If you want consolation, go somewhere else

Question 1:

Dhyan Nidhi, before I answer your question I would like everyone to know that if you are not capable of understanding me when it is a question of your personal relationships then don't bring those questions to me, because I cannot lie and console you. I am not a consoler. Don't force me to be a baby-sitter.

When you bring a question to me, you have to be ready to understand my vision, my clarity, my understanding, even if it goes against your ego. It is bound to, because all your questions are arising out of the ego. That is your basic problem; all other problems are only by-products.

As far as I am concerned, I am not interested in your personal relationships; that is absolutely your own nightmare. You have chosen to suffer - suffer. But when you bring a question to me, then remember that I am simply going to say the truth of someone who can observe without being a party to anybody. This is not ordinarily the case in the world. Whenever you go to someone with a question about your personal relationship and the suffering it is bringing, the worldly way is to console you.

In some way, all the religions have been doing that for centuries. They have all found explanations so that nothing has to be changed; you are not to grow in consciousness and awareness. They only go on giving you homeopathic sugar pills - consoling you that it is your past life and its evil acts that are affecting your life, shadowing your life, bringing misery to you. All you can do is accept it and be patient, because God is compassionate and you will be finally forgiven. This is an opium; it keeps you half asleep.

People have chosen all these consolations because they help them to avoid taking the trouble of changing their consciousness, their understanding, their attitudes. Nothing has to be changed; you cannot do anything. So relax in your position, accept it as your fate, because if nothing can be done about it, the only thing possible is acceptance.

Acceptance brings a kind of peace - dead, hiding your despair, your anguish, your suffering. But knowing that nothing is in your hands; everything is in the hands of God ... you are only a puppet.

When he pulls your strings, you dance; whatever he wants to do with you, he does. It helps you to remain in a condition of being half asleep. And it also takes away the responsibility from you. You cannot do anything; hence you are not responsible for what is happening - you are not contributing to the suffering of yourself and the person you are related to.

And you can go on repeating the same vicious circle your whole life. Slowly, slowly you become accustomed, you become immune. You know this is how life is. That"s why there has not been any revolution in human relationships.

Although men and women have suffered together, creating all kinds of troubles for each other, there has not been in ten thousand years any revolution, any change in their relationships. What your parents have been doing, you are repeating. Your children will learn from you, and they will repeat it. You know that this is how life goes on ... you remember your parents, or perhaps even your grandparents. And your children are learning everything from you, and they know this is the way life has to be lived.

So if you want consolation, go somewhere else - any priest will be helpful: Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jewish.

I am not here for consolation.

Consolation to me is poison.

I want to help you to see clearly how you are creating your own world. To me, you are your own world, and you are your world"s creator. Neither your past life nor any God is deciding what is happening in your life; you are the decisive factor. Take responsibility for it. Be strong, have some stamina, and make an effort to change.

But first you ask the question, and if I don't answer then you feel rejected. Just the other day there was one question, "I have asked my question many times, and you are not replying. I feel very much rejected." You don't leave me any space. And if I answer it, then you feel hurt. My answer is going to hurt you - hurt you terribly, because my answer is going to open your wounds which you have been hiding, of which you may not be aware.

Just last night I was talking about Dhyan Om and his ex-girlfriend Latifa, because they were continuously fighting. It seems their whole psychology was completely fixed: each was trying to dominate the other, and both were strong people. Nobody was submissive and there was no solution.

If one was weaker and had submitted, seeing all the trouble, the problem would have remained but there would have been a cold war; undercurrents would have continued. But because both were strong personalities ... and nothing is wrong in being strong, but they were misusing their strength.

Every good thing can be misused.

It is not only weakness that creates problems, it is also strength that creates problems. If one of them were weaker, that person would have accepted the slavery and they would have been a good couple. Such good couples you can find everywhere. Their goodness consists only in the fact that the woman has surrendered. She has accepted for centuries to be secondary, not to try to dominate directly. But indirectly she goes on torturing, nagging, being bitchy; that is a natural outcome of an unwilling state.

