Chapter 26

[NOTE: This discourse will be in the book "India Coming Back Home", which has not been published, as of August 1992.]

Q: ARE YOU THE BEGINNING OF A NEW RELIGION?

A: I am certainly the beginning of something which is far more precious than any religion can be. I am also the end of all the old religions.

The old religions have not helped humanity to progress in consciousness, in being. On the contrary they have hindered man's growth, his spirituality, in every possible way. The old religions became simply a facade of politics. In the name of religion, politics has reigned all over the world.

One thing that is most important to understand is that truth cannot be organized.

The moment you organize it, you kill it.

Truth is an individual experience, and it can never become a collective phenomenon. Those who have attained the experience of it were individuals, not crowds, not mobs, not Hindus, not Mohammedans, not Christians, not Jews; but just individuals. Moses is an individual, just as Mahavira is; Gautam Buddha is an individual just as Jesus Christ is. They experience something in their aloneness, in their silence, in their innermost shrine of being. The church is not outside, it is within you.

But the Christians are looking for the truth in a church which is outside. They are looking for truth in a collectivity, in a crowd, and it is clear to anybody who has a little bit of intelligence that in two thousand years they have not produced a single Jesus Christ again; neither have the Buddhists been able to produce in twenty-five centuries another Gautam Buddha.

And it is not that people have not worked hard. People have worked tremendously hard; down the centuries millions of people have sacrificed themselves and everything they had to become enlightened. But nothing has happened; there seems to be something fundamental missing. They forgot one thing: that Gautam Buddha was not following anybody, and they are following Gautam Buddha; that Jesus Christ was not following anybody, and they are following Jesus Christ. That is the point where they missed.

You have to be just yourself, individual, not a carbon copy of anybody else. You have to assert your original face. Existence believes in originality, not in imitation. There are millions of Christians, but not a single Christ.

I am reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche's statement -- he said that the first Christian and the last Christian died on the cross two thousand years ago, the first and the last. Then what are these crowds doing? Almost half of humanity is Christian. What is this half of humanity doing if the first and the last Christian has already died two thousand years ago? They are simply deceiving themselves.

The days of organized religion are finished.

I declare a totally different conception. I will not even call it religion because that word is associated with the old religions; I will call it only religiousness. I am the beginning of religiousness. Religion is bound to be Hindu, bound to be Mohammedan, bound to be Christian. Religiousness need not be Hindu, how can it be Hindu? How can it be Mohammedan?

If love cannot be Hindu, cannot be Christian, if silence cannot be Jewish, then why should religiousness -- a quality, a fragrance -- have any adjective to it?

Yes, I am the beginning of something new, but not the beginning of a new religion. I am the beginning of a new kind of religiousness which knows no adjectives, no boundaries; which knows only freedom of the spirit, silence of your being, growth of your potential; and finally the experience of godliness within yourself -- not of a God outside you, but a godliness overflowing from you.

The old religions are just corpses, stinking; still they are immensely powerful, because the whole past has given them prestige, authority. And nobody wants to leave power and authority. They go on manipulating humanity, exploiting human beings; they go on keeping you retarded. They don't want you to evolve, because the moment you evolve and you become intelligent, you will be free from the bondage which is their vested interest.

Anybody who is intelligent cannot be a Hindu, cannot be a Mohammedan, cannot be a Christian, -- because all these religions have done so many ugly actions in the past, they have killed millions of people, burned people alive in the name of God, in the name of love. They have been simply destructive; they have not enhanced beauty, they have not contributed to humanity in any way. They are parasites. They have sucked you for centuries, they have been living on your blood.

It is time that churches should be transformed into schools, into hospitals.

Temples and mosques, synagogues and gurudwaras should be used for art galleries, music schools, for teaching painting and sculpture. And the priests should cease to exist. It is ugly; the priesthood should simply disappear from the earth, because man does not need anybody to mediate between himself and existence.

I am reminded of a great master, Lao Tzu. He used to go every day for a morning walk. One of his neighbors asked him, "A friend has come to visit me. He is a poet, a lover of beauty, and he is also very much interested in you. He wants to accompany you tomorrow morning on your morning walk."

Lao Tzu said, "I have no objection, except a simple condition: that he should not speak while we are walking in the mountains."

The friend said, "That's acceptable."

All three started the next day before sunrise. It was a beautiful calm and quiet early morning; and then the sun started rising above the hills, and with it the flowers started opening and the birds started singing. The poet forgot about the condition. He said, "How beautiful!" Just two words, and then he remembered.

