Que
stion: Some days I feel like a man and others like a woman. Can I be Both? Or will I grow up Schizy?
Osho : Everybody is both, and you have become aware -- that's very good; that's a great insight into your being. Everybody is both. But up to now, the society has been conditioned in such a way, we have been taught and brought up in such a way, that man is man, woman is woman. This is a very false arrangement, untrue to nature. If a man starts crying and weeping, people start telling him, "Don't weep like a woman, don't cry like a woman; don't be sissy." This is nonsense -- because a man has as many tear-glands in his eye as a woman.
If nature had not meant for him to cry and weep then there would have been no tear-glands. Now this is very repressive. If a girl starts behaving like a man, is ambitious, aggressive -- mm? -- people start thinking that something is wrong: something hormonal is wrong. They call her a tomboy; she is not a girl. This is nonsense! This division is not natural; this division is political, social.
Women have been forced to play the role of women twenty-four hours, and men have been forced to play the role of men twenty-four hours, which is very unnatural and certainly creates much misery in the world. There are moments when a man is soft and should be feminine. There are moments when the husbands should be the wife and the wife should be the husband, and this should be very natural. And there will be more rhythm and more harmony. If a man is not Supposed to be a man twenty-four hours, he will be more relaxed.
And if a woman is not supposed to be twenty-four hours a woman she will be more natural and spontaneous. Yes, sometimes in a rage a woman becomes more dangerous than a man, and sometimes in soft moments a man is more loving than any woman -- and these moments go on changing. Both these climates are yours; so don't think that you are becoming schizophrenic or something. This duality is part of nature. A good insight has happened to you. Don't lose it, and don't be worried that you are going schizophrenic.
Up to the sixth, the division remains and becomes more and more clear cut; and again and again one will feel the changing, shifting. It is a shift: a few hours you are man, a few hours you are woman. If you watch it exactly, you can know exactly how many minutes you are a man and how many minutes you are a woman. It is a periodical change. In yoga they have worked hard on these inner secrets. If you watch your breath, that will exactly give you the time. When one nostril, the left nostril, is breathing you are feminine.
When the right nostril is breathing you are male. And after near about forty-eight minutes they change. Continuously -- day, night -- this change happens. When you are breathing by the left nostril your right-brain hemisphere functions: the right is the feminine part. When you are breathing from the right nostril your left brain functions: that is the male part. And sometimes you can play games with it.
If you are very angry then do one thing: close your right nostril and start breathing by the left, and within seconds you will see the anger has disappeared -- because to be angry you need to be in the male part of your being. Try it and you will be surprised. Just by changing the breath from one nostril to another, something of tremendous importance changes. If you are feeling very cold towards the world then breathe from the left nostril and let your imagination, fantasy, warmth, flow in -- and you will suddenly feel full of warmth.
There are acts which can be done more easily when you are in the male climate. When you are doing something hard -- carrying a rock, pushing a rock -- check your nostril. If it is not in the male climate it is not good. It may be dangerous for the body: you will be very soft. When you are playing with a child, or just sitting with your dog, feel that you are in the feminine -- more affinity will arise. When you are writing a poem or painting or making music you should be in the feminine... unless you are trying to create a war music! then it is okay, you should be in the male climate -- aggressive.
Watch it, and you will be becoming more and more aware of these two polarities. And this is good that these two polarities exist: that's how nature arranges for rest. When the male part becomes tired you move to the female part; the male part rests. When the female part is tired you rest; you become male. And this is an inner economy -- one goes on changing. But your society has taught you wrong things: that a man is a man, and Has to be a man twenty-four hours -- this is too much of a duty.
And a woman has to be a woman twenty-four hours --soft, loving, compassionate: this is too much of a duty. Sometimes she also wants to fight, be angry, throw things -- and this is good, if you understand the inner play. These two polarities are a good inner play -- the play of consciousness. This is how God has become divided in you, to have a play of hide-and-seek with himself. When the play is over, when you have learnt that which is to be learnt from the play, when the lesson has been learnt, then you pass beyond.
The ultimate stage is neither male nor female . it is neutral. Man is deep down aware of the fact that the woman has something which he does not have. In the first place the woman is attractive to him, she looks beautiful. He falls in love with the woman, the woman becomes almost an addiction to him -- and that's where the trouble arises. The feeling of dependence on women which every man feels, makes him react in such a way that he tries to manage the woman as a slave -- spiritually a slave.
He's also afraid because she is beautiful; ... she is beautiful not only to him -- she is beautiful to whomever looks at her, to whomever comes in contact with her. Great jealousy arises in the egoist, male chauvinist mind. He has done with women what Machiavelli suggests to the politicians -- marriage is politics too. Machiavelli suggests that the best way of defense is offense, and man has used the idea for centuries -- centuries before Machiavelli recognized it as a basic fact in all political spheres.