Nobody can love slavery. Everybody hates it. And the man who has forced the slavery, rather than being your lover, becomes your enemy. So on the surface, just a thin layer of love ... and underneath there is so much hate. But you are not aware of that hate because it is in the deep darkness of your unconscious.

People have been asking me how to avoid their wife"s or their girlfriend"s nagging, because it has become a continuous headache. In the name of love, what they are getting is not love but just a constant torture, very subtle. She may not say anything, she may simply bang the door, but she has said everything by banging the door, by dropping the plate, by beating the child. She may not say anything to the husband. But the child has not done anything and he has a good beating. And the husband knows that HE is being beaten, not the child. To avoid this whole thing, he tries to escape from the home, to the office.

You know about the offices. The boss approaches first. Even before the janitor has reached the office to unlock it, to clean it, the boss is already there, sitting in the car. Then the janitor arrives, then the clerks start coming, then the manager comes .... And they all look happier in the office, where there is so much work, and they hope that by the weekend they will be able to relax for two days.

But those two days of the weekend prove to be the most terrible because they have to be at home for twenty-four hours. Clouds of misery surround them. For five days, the working days, they hope for the weekend, and at the weekend they pray to God, "Finish this weekend as quickly as possible; the office is far better!"

I have heard, two men used to sit in the pub very late every day till the owner was about to close. He almost had to push them out, saying, "Now go home, it is illegal to keep the pub open any longer. It is the middle of the night. Get out!" Then reluctantly they would go.

One day, one man asked the other, "I know why I am sitting here, but what is the reason that you go on sitting here every day?"

The other one said, "My reason is my wife. As long as I can remain out of the home I have some dignity, some self-respect. The moment I enter the home, I have to enter with my tail between my legs. And immediately all my dignity, all my self-respect is destroyed. But why do you go on sitting here? I know perfectly well you are unmarried."

The first man said, "I go on sitting here just because I am unmarried - there is nobody waiting for me at home. I am hoping to get married."

He said, "This is strange, I am sitting here because I am married; you are sitting here because you are unmarried, there is nobody at home waiting for you. For me there is somebody waiting ..."

What kind of relationships have we created?

Dhyan Om was very angry. You ask the question, and then your reaction is anger. That means you missed the point. Latifa was a little better. She was crying, and then laughing ... and then crying, and then laughing. Whenever she understood the point she laughed, and whenever she became herself she cried. So this went on for a long time.

Shunyo is innocent - in a way very gullible. She thought this poor Om was presenting the sari to her because she understands him and his misery. This is something to be understood. I have been working with thousands of people for almost three decades .... Women never sympathize with women because they know from their own experience how bitchy they are! So they project the same bitchiness on every other woman; they never sympathize with the woman. They will always sympathize with the man: "Poor fellow, he is suffering so much in the hands of that monster."

This is one of the reasons why women are not yet liberated, because they cannot become a force together. They sympathize with the man; their sympathy is not for other women. With other women they have a relationship only of jealousy - if she has better clothes, if she has better ornaments, if she has a good car, if she has a better house. Their only relationship with other women is of jealousy.

But if every woman is jealous of every other woman, then naturally this is one of the fundamental causes of their slavery. They cannot become a force; otherwise they are half the number of people - they could have managed to become liberated long ago. Any time they wanted to be liberated there was nothing to prevent them. They are their own enemies.

Shunyo is innocent. She unnecessarily got into trouble by accepting the sari. She should have told Om, "This day when you are separating, it seems so outlandish; it proves you really are a crackpot.

In one room you are deciding to separate and suddenly, in the middle of this separation business, you remember to present a sari to me."

Now he is saying that he had not purchased the sari from here. A few days before, Latifa had sent Om to Bangalore for some work and there he purchased the sari, with Latifa"s money. And he wanted to give it to Shunyo because she understands him better than anybody else; she sympathizes with him, consoles him more than anybody else.