He didn't say anything more.

Back home, Lao Tzu called the neighbor and said, "Your friend is too talkative; I cannot afford to have him again. And he is stupid too. I was there, listening to the songs of the birds, seeing the sun rising, listening to the wind passing through the trees, hearing the sound of running water. No mediator is needed.

What can he add by saying, 'How beautiful!'? He simply disturbed."

Existence and you are enough. There is no need for any agent between you and existence to interpret, to say, "How beautiful!", to take messages from you to existence and bring messages from existence to you. That's what the priests have been doing down the ages; they have kept you away from reality. They have been standing between you and reality.

A truly religious person does not need anybody between himself and the sunrise, between himself and the stars in the sky, between himself and the fragrance of the flower. It is all divine, you just have to be open to it.

When the priesthood is dissolved, organized religions finished, then humanity will be one. Otherwise, they have created so many barriers between man and man. Every evening since I came here I have gone for a walk. The first day one man said, "Osho, this is not pranam that I am doing to you; this is salaam."

Pranam is Hindu, salaam is Mohammedan.

I said to him, "To me, both mean the same."

The second day he said, "I have come again."

I said, "That's good, but don't say what you said on the first day."

Why create barriers? It is the same experience. A loving welcome... whether you call it pranam or whether you call it salaam, does it make any difference? But in his mind there must be great difference, that he wanted to indicate to me that he is a Mohammedan. Just to be human is enough. To be Mohammedan, to be Hindu, to be Christian is to be below your humanity, is to fall from your height, is to lose your dignity.

Yes, I am the beginning of something new. You can call it religiousness, but don't call it religion.

Q: YOU SAY YOU ARE A BUDDHA, AND HIS TEACHING WAS BASED ON SIMPLICITY, A SIMPLE LIFE. YOURS IS BASED ON COMFORT AND LUXURY. WILL YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THAT?

A: It is a significant question, with tremendous implications to be understood; one is that there is no difference. You will be surprised to hear it, because you don't understand the inner mechanism of transformation.

Buddha was born a king. He got fed up with his palaces, with his richness, with his luxury; he became a beggar. In the middle of one night, he renounced his kingdom and went into the forest as a beggar.

I was born as a poor man. I got fed up with up poverty. In the middle of one night I renounced poverty, and since then I have been living like an emperor.

What is the difference? Just one difference is there: Buddha's renunciation was simple, my renunciation is very difficult. To renounce a kingdom luxury and is a very simple phenomenon; you just get out of the palace and into the mountains.

But to renounce poverty is not so easy, otherwise you would have all renounced it. I have done the more difficult task.

But the inner mechanism is the same -- a drastic change in your lifestyle helps you to become enlightened. It doesn't matter whether from the palace you move to the hut, or from the hut you move to the palace. A drastic change in your lifestyle brings the revelation easily, because it uproots you from your ground, it brings you to a totally new territory. You cannot remain the same, you have to change.

Obviously it seems Buddha did a great thing, but it only seems so. I have done the greater thing. You try! -- and you will know immediately that to renounce empires is the easiest thing in the world. To renounce poverty is the most arduous phenomenon.

But there are other aspects of it too; I am not in favor of poverty, and neither are you. It is natural that nobody should be in favor of poverty, because to be in favor of poverty means to be in favor of hunger, to be in favor of being without clothes, to be in favor of being without shelter, to be in favor of sickness, old age, and no medicine. Nobody is in favor of poverty.

But Gautam Buddha and the twenty-four Tirthankaras of the Jainas, all these twenty-five people who have impressed this country immensely, have impressed the whole East, were born as kings. You have to understand it: Buddha was born as a king. The incarnations of Hindus, Rama and Krishna, were born as kings.

You have not accepted a single poor man as a buddha, as a tirthankara, as an incarnation of God -- that shows your mind.

You respect luxury, you respect kings. In fact, you have respected Gautam Buddha not because he was a beggar, but because he renounced his empire. Just think, if Gautam Buddha was born a poor man, and one night he had renounced his poor man's house, with no clothes, no food, the father dying without medicine. I don't think you would have ever accepted him as a great master; you have never accepted anybody like that.

Why were the twenty-four tirthankaras all kings? Is not anybody else intelligent enough to be spiritual? Is the whole world empty, with nobody to give it challenge? Do only kings have a prerogative, a monopoly?