Wherever there is some kind of domination, offense is certainly the best way of defense. In defense, you are already losing ground; you have already accepted yourself as the defeated side. You are just protecting yourself. In this country, there are religious scriptures like manusmriti, five-thousand years old, and they suggest that if you want to have peace in your house, giving a good beating to the woman once in a while is absolutely necessary. She should be kept almost imprisoned.
And that's how she has lived -- in different cultures, different countries, but her imprisonment has been almost the same. And because man wanted to prove himself superior.... Remember, whenever you want to prove something that means you are not that thing. A real superiority needs no proof, no evidence, no witness, no argument. A real superiority is immediately recognized by anybody who has even a small amount of intelligence. The real superiority has its own magnetic force. Because men condemned woman -- and they had to condemn her to keep her in control -- they reduced her almost to a subhuman category. What fear must have led man to do this? -- because it is sheer paranoia....
Man continuously compares and finds the woman superior. For example, in making love to a woman, a man is very inferior because he can have only one orgasm at a time while the woman can have at least half a dozen, a chain -- multiple orgasm. Man simply feels utterly helpless. He cannot give those orgasms to the woman. And this has created one of the most miserable things in the world: because he cannot give a multiple orgasm, he has tried not to give her even the first orgasm. The taste of the orgasm can create danger for him.
If the woman knows what orgasm is, she is bound to become aware that one orgasm is not satisfying; on the contrary, she is more thirsty. But the man is spent. So the most cunning way is not to let the woman know that anything like orgasm exists in the world. And because the woman has not known orgasm, you should not think that man has been in a better position. Not giving orgasm to the woman he has to lose his orgasm too.
Something significant has to be understood: Man's sexuality is local, it is confined to the genitals and a sex center in the brain. But with the woman, it is different. Her sexuality is all over her body. Her whole body is sensitive, is erotic. Because man's sexuality is local, it is tiny. The woman's sexuality is something very great. Man is finished within a few seconds; the woman is not even warmed up. Man is in such a hurry -- as if he is doing some duty for which he is paid and wants to finish it quickly -- making love is the same.
Why, in fact, does man bother to make love I wonder? -- just two or three seconds and he is finished. The woman was warming up and the man is finished -- not that he has attained orgasm; ejaculation is not orgasm. The man turns on his side and goes to sleep. And the woman -- not one woman but millions of women are crying tears after men have made love to them because they have been left in a limbo. You have encouraged them and before they can come to a conclusion, you are out of the game.
But this fact of the man finishing quickly has a very significant background; that's what I have been bringing you to. In not allowing the woman the first orgasm, he has to learn to finish as quickly as possible. So the woman has lost something tremendously beautiful, something sacred on the earth -- and the man has lost. Orgasm is not the only thing in which the woman is powerful. Everywhere in the world the woman lives five years longer than the man; her average age is five years more than the man's. That means she has more resistance, more stamina.
Women are sick less than men. Women, even if they are sick, heal themselves more quickly than men. These are scientific facts. One hundred and fifteen boys are born while one hundred girls are born. One wonders: why one and hundred fifteen? But nature knows better. By the time they are marriageable, fifteen boys will have popped off! Only one hundred boys and one hundred girls will be left. Girls don't die easily. Women don't commit suicide as much as men; men's suicide rate is double.
Although women talk about suicide more than men -- man ordinarily never talks -- women make much fuss about suicide but they always choose to survive because they don't use any drastic methods to kill themselves. They choose the most comfortable and most scientific and most contemporary -- sleeping pills. And strangely enough, no woman takes so many pills that it becomes impossible for her to be revived. So her suicide is not suicide but a kind of protest, a threat, a blackmail to make the husband understand that this is a warning for the future.
Everybody is condemning him -- the doctors, the neighbors, the relatives, the police officers. He has unnecessarily become a criminal, and everybody's sympathy is for the woman -- although she was going to commit suicide. As far as murder is concerned, the difference is vast. Man commits murder almost twenty times more; a woman, very rarely. Women go mad less than men. Again, the proportion is the same: men go mad twice as often as women.
And still, after all these facts established by science, the superstition continues that man is stronger. Only in one thing is he stronger and that is that he has a muscular body. He is a good manual worker. Otherwise, on every point he feels -- and he has felt for centuries -- a deep inferiority complex. To avoid that complex, the only way is to force the woman into an inferior position. And that is the only thing that is more powerful in man: he can force the woman.