But I wonder why he was keeping that sari for so many days? If it was purchased in Bangalore with Latifa"s money, when he had come back from Bangalore he should have given it to Shunyo. Why had he been keeping it only for the day when he would be separating? This shows a cunningness, a calculativeness. It was not purchased for Shunyo. It was purchased because it was certain that sooner or later he and Latifa will have to separate, because they are creating a constant scene in Lao Tzu House. So he brought the sari in case they have to separate and he will have to find another woman immediately.

It is just a coincidence that he found Shunyo. If it was purchased for Shunyo, he would have given it to her a few weeks before; that would have been natural, that he had gone and purchased it, and he had given it as a gift. But just yesterday, when he had to change his room and take his things - before doing that, just in the middle of all that turmoil - he remembered to give Shunyo the sari.

Shunyo has to understand it. This innocence can be misused by others.

Just a few days before, one woman, Patipada, was here. She wanted to be here but she was part of a small group that destroyed the commune in America, because they committed so many crimes that their crimes became a support to the American government.

This Patipada had even tried poisoning people, under the instructions of Sheela. And before things had come to a point where I was going to request the government to enquire into all the activities this small gang had done against the whole innocent commune, Sheela escaped. Patipada also escaped, and the day she escaped she came to see me just as I was going for a press interview.

She was standing there in front of the door, and she said, "I am very grateful to you, Osho, but now perhaps I will never see you again. I am leaving this place tonight."

"But," I said, "why are you leaving, and why will you not be able to see me again?"

She said, "The situation is such."

It was only discovered later, when all the crimes were discovered, that she was also a partner in those crimes. That was the reason for leaving the commune, and that was the reason ... because then in what way will she be able to face me? But she came here, and she knows perfectly well that I will forgive her; there is no problem about it.

It is human to err, and it is more human to forgive. I will not say it is divine to forgive. That is making forgiveness a superiority.

But she gave two hundred rupees to Shunyo, two hundred rupees to Nirvano, and two hundred rupees to Amrito just as a present.

Amrito and Nirvano both thought that this was a bribe so that she can be accepted into the commune, and they wanted to give that money back - it looked dirty. But Shunyo is innocent; she behaved the same with Patipada, thinking, "How sweet she is." She could not see the point, why in the first place she would give that money to her. It is because these three people look after me; to approach me, these three people are the key. And if they are satisfied with her then perhaps they will help her to get re-established in the commune.

But Shunyo was also hurt yesterday, because she was thinking it was because of Om"s great understanding of her sympathy that he had given her the present.

One thing every woman has to remember is that man has divided you in such a cunning way that you can never become a force. You are jealous of each other; you don't have any sympathy for each other. You would rather sympathize with men - not your man of course! It has to be somebody else"s man.

Shunyo has to grow in more understanding and more awareness. The only man who laughed at the whole matter and enjoyed it was Shunyo"s boyfriend, Milarepa. He really enjoyed the whole thing.

He proved to be a more understanding person. He did not jump into the tournament that was going on; he remained outside playing his guitar, thinking, "Let these fools decide whatever they want to do."

And people freak out so easily if anything is said which goes against their opinions and their habits.

They don't even think about it, that I don't have any vested interest in their relationships - whether they are together or separate. Just because they ask the question, I feel it as part of my compassion to make things absolutely clear.

And once things are clear to you ... they cannot be clear in anger, they cannot be clear when you are freaking out. They can be clear only when you meditate upon them. Whatever I say to you has to be meditated upon. You are not to be defensive about it, because there is no question - I am not attacking you. You all belong to me in the same way.

I would like you to be more individual, more free, more alert, more conscious, more meditative.

And these situations can be great opportunities for meditation. But if you get angry, freak out, start defending yourself, then please don't ask such questions. I have no interest at all. Your relationship is your business.

My simple concern here is meditation. And this is very strange - rarely do you ask questions about meditation. That does not seem to be your main concern. To me, it is my ultimate concern, the only concern, and to you it seems not a priority - it is not the first item on your mind. Perhaps it may be the last thing on your laundry list, but certainly it is not the first; the first things are stupid things, trivia. You waste your time, you waste my time.

