends with sex ending. Then people try all kinds of bizarre things: face lift, plastic surgery, false breasts. It is stupid, simply stupid.

People start trying wigs; they start trying dresses which are sex-provoking. Almost all Western women are starving -- they call it dieting! The idea in the West is that a woman is beautiful if she is not fat. And nature has some other idea: the woman has to be a little fat because for nature the woman is a mother. A mother needs extra fat for the child, because when the child is in her womb he will need food. And when the child is in the womb, the mother starts feeling nausea; she cannot eat, she starts throwing up.

She needs emergency fat in her body so she can feed the child because the child needs food; he is growing fast. Science says that in the nine months in the mother's womb, a child grows so fast that he will never grow so fast again in his seventy years. In nine months he passes through almost the whole evolution of man, from the fish... all the stages. His requirements have to be fulfilled by the mother -- And she cannot eat... you can imagine. It is troublesome to have a child in your belly.

I don't think any man is ready to be pregnant: he will commit suicide; without any doubt he will jump from a fifty-storey building, "I am finished... pregnant...?" Just think, the idea that you have a child in the belly, and you will go crazy. But how to get rid of it... The mother goes through immense suffering, great sacrifice; hence, in the East we have not created the idea of a skinny woman. Of course, the skinny woman looks more sexually attractive, younger. The fat woman looks less sexually interesting, because she loses proportions.

Her waist is no longer very small. Her body has gathered so much fat that nobody will feel attracted towards her. She does not have the necessary attraction for the human mind. The East has accepted that a woman has to be a little more fat than a man, a little more rounded. Just the other day somebody brought me a book of pictures taken by one famous photographer and on the front page was Sophia Loren. In the East she cannot be conceived of as very beautiful: she must be dieting -- and dieting is nothing but the rich man's idea of starvation.

The poor people starve by themselves. The rich people starve in a costly way under professional guidance. The fear that you will not be attractive, that you will no longer be looked at by people... You will pass through the street and nobody will look at you; who is going...? It is a great need of man, and particularly women, to have attention -- attention is nourishment. A woman suffers immensely when nobody pays attention to her. She has nothing else to attract people by; she has only her body.

Man has not allowed her to have other dimensions where she can become a famous painter, a dancer or a singer, a learned professor. Man has cut all other dimensions from the woman's life where she can be attractive and people will pay respect even while she becomes old. I have to remind you of the meaning of `respect': it means looking back. When somebody passes by: re-spect. It has nothing to do with honor; it has something to do with your being suddenly aware that a beautiful thing has passed.

Woman is left only the body by man, so she is so much concerned with the body that it creates clinging, possessiveness, fear that the person who loves her, if he leaves, perhaps will find another person. And without attention she starts feeling almost dead: What is the use of life if nobody is paying attention to you? She does not have an intrinsic life of her own. Man has taught woman that her life depends on others' opinions about her.

You can see all over the world that beauty competitions are arranged only for women, and the woman does not even revolt against these ideas. Why not for men? Just as you choose a Mrs. or Miss Universe, choose a Mr. Universe. No, nobody bothers about the man's body. He can grow fat; he can become a Winston Churchill. Still he attracts attention because he has power. In the same book just beside Sophia Loren is Winston Churchill -- ugly, as fat as you can conceive, the whole face sagging.

He needs a face-lift -- not Sophia Loren -- but he will not bother; there is no need. He can have power, he can be the prime minister. He can be this and he can be that... Man has managed over the centuries to have all the other dimensions of attracting people, and he has left to woman only one dimension: her body. He has made woman just a vegetable. And naturally, the vegetable starts being worried if there are no customers.

It is not a coincidence that in the most sexually perverted country, France, while being in love with a woman, you say, "I want to eat you." Are these people cannibals? Is the woman a vegetable or what? "I want to eat you" shows a great respect for the woman! When nobody says to her, "I want to eat you," she thinks, "I am now finished. Life has come to an end!" But here with me you have to learn something. The first thing is a deep acceptability of all the changes that nature brings to you. Youth has its own beauty; old age has its own beauty too.

It may not be sexual, but if a man has lived silently, peacefully, meditatively, then old age will have a grandeur of its own. Just as the snow-covered peaks look beautiful, the white hairs of old age also have their own beauty -- and not only beauty, but wisdom too, which no young man can claim, because all his behavior is stupid. He is running behind this woman, running behind that woman. The old man has stopped all this running business. He has settled in himself. He is no longer dependent on anybody else. The old woman should follow the same way.

There should be no difference between men and women. Love happens only when you are beyond biological slavery; then love has a beauty. Biological slavery and the biological relationship are so ugly that for centuries people have decided to make love in darkness without light, so they don't see what they are doing. When life is going through biological change, it is not only to be accepted, it has to be rejoiced in that you have passed through all that stupidity, that now you are free from biological bondage. It is only a question of conditionioning...

One has to accept life. But your unconsciousness does not allow you to accept life as it is. You wanted something else. It is perfectly good when sex disappears. You will be more capable of meditating. You will be more capable of being alone. You will be more capable of being blissful, without any misery because the whole game of sex is nothing but a long misery -- fighting, hate, jealousy, envy. It is not a peaceful life. It is peace, silence, blissfulness, aloneness, freedom which give you the real taste of what life is.

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