The reason is that these kings renounced their kingdom, and became beggars. In your eyes, the kingdom is so valuable that it is amazing that a man would renounce something for which you have been hankering your whole life. The man is not respected for himself or his spirituality, he is respected for the money that he has left behind. You are still counting money, you are still looking at the bank balance.

I used to know a postmaster, a poor man, the only earning member of a big family. When his wife died and his children got married he asked me, "I am tired and all my duties are fulfilled. I can renounce the world."

I said, "What have you got to renounce? How much is your bank balance?"

He said, "Bank balance? I don't have a bank balance, just three hundred and sixty rupees in the post office."

I said, "You can renounce, but don't tell anyone that you had only three hundred and sixty rupees when you renounced; otherwise nobody is going to pay any attention to your renunciation. People will simply laugh."

After ten years I met the man in New Delhi. He had gathered a good following.

One of his disciples told me, "My master was a great rich man; he renounced everything."

I went to see the master. Looking at me, he felt a little nervous. I said, "Don't be worried. I will not tell anybody that you renounced only three hundred and sixty rupees." But they all heard it. Since then he has lost all his following. He is very angry with me.

I want to emphasize the fact that, although you think that you respect Buddha because he renounced, deep down you still respect the empire, the kingdom, the riches -- not Buddha himself.

With me the situation is totally different. I have renounced poverty. You have to look eye to eye with me. Either you respect me, or you don't respect me. But money does not come in between.

The people who have respected me are far more religious than you who have respected kings because they renounced their kingdoms. The people who have respected me, have respected me, not the kingdom that I had renounced. I had no kingdom; their respect is direct, immediate. It concerns me, it has nothing to do with anything else.

And moreover, I am against this whole idea of Gautam Buddha, Mahavira and other tirthankaras renouncing their kingdoms. Because they not only renounced their kingdoms, they raised the value of poverty, which you have never thought about -- they made poverty something spiritual, which it is not.

Poverty is the source of all crime, all sickness, all that is ugly in life. They made poverty something spiritual, and thousands of people became beggars with Buddha. But have you looked into the whole situation?

The people who followed Buddha left behind them crying and weeping wives, crying and weeping children, old parents. What happened to those people? The wives became prostitutes, the children became orphans, the old parents died without any care and without any medicine, because the man who was the earning member had become spiritual. And this happened to millions of people.

Who is responsible for this?

I cannot forgive Buddha, or Mahavira, or other tirthankaras. They raised poverty to spirituality, convinced people, and destroyed thousands of families, millions of people. And the people who became beggars became a burden on the society.

Because if you have renounced the world, then you don't have any right to ask for food from that same world; you don't have any right to ask for clothes, for shelter, from that same world. This is a strange thing: you condemn the world, and the world feeds you. You renounce the world, and the world supports you.

You live on it. These are the people who have reduced the East to poverty, to slavery.

No, I am not in favor of poverty.

And finally, I have also renounced. Buddha renounced this world, because this world's pleasures are momentary. Try to understand the subtlety of the logic: he renounced the world, this world, because its pleasures are momentary. But he is renouncing it to gain another world beyond death, the pleasures of which are permanent and eternal.

Look around the world into different religions' idea of the other world. I will give you a few instances to understand their psychology.

In the heaven of Mohammedans there are rivers of wine. Here, on the earth wine has to be renounced. In paradise, where rivers of wine are available, you can drink as much as you want, swim in it, get drowned in it. But it's very strange: in this world wine is a sin, and in that world it is a reward. I can't see the connection.

In this world the woman has to be condemned. She is the source of sin, she is the door to hell. If you can manage to renounce the woman you become a saint, and the saints are rewarded with beautiful women in paradise. Not ordinary beauties, those women never grow to be more than sixteen years old. They are stuck for millions of years at the age of sixteen. They don't perspire, they are always young.

In Arabian countries homosexuality has been prevalent for centuries. It is a very shocking thing that in paradise, for saints, young boys are also made available.

Buddha, Mahavira, Mohammed, Jesus... they all renounced this world because its pleasures are momentary for a world where pleasures are eternal. I renounce the world of eternal pleasures for this world, where pleasures are momentary.

Who is renouncing more? I would hate a girl who has remained for millions of years stuck at age sixteen. She is a prostitute and she has been used by millions of saints.