And I am ready even to help you to solve those problems just so that you can get rid of all this nonsense and have simple, loving relationships. But that will be possible only when meditation becomes your priority. Out of meditation, everything else will become graceful; you will be able to see deeply into your own acts, into your own behavior, and you will be able to have some compassion for the other person - his human frailty, the possibility of his committing mistakes.

When somebody commits a mistake you don't have to be angry, you have to be more compassionate, so that he does not start feeling guilty. Because you don't understand the psychology of things: if one person commits a mistake and you become angry - and your anger is justified because the mistake has been done by the other person - your anger creates humiliation in the other person. That humiliation becomes a wound which wants revenge. So the other person will wait until you commit a mistake - and you are not beyond committing mistakes - and then he will take revenge with a vengeance.

Never make anyone feel guilty, because if you make the person guilty he or she can only hate you; love becomes impossible.

That"s why I repeat again and again:

Love needs as a basic foundation, meditation.

Only in the heart of meditation roses of love can grow. That is the right soil; there is no other way.

Dhyan Nidhi, your question is, "From your answer to the woman who falls in love with bank balances, not the man, I realized that I can"t even see the man, let alone love him. I have accepted my mother"s angry conditioning towards men. When a man comes to me with his love, I run away, which encourages him to chase me. This game I play is so ugly. Please Osho, help me to drop this garbage, to be able to see men and to know their beauty, their gifts, their love."

Now, if you really want to drop this garbage ... your mother is in that garbage, and that will hurt you. You have been poisoned by your mother. Out of a hundred problems and troubles, almost ninety percent of them are because of your mothers because the child grows in the mother"s womb.

Even while he is in the womb, the mother"s moods and emotions affect him. If the mother remains constantly angry, sad, gloomy, frustrated - if she does not want the child and the husband has forced her to have a child, if she is having the child unwillingly ... all these things are going to affect the basic fabric of the child"s mind. He is in the making. It is not only the flesh of the mother and the blood of the mother that the child will get; he will also get her psychology - not only her physiology.

So while a mother is pregnant she has to be very careful because a new life is being created inside her. Anything she is going to do - fighting with the husband, fighting with the neighbors, or being frustrated for any reason - is destroying and poisoning the child"s mind from the very roots. Before he is born, he is already prejudiced.

It is not only your mother who is angry with men. Almost ninety-nine percent of women are angry with their husbands. The same is true about husbands: they are angry with their wives. But their anger does not affect the child so much, because the child is inside the mother"s womb and the child starts growing under the shadow of the mother, not under the shadow of the father. The father remains only a casual visitor. In the morning he may give the child a kiss, pat him and go to the office. In the evening he may come and have a little talk with the child; otherwise, for twenty-four hours the child is learning everything from the mother.

That"s why every language is called the mother language, because the father has no chance to speak to the child when the mother is present! Mother speaks, father listens - the child learns the language from the mother. And it is not only the language, all her attitudes ....

Every woman is angry for the simple reason that she is not free, she is enslaved. And certainly the enslaver is the husband; he has become her prison.

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 adikari" - 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.

Once in a while this also happens - it is natural, but mostly it becomes suppressed by the time she gets married - that deep down a woman carries her mother"s feelings; she has been against men.

And I don't see why she should not be, there is every reason. Man has crippled the woman, has prevented her from education, has prevented her from financial independence, has prevented her movement in the society. She is encaged in the home. Her whole dignity, her whole joy as a social being is completely destroyed. Naturally, there is anger.

Dhyan Nidhi, you have accepted your mother"s angry conditioning towards men. It is absolutely well-founded, but it is not going to help human society or create a better future. Past is past.

You should start looking at men with fresh eyes - and particularly in this place, where our whole effort is unconditioning, dehypnotizing. All the rubbish that you are carrying has to be thrown away; you have to become unburdened and light so that you can gain your own understanding, your own insight.

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.