He is more cruel, he is more violent, and he has forced the woman to accept an idea which is absolutely false: that she is weak. And to prove that the woman is weak, he has to condemn all the feminine qualities. He has to say that they are all weak, and all those qualities together make the woman weak. In fact, the woman has all the great qualities in her. And whenever a man becomes awakened, he attains to the same qualities which he has been condemning in women. The qualities that are thought to be weak are all the feminine qualities.
And it is a strange fact that all the great qualities come into that category. What is left are only the brutal qualities, animal qualities. The woman is more loving. The man has not shown greater love than the woman. Millions of women have died -- they have jumped alive into the funeral pyre with their beloveds because they could not conceive of a life without their husband or friend. But don't you think it is a little weird that in ten-thousand years not a single man has dared to jump into a funeral pyre with his wife?
Enough time, enough opportunity... and you are stronger. The delicate woman, the fragile woman, jumps into the funeral pyre and the stronger Mohammed Ali goes on doing his push-ups. And he is still stronger! Strength has many dimensions. Love has its own strength. For example, to carry a child in the womb for nine months needs strength, stamina, love. No man could manage it. An artificial womb could be placed in man -- now scientific technology has come to the point where man could have a plastic womb implanted but I don't think he could survive nine months! -- they are both going to jump into the ocean.
It is difficult to give life to another soul, to give a body to another soul, to give a brain and mind to another soul. The woman shares wholeheartedly in giving to the child whatever she can manage. And even after the child is born, it is not easy to bring up children. To me, it seems to be the most difficult thing in the world. Astronauts and Edmund Hillary... these people should first try to bring up children. Then only can we accept that they have done something by going to Everest; otherwise it is pointless.
Even if you have reached the moon and walked on the moon, it does not matter. It doesn't show that you are stronger. A living child -- so volatile, such an energy overflowing that he will tire you within hours. Nine months in the womb and then a few years.... Just try one night to sleep with a small baby in your bed. During that night, in your house, something is going to happen. Either the child will kill you or you will kill the child. Most probably, you will kill the child, because children are the nastiest people in the world.
They are so fresh and they want to do so many things and you are dead tired. You want to go to sleep, and the child is fully awake and he wants to do all kinds of things and he wants your advice, and questions, and if nothing works then he wants to go to the bathroom! He's feeling thirsty. He's feeling hungry in the middle of the night...
The child sleeps the whole day. In the mother's womb he sleeps twenty-four hours; then, slowly slowly... twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty... but he is almost always asleep. And in the night, he wakes up.
The whole day he will be asleep and in the night he will wake up to torture you. I don't think there is any man who can have a pregnancy or who can bring up children. It is the strength of the woman. But it is a different strength. There is one strength which is destructive, there is another strength which is creative. There is one strength which is of hatred and there is another strength which is of love. Love, trust, beauty, sincerity, truthfulness, authenticity -- these are all feminine qualities, and they are far greater than any qualities that man has.
But the whole past has been dominated by man and his qualities. Naturally in war, love is of no use, truth is of no use, beauty is of no use, aesthetic sensibility is no use. In war, you need a heart which is more stony than stones. In war, you need simply hate, anger, a madness to destroy. In three thousand years, man has fought five thousand wars. Yes, this is also strength but not worthy of human beings. This is strength derived from our animal inheritance. It belongs to the past, which is gone, and the feminine qualities belong to the future, which is coming.
There is no need to feel yourself weak because of your feminine qualities. You should feel grateful to existence that what man has to earn, you have been given by nature as a gift. Man has to learn how to love. Man has to learn how to let the heart be the master and the mind be just an obedient servant. Man has to learn these things. The woman brings these things with her, but we condemn all these qualities as weaknesses Women are women and men are men; there is no question of comparison.
Equality is out of the question. They are not unequal and neither can they be equal. They are unique. Man is not in a better position than woman as far as religious experience is concerned. But he has one quality and that is of the warrior. Once he gets a challenge, then he can grow any kind of qualities. Even the feminine qualities, he can grow better than any woman can. His fighting spirit balances things. Women have qualities inborn. Man needs only to be provoked, given a challenge: these qualities have not been given to you -- you have to earn them.
And if men and women both can live these qualities, the day is not far away when we can transform this world into a paradise. I would like the whole world to be full of feminine qualities. Then only can wars disappear. Then only can marriage disappear. Then only can nations disappear. Then only can we have one world: a loving, a peaceful, a silent and beautiful world. So drop all the conditionings man has given to you. Find your own qualities and develop them. You are not to imitate the man; neither is the man to imitate you. When I say he has to grow feminine qualities, I don't mean that he has to imitate women.