I have heard about a disciple whose master, whose whole teaching was celibacy, had died. After a few days the disciple also died. Of course the first thing he looked for in paradise was his master, and he soon found him under a beautiful tree -- which remains eternally green! He saw the master, but he was very much shocked because in his lap was sitting an American Hollywood actress, Marilyn Monroe. She was very beautiful, but without any brains, just flesh without any soul. The disciple was very shocked. The master has been teaching celibacy and here he is hugging a naked film actress! But then he thought, "Perhaps this is his reward! He deserves it. His whole life he was celibate; he would not allow any woman even to touch his feet; he would not see any woman. Certainly he deserves it."

He came close, fell at the feet of the master, and said, "My great master. You certainly deserve such a beautiful woman."

Before the master could reply Marilyn Monroe said, "You idiot. I am not his reward. He is my punishment."

I have renounced that world. To me each moment is paradise, and I don't have any desire for eternal pleasure. In fact the very idea is sick. Just think, if you have anything forever you are going to get bored -- if you have any intelligence. The woman may be very beautiful, but to have the woman eternally... just think of eternity, forever and forever, the same woman. In no religious scripture is there any mention of divorce in paradise. Once you are caught by the woman you are caught forever.

Whenever I think about the paradise that all the religions have created I simply freak out. I don't want to go to paradise. Absolutely no! It is only for idiots. I would rather go to hell, because the best and the most colorful people, the most creative people, all the great poets, all the great painters, all the great dancers, all the great sculptors, you will find there. In heaven you will find only dried up saints with no juice. It will be utter boredom; you cannot even have a good conversation.

You cannot find Byron in heaven, you cannot find Shelley, you cannot find Bertrand Russell, you cannot find Jawaharlal, you cannot find Rabindranath Tagore, you cannot find Maupassant, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Leonardo da Vinci, Dante, Socrates. You cannot find the cream of humanity there. You will find only dull, unintelligent, retarded people. Their qualities are that they can fast for twenty-one days, but that does not give intelligence. Somebody can stand for twelve years and will not sit down, but that is not a quality. Somebody lives naked, but that is nothing creative; every child is born naked, every animal lives naked. If nakedness is spiritual, then all animals will be ahead of you.

I have also renounced, and my renunciation is far greater. I have renounced the world of eternal pleasures for this beautiful world of momentary pleasures. I have renounced eternity for the moment; to me it is enough. And I call this contentment.

All your saints are full of desire, whatever they say. They go on saying to you, "Be desireless." But why? -- so that in paradise all your desires can be fulfilled.

But this is not desirelessness; it is motivated. I say to you, there is no need to be desireless. Live each desire with as much awareness as possible, and you will feel a tremendous contentment arising in you. Each moment it goes on growing -- you feel fulfilled, here and now. I do not promise you anything after death, because that is a very cunning device of your priests, your prophets, your messiahs. I want you to experience something here.

I am a realist, I am not a dreamer. And my experience is that if you can live each moment with contentment, awareness, silence, joyfulness, this very earth becomes paradise; there is no other paradise anywhere. All those paradises are invented only for idiots to be exploited.

I have renounced everything hocus pocus.

Q: NO GOVERNMENT CAN TOLERATE YOU, NO POLITICIAN WILL ALLOW YOU TO ENTER, NO PERSON ON A CHAIR WILL ALLOW YOU TO MAKE A DENT INTO THEIR POSITION. NO CHURCH, NO RELIGION, WILL FORGIVE YOU FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO THEM AND NINETY- EIGHT PERCENT OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION CANNOT ACCEPT YOU.

HOW DO YOU PROPOSE TO DEPROGRAM THIS GREAT HUMANITY AND CHANGE THE FACE OF THIS EARTH?

A: It is true, no government will allow me to do what I want to do. No religion will ever come to support me. Nobody who has a vested interest is going to be friendly towards me. Nobody who is in power has the guts even to listen to me.

I count this as a great victory, because nobody before me has threatened so many people around the world. Their very fear is a proof of my truth. If I were false there would be no need for them to be afraid of me. They could have exposed, they could have argued, they have all the means. They could have told the whole world that I am wrong. Their fear is that I am not wrong. And truth knows no defeat; it can be delayed, but it cannot be defeated.

You say ninety-eight percent of the people are in the grip of politicians, of priests, how are you going to deprogram and change the whole humanity? You have forgotten the remaining two percent. You have forgotten yourself.

When Karl Marx started thinking of communism, he was alone; now half the world is communist. Two percent of the people is enough. The ninety-eight percent look like a big majority, but the question is not going to be decided by a majority. The question is to be decided by who is true.

Truth has its own ways, very subtle ways. Two percent of the people is a big phenomenon. If I can get to two percent of the people's hearts it is enough.