You are in a totally different space than your mother. Now, carrying her anger and her conditioning is simply stupid. Just forgive her and forget her, because if you go on having this conditioning of anger against men, you will never feel complete - you cannot love men. And a woman or a man who is incapable of loving remains incomplete, frustrated.

And this way it creates a vicious circle. Your anger prevents you from love, because love means dropping anger against men and moving to the diametrically opposite polarity - instead of anger, love; instead of hate, love. A quantum leap needs courage. The vicious circle is that because of your angry conditioning you cannot love men, and because you cannot love men you become more and more frustrated, and your frustration makes you more angry - this is the vicious circle. Anger brings frustration; frustration makes you more angry, more violent, more against men. That brings more anger, and the circle goes on becoming deeper and deeper. And to get out of it becomes almost impossible.

You have to begin from the very beginning. The first thing is, try to understand that your mother lived in a different situation. Perhaps her anger was right. Your situation is different. Moreover, now that you are here with me, your whole situation is totally different. Here, carrying your mother within your mind is simply unreasonable. You have to live your life; you are not to live your mother"s life.

She suffered; now why do you want to make more suffering in the world? Why do you want to be a martyr?

Have every compassion towards your mother - I am not saying to get angry at your mother that she conditioned you. That will be again keeping you in anger, just changing the object from men to the mother. No, I want you to drop the anger completely. Your mother needs your compassion; she must have suffered. That created anger in her. But you are not suffering.

You put your anger aside and you have a fresh look at men. And particularly in my place ... these men are not the same as you will find outside in the world. They have some understanding that man has done wrong, much wrong, to women. And they feel sorry for it.

But they have not done it. If their forefathers did it, it is beyond their power to undo it; what has happened, has happened. They have a deep apology in their hearts for what man has done to women. And you have to understand this, that these are a different category of people.

I am creating every possibility for the New Man - a man who is not contaminated by the past, who is discontinuous with the past. It is a difficult job; it is almost like hitting my head against the wall. But I am determined to go on hitting - I trust in my head! And the wall is very old and ancient. It may hurt me, but it has to fall; its days are finished. It has already lived more than its life span.

So have a fresh look towards men. Without man, a woman is incomplete, just as the man is incomplete without a woman. There is only one exception: if you become enlightened, then your inner woman and your inner man make a completion. But without enlightenment you remain half - you have to become complete by meeting with the other sex on the outside. Otherwise, everybody has both, because you are born out of the meeting of a man and woman; your father has contributed, your mother has contributed. You are carrying your father and mother both within you.

Sometimes it is only a question of a very small difference. For example, there are people known as "the third sex" - what is their problem? Their problem is that their man inside is fifty percent and their woman inside is fifty percent; they equalize each other. Hence they are neither man nor woman.

Mostly the difference is big enough - at least seventy-five percent woman, twenty-five percent man, or seventy-five percent man, twenty-five percent woman.

But sometimes the difference is very small: fifty-one percent woman, forty-nine percent man. Then it happens once in a while that the sex changes without your doing anything. The difference is so small that a little change in food, in atmosphere, a little change in your hormones - just by accident you were taking some medicine for something else - and it changes your chemical balance. And the difference was so small ...

There have been many cases in the past in the courts around the world ... A man marries a woman and after a few months the woman turns into a man. Now the problem is, what to do? Both are men.

And they have to resort to going to the court. Physiologists came to figure out why such accidental sex changes happen, and now it is possible through scientific methods to change the sex. And many people are changing their sex.

Perhaps in the future it will become a fashion. I am certain about it - it will become a fashion. You will live up to thirty years as a man, and then you will go through a change and become a woman. If you can manage to live both sides of the coin in one life, why live only on one side? If you can know both banks of the river, know both banks. Your life will be richer, and at least you will not talk in the way old poets and philosophers have been talking for centuries, that "Woman is a mystery." Become a woman and know the mystery!

