Something of the wild

Question 1:

Prem Salila, it is a strange logic of life, but in a way very simple. In the East ninety-eight percent of the women have not known what orgasm is. Your question is, "Why is it they look so graceful and not frustrated like the women in the West?" That's why! You have to be in a position of experiencing something and then having it denied to you; only then frustration sets in. If you don't know at all that anything like orgasm exists, then there is no question of frustration. In the West also, before this century, the woman was not frustrated because the situation was the same there.

It was because of psychoanalysis and the deeper researches into human energies that it was discovered that for a millennium we have lived under a fallacy. The fallacy was that the woman has a vaginal orgasm, which has not been found to be true; she does not have a vaginal orgasm at all.

In fact, the woman's vagina is absolutely insensitive, it feels nothing. Her orgasm is clitoral - and that is a totally separate part. She can reproduce children without knowing any orgasm, she can make love without knowing any orgasm.

Hence for centuries, in the East and West both, the woman was satisfied to become a mother.

In a way she was against sex, because it was not giving her any joy - it was giving only trouble: pregnancy.

For centuries women have lived just like factories, reproducing children. Man has used them as factories, not as human beings - because nine children out of ten used to die; so if you want two or three children, the woman has to produce two or three dozen children. That means that for her whole sexual life, while she is capable of giving birth to life, she becomes pregnant again and again; and pregnancy is a suffering.

She has never been in favor of sex. She has suffered it, she has tolerated it. She has gone into it because it was her duty; and deep down she has hated her husband because he is just like an animal. Why do you think women have always worshipped celibate saints? The innermost reason is that their celibacy proved them to be holier beings.

She cannot respect her own husband in the same way. Once you have a sexual relationship with a woman, she cannot have respect for you. That has been the cost - because she knows you have used her. In every language the expression makes it clear: it is the man who makes love to the woman, not vice versa. It is strange... they are making love with each other, but in every language it is always the man who makes love; the woman is only an object. The woman only tolerates and goes into it because she has been conditioned in her mind that it is her duty; the husband is the god and she has to make his life as pleasant as possible.

But sex has not given anything to her. And she has been kept unaware... because man must have become aware very early, when there was no marriage and when men and women were as free as birds, man must have become aware - and the ancientmost women also - that she has a capacity for multiple orgasm. It is a very dangerous signal to the husband to trigger her orgasmic energies.

The husband cannot satisfy her - no husband can satisfy a woman. It seems to be a disparity, a fault of nature, that she can have multiple orgasms and man can have only one orgasm.

So man has tried to avoid even the knowledge that the woman can have orgasm. That's why in the East it is still the case, particularly in the interior parts of the country. Leave aside the modern cities, where a few women may have found out through their education, may have heard the names of Masters and Johnson, who have discovered women's capacity for multiple orgasm.

But in the West it became a problem, because the discovery of multiple orgasm and the centuries-old deception by man of woman was a simultaneous growth. At the same time the women's liberation movement was coming up, and women were trying to find out all the wrongs that had been done to them by men. They suddenly got hold of this new phenomenon, this research, and the most fanatic women's liberation women have become lesbians; because only a woman can help another woman to have multiple orgasm - because it is not concerned with the vagina at all.

Men's and women's bodies are very similar, except that the man has only marks of the breasts and the woman has actual breasts; but the man has the marks on his physiology. The clitoris is just a mark of the man's penis; it is just a small growth, but it is outside the vagina. Children are born out of the vagina, and man need not touch the clitoris - and without playing with the clitoris the woman cannot have an orgasm; so it was very simple to avoid it.

The Eastern woman looks more contented because she is not aware of what she is missing.

She is more graceful because she has not even started thinking of any liberation.

The East, as a whole, has lived under the conditioning of contentment - man and woman both - in poverty, in slavery, in sickness, in death.

The idea of revolution was impossible in the Eastern mind because the conditioning was so strong, and so many centuries old, that whatever you are is the by-product of your own actions in past lives.

It has nothing to do with the social structure, it has nothing to do with education, it has nothing to do with the division of classes in society, it has nothing to do with men's enslavement of women. The conditioning is so old that one is born with it, and the atmosphere all around is supportive of the conditioning.