Because those ninety-eight percent of people who are not standing with truth, they are standing with something which is already dead. They are standing with things which are lies, they are standing with things which are superstitious.

Just two percent of the intelligent youth around the world is enough, and we can make the whole world aflame. I don't see that there is any problem.

I have been talking to all the races, to all the nations, to different cultures, and I have always found a tremendous rapport between me and the intelligent people -- a deep synchronicity everywhere around the earth. Only the stupid are not with me, I don't want them to be with me. I want only the intelligent people; and they are with me. They can understand, and they are the people who change the world. The vast majority is never active, it is dormant.

Only the small minority, the arrowhead... once the small, intelligent minority gets the idea and starts moving, the majority follows automatically. The majority has always followed; if it has followed people who have no truth in them, why cannot it follow people who have some vision of truth?

But don't be worried about that. I am not interested in governments, I am not interested in popes and Shankaracharyas and -- Ayatollah Khomeiniacs. I am interested in the young people. Their age does not matter, maybe they are sixty or seventy. All that is needed is a fresh intelligence. And if they are with me, we are going to change this world. Nobody can prevent us. I have not come across a single argument against me. Against me there are only gossips, and gossips cannot do anything, they are simply indications of failure. The majority is having a nervous breakdown.

Just the other day, while I was coming back from my walk one man shouted very angrily, "What is the purpose of your coming to Nepal?"

I looked at the man. I wanted to ask him, "What is the purpose of your being in Nepal? What is the purpose of your being born?" My purpose is clear -- I corrupt people. Whosoever has guts, I corrupt him. That has always been the purpose of the category of people I belong to. Socrates was corrupting people, Heraclitus was corrupting people, Pythagoras was corrupting people. I am simply doing the same. But it is good to be corrupted in the hands of Socrates because that will bring a rebellion in you, a revolution in you. I don't want to have anything from you.

I simply want to give you something that I have got.

Q: WHAT IS WOMAN? AND FINALLY, A JOKE FOR NEPALESE PEOPLE.

A: Before I answer you, there have been a few more questions which I rejected because they were very simple. But I don't want anybody to feel that his question is rejected. I am very sensitive about it; so first I will give the answer to those questions which I have rejected.

One was, that I am a self-appointed buddha but still I could not see what was going on behind my back in the commune, and the commune was destroyed.

The question arises in many people's minds, because you have a certain expectation of a buddha, of an awakened man. You think that an awakened man has to know everything that goes on around him. If you think that then you are not aware of the history of the awakened people.

Gautam Buddha was betrayed by his own cousin-brother, Devadatta. He was preparing to betray him for years, and he convinced five hundred people to go with him and leave Buddha, because Buddha was not really awakened; Devadatta was the real awakened one. What do you say? Gautam Buddha was not aware of this, therefore he was not enlightened?

But your expectations are without foundation. Gautam Buddha was given poison in food, and he ate it. Is that not enough for you to deny that Gautam Buddha was enlightened? He could not see that the food just in front of him is poisoned.

Mahavira is described by the Jainas as having all the qualities of God. He is omnipotent, all-powerful; omniscient, all-seeing, past, present, and future; omnipresent, past, present, future. But his own son-in-law betrayed him and prepared the ground to take thousands of his followers away with him, convincing them that he was the right tirthankara, Mahavira was not. What do you say about it? Mahavira is omniscient, that's what Jaina scriptures say; because of these scriptures you go on carrying absurd expectations that he sees everything, not only in the present, but the whole eternal past and the whole eternal future. But it has been known that one day he was standing before a house begging for his food and the house was empty. The people had left just the day before. Now this man cannot know whether the house is occupied or empty?

He knows all past, present, and future, and he does not know that the house in front of him is empty?

In fact your definitions are false. Enlightenment simply means that one knows oneself. It does not mean that he becomes omnipotent, that he becomes omniscient, that he starts seeing past, present and future. It simply means that he is no more ignorant of his own self; nothing else.

So please drop unnecessary expectations. I am a simple human being, who has come to know himself and is totally blissful, immensely contented, with his knowing. There is no question left. You are all full of questions, I am just empty of any questions. I am not even full of answers. It is your question that creates my answer, otherwise I am empty. And I don't claim any miraculous powers.

But you go on projecting ideas of your own which have nothing to do with me.

Now you say that I am a self-appointed buddha, as if you know what you are writing. Let us go into it a little deeper.