There is nothing, no mystery. Neither the woman is a mystery nor is the man a mystery; the mystery is when love happens between them. Alone they are dry deserts. When love comes as a spring it brings thousands of flowers to their being, and much juice, much greenness. Life is no longer just a drag, it becomes a dance.

Dhyan Nidhi, meditate more and be aware when your mother"s voice starts speaking to your mind.

Slowly, slowly put that voice to sleep. Don't listen to it; it will spoil your whole life. You have to learn how to love the man.

By loving, the man becomes more polite, nicer, a gentleman, loses his corners, becomes softer.

Through love, the woman starts blossoming; otherwise she remains a closed bud. Only in love, when the sun of love rises, she opens her petals. Only in love her eyes start having a different depth, a different shine; her face starts having a joyous outlook. She has a deep transformation through love; she comes to maturity, of age.

So you get rid of the conditioning that your mother unconsciously has given to you. You have accepted it unconsciously. The way to get rid of it is to become conscious of it. It is a good beginning that you have asked. This is the beginning of consciousness - just the very ABC. You have to go far to change your mind completely, to be fresh, unconditioned, open and vulnerable.

And because of this conditioning you have been playing this ugly game, that whenever a man comes to you with his love, you run away - which naturally encourages him to chase you. That you enjoy, that he is chasing you. Every woman enjoys that. It is ugly; you are not aware of its deeper implications. It means you are the game; the man is the hunter and he is chasing the game. You are allowing a supremacy to man, unknowingly.

It has been traditionally given to you that the initiative in love should be taken by men, not by women; it is against a woman"s grace. Those are all rotten ideas. Why be number two from the very beginning? If you love a man, why wait? I know many women who have waited for years because they wanted the man to take the initiative. But they have fallen in love with such men who were not going to take the initiative.

I know one woman in Bombay who was in love with J. Krishnamurti. Her whole life she remained unmarried, waiting for J. Krishnamurti to take the initiative. She is one of the most beautiful women - but J. Krishnamurti is not the type of man ... he is utterly fulfilled within himself, he does not need anybody else to complete him. Obviously, he never took any initiative. And the woman, out of the conditioning of thousands of years, of course cannot take the initiative - that is against grace, that is primitive.

I know another woman in Ahmedabad who waited her whole life for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to marry her. Jawaharlal was not an enlightened man, and there was every possibility ... And very strangely, in his old age he fell in love with Lady Mountbatten and they were writing such letters to each other that teenagers write. They were so foolish ....

But this woman belongs to the richest family of Ahmedabad - I used to stay in their home - and she is so ugly. Jawaharlal was a beautiful man; I cannot conceive that he would ever have thought of this woman when any woman would have been ready to marry him. But she was thinking only of her richness.

I know both the women. The woman who was in love with J. Krishnamurti used to come to see me also. I have seen in both these women"s eyes such sadness ... it would have been better if they had taken the initiative. There is no harm if the other person says, "Excuse me, I am not ready." He has that right, it is not an insult. It is simply his freedom to say yes or no.

I would like my women not to wait for the man to take the initiative. If they feel love for someone, they should take the initiative and they should not feel humiliated if the man is not willing. This will give them equality. These are small things which will make the liberation of woman possible.

But the woman has been always trying to be game. She attracts the man, she tries in every way to attract him by her beauty, by her clothes, by her perfume, by her hairdo, all that she can manage to do, her makeup ...

She attracts the man, and once the man is attracted then she starts running away.

But she does not run too fast, either. She goes on looking back, to see whether that fellow is coming or not. If he is left far behind, she waits. When he comes again close, she starts running. This is stupid; love should be a clean affair. You love someone, you express your love and tell the other person, "You are not obliged to say yes; your no will be perfectly respected. It is just my desire. You need not unwillingly say yes to me, because that yes is dangerous unless you also feel love for me.

Only then can our life become a completion."

A woman and a man in love can move into meditation very easily. Meditation and love are such close phenomena that if you move into meditation, your love energies start overflowing. If you really fall in love with someone who loves you, your meditative energies start growing; they are very deeply joined experiences. Hence I am in favor of both.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.