All the religions of the East preach that the woman is born a woman because of her past actions; man is a higher being and the woman is a lower being. This has been accepted. If you are poor, it is not because of exploitation by the rich; you are poor because of your wrong actions in the past.

Man's mind has been diverted from the realities to fictitious explanations - you cannot do anything to change your past life, you have to go through it. Unbelievable religious sects grew in the East, which no reasonable person can accept, but millions followed them. For example, Jainas believe that a woman cannot attain to enlightenment from a woman's body because she cannot be really celibate. She cannot stop her menstrual period, and that keeps her a sexual being. So unless she attains by being contented, graceful, prayerful, serving her husband and accepting everything as her fate... this is the only way she will be able to be born as a man in the next life.

So nothing can be done right now; right now one has to simply accept and remain contented. Any rebelliousness will spoil the chances even for the future; any discontentment, any frustration will not only destroy your present, it will destroy your future too. So the better course, the intelligent course, is to be silent. Nobody can help you, because you did wrong things in your past life - although your poverty is not concerned with your past life.... But that is a very recent finding, and it has not penetrated into the Eastern mind yet.

And just as women have their monthly period, men also have one; that is the very latest finding. So if her monthly period prevents a woman from being enlightened, it will prevent a man also - just the expression of it is subtle. The woman's expression is physical - you can see the blood every month.

But if every man keeps a diary, he will be surprised: every month, after twenty-eight days, for four or five days he becomes bad-tempered, exactly the way the woman becomes irritable, annoyed at small things.

The same person would not have been annoyed by the same things at another time, but within those four or five days... his period is more psychological, and the woman's period is more physiological; that's the only difference. And it is good for every couple to know perfectly well that when a woman is having her period the man has to be more understanding, that it is beyond her. She will be irritable, she will be easily annoyed, she will become angry, will be more nagging.

In the East, to avoid this they have found a very strange strategy: during the time of her period the woman has to live in a dark cell in the house. She has not to come out, she has not to contact anybody - because even her shadow contaminates everything. She cannot prepare the food, and she has to remain aloof and hidden, ashamed of herself. In a way it was good that she rested for those four or five days, did not come in contact with anyone and did not create any unnecessary conflict. But this was one-sided and unjustified - man also has his period.

The worst combination is when the husband and wife both have their periods together. Then the situation is on the scale of war. But mostly it does not happen - the husband has his period at one time, the wife at a different time. But if the husband keeps a diary for four or five months - just to find which are the dates when his period begins and which are the dates when his period ends - he can allow the wife and the family to know that for these five days, they have to be a little more tolerant and more compassionate towards him, because he will be in the same situation.

Men and women are not different species. They may differ, but they belong to the same species.

Stop that old nonsense - that the woman cannot become enlightened from her body because she cannot prevent her periods, and that it is the obvious proof that she cannot be celibate. Man can only pretend to be celibate because his period is psychological, he has no visible symptoms.

There has been a sect in India, Terapanth. It says that even if you are passing by the side of a well and somebody has fallen into the well and is crying, shouting, "Save me! Help me!" just go on your way as if you have not heard him at all - because he is suffering a punishment for some wrong action done in his past life. If you interfere he will again have to fall into a well. Why give him unnecessary trouble? You are thinking you are helping - you are simply postponing. It is better for him to be finished with the punishment rather than to take your help, come out of the well and then have to fall in again. He will have to fall in again.

This is one side of the danger - that you have interfered unnecessarily, because nobody can change his fate, nobody can undo his past, he has to go through all the consequences. Secondly, your interference creates bad consequences for you. You saved the man and he commits a murder tomorrow... then you may not be caught by the police and the courts, but the law of karma - which all Eastern religions believe in - will not forgive you. You have to share the consequences, because if you had not saved him, he could not have murdered. You are a partner - unknowingly, unconsciously, but that does not change the law. The law has to be fulfilled in every condition.

This is the logical end of the theory of the law of karma, the law of action and its consequences.

That's why in the East there has been no revolution.

And the question of why women look so graceful, and not as frustrated as in the West, is very simple to understand: they have accepted their fate. The Western woman, for the first time in history, is revolting against all these fictitious ideas about fate, the law of karma, past lives.