Do you want a buddha to be appointed by a committee? Naturally the committee will be of unenlightened people. The blind people will be appointing a man who has eyes. They will certify that, yes, he has eyes. Do you want a buddha to be chosen by a majority? Is it a political thing? The majority is blind, the minority is blind. How can they choose, how can they select? Do you want a buddha to be nominated by some king or some queen? But what do they understand about enlightenment? The `awakened one' is not a title that can be conferred by a government, it is not an award like the Nobel prize that a committee can decide.

It is not a degree that a university can give. Then how does it happen? It is not self-appointment either, it is self-revelation.

In your experience there are things which may help you to understand. You have a headache; now only you know it, even your doctor cannot know whether you have it or not. Is it a self-appointed headache, or has a committee decided, or has there been an election? You know when you have a headache.

The moment one becomes full of light and full of blissfulness one knows -- it is self-revelation. So please don't use ugly words, because you are not using ugly words only to me. You are using those ugly words to all the awakened ones of the whole history.

Q: WHY DO YOU NOT LAUGH HERE WITH US? YOU USED TO LAUGH IN YOUR COMMUNE IN AMERICA.

A: It is relevant. The commune in America consisted only of my sannyasins, who were deep in meditation, who had no questions to ask, who simply enjoyed my being with them. There was a certain harmony between my heart and their hearts. So it used to happen that when they would laugh, I would laugh; when they would dance, I would dance. You are still a little distant. If you want me to laugh with you, you will have to come a little closer, become a little more open, a little more receptive. If you want me to dance with you, you will have to start dancing.

I am available, it all depends on you. It is a question of communion. Right now I can only talk to you intellectually, not heart-to-heart, not being to being. It takes time to attain to that growth. It took four years of five thousand sannyasins living with me for all distance to disappear, for me to become completely one with them. Then their laughter was my laughter, and their dance was my dance.

Don't feel sad; you can manage it.

Now, the question that has been waiting: what is a woman? It is a simple question, yet great implications are in it. A woman is a man with a womb. That's exactly the meaning of the word woman: womb plus man. She has more than man has, she is richer than man is. She can produce life; man cannot. And because of this, because she is capable of producing the greatest thing, life, man has always felt an inferiority complex. To avoid that inferiority complex he has tried in every way to destroy the dignity of woman, to cut her wings, to engage her in the house, not to give her an education, not to allow her financial independence, not to let her move in the society freely, not to allow her to have friends of her own. These were the strategies to reduce her into a slave so that man can forget his inferiority complex.

He has done a few more things with himself. He has tried to create paintings, he has tried to create literature, he has tried to create great pieces of art, dances, poetry, just in order to feel that he is a creator.

At the same time he reduced the woman's freedom, destroyed her humanity in every possible way, in smaller ways.

I was a professor in a university. One of my friends, a professor in the same department, said to me, "I am in trouble. I had never thought about it before, but now it has become tremendously important. I have fallen in love with a woman who is taller than me. Now she insists on marriage, and I don't want to become a laughing stock, because she is really too tall, almost one foot taller than me." The man was very short, and he said, "Even now when we are not married, whenever we go anywhere together somebody asks her, `Is he your son?' And that hurts me very much." No man wants his wife to be taller than him.

It is time to understand clearly that there is no question of inferiority. Man is man, woman is woman; man has immense capacities which woman does not have. The woman's interest is very local, limited. Even the wife of Albert Einstein is not interested in his far away galaxies and stars. She gets fed up with him. She said, "Sometimes you should forget all about these stars. What have we to do with them? The real thing is that our neighbor's wife is having an affair with somebody else, and you are talking all kinds of nonsense. Talk something juicy."

The woman is very earthbound, man has strange interests, adventures. The woman is not interested in that. So there is no question of comparison. The woman creates life. But just life is not the real thing. Man can create consciousness. Very few women have been interested in creating consciousness.

Life is a lower thing. Consciousness is a higher thing. The woman is capable of creating consciousness, but very few women seem to be interested.

All the meditation techniques have been discovered by men, all the religious experiences have been discovered by men. All the art, all science, all poetry, even books on cookery are written by men. The best cooks in the greatest hotels of the world are men. Don't feel inferior; and neither does the woman have to feel inferior. She creates life; without her there would be no life and without life there is no possibility of awakening, of superconsciousness, of the ultimate experience of life. All the buddhas are born of a woman, they are indebted to the woman.

Both have their own uniqueness, there is no need to compare. If we accept each other in our uniqueness, men and women can become friends. Up to now they have been intimate enemies. I would like them to be intimate friends.