It is such a nonsense idea - that you did something in your past life, and existence will wait such a long time to punish you. Who is going to keep the records for so many millions of people? And we know it in life - you put your hand... that's what I said to one Jaina monk who was arguing with me about the law of karma. I told him, "There is no problem. You put your hand in the fire, and let us see whether it burns now or in your next life."

Consequences follow the action immediately. I told him, "Put your hand in..." and he hesitated. I said, "Why are you hesitating? It is a long time... in the next life you will be burned."

He said, "This is a strange way of arguing. You will burn my hand right now."

I said, "That makes you realize that in nature, in life, the action is followed by the consequence, just like you are followed by your shadow. There is not such a gap... you passed by in a past life and in this life we see your shadow passing by. We simply see your shadow, and we know that somebody must have passed by here in a past life. The consequence is the shadow."

But Western woman has had to pass through a very revolutionary period which destroyed her contentment, the grace that had always been hers. And it has led her to the extreme; she has started behaving in an ugly and nasty way. It is not a rebelliousness with understanding, it is just a reactionary attitude.

Of the causes that marked the change between the Western woman and the Eastern, the first is Karl Marx. He proposed, and convinced the intelligentsia of the whole world, that poverty has nothing to do with any past life, or with fate, or with destiny; that it is not decided by God who should be poor and who should be rich. It is the social structure, the economic structure which decides who is going to be poor. And this structure can be changed, because it is not God-made - there is no God, as such - it is man-made.

The Russian revolution proved Karl Marx right on an experimental basis - that the structure can be changed, that kings can become paupers and paupers can become kings. And no interference was made by God, "You cannot do this, it is my writing on their foreheads, you cannot change it."

The Tsar's whole family in Russia - nineteen people, men and women, old, young, children, one small baby only six months old, and one man ninety-five years old - the whole royal family of nineteen people was massacred. They were cut into pieces, and God did not interfere saying, "What are you doing with this family? That is my decision. What are you doing with the people who I have made the owners of almost one-sixth of the world?" The Russian Empire was the biggest empire of those days, and the Tsar was the richest man in the world.

So the first hammering came from Karl Marx. The second hammering came from Sigmund Freud.

He declared that men and women are equal, belong to the same species, and any theories or philosophies which condemn women are simply inhuman and male chauvinistic. And then the third and the last hammering came from Masters and Johnson's researches, which brought to light that the woman has been deprived of orgasm for centuries. It proved that man has been really inhuman in his behavior. As far as his own sexual needs were concerned he used the woman, but he did not allow the woman to enjoy sex.

These three things have changed the whole atmosphere in the West; but these three things have not yet penetrated into the Eastern, traditional mind. As a result, the Western woman is on the warpath.

But it is a reactionary phenomenon; hence I am not in favor of what goes on in the name of women's liberation.

I want women to be liberated, but not to go to the other extreme. The women's liberation movement is going to the other extreme - it is trying to be revengeful, it is trying to do to man exactly what man has done to her.

This is sheer stupidity. Past is past, it is no longer there and what man has done has been done unconsciously. It was not a conscious conspiracy against women. Neither he was aware, nor the woman was aware.

The women's liberation movement is declaring that they don't want to have any relationship with men - cut off all relationships with men. They are promoting lesbianism, a parallel of homosexuality - that women should love only other women and boycott men. This is sheer perversion. And as a reaction, women should do everything to man that he has done to her: misbehave, mistreat, use dirty words as man has always done, smoke cigarettes as man has always done.

Naturally, they are losing their grace, their beauty... dress just as man has always dressed. But it is a strange phenomenon that the way you dress changes so much. The Eastern woman's dress has a grace, and it gives a grace to her whole body. The Western woman is trying to compete with cowboys - blue jeans, stupid looking clothes, ugly hairdos.

They think perhaps they are taking revenge - they are destroying themselves. But revenge always destroys you, reaction always destroys you. I would love to see them as rebels.

A rebel knows that to err is human, and to forgive is more human.

The past was full of mistakes of all kinds. Discontinue the past. Start everything - man's and woman's relationship included - under the light of fresh findings. Find out ways together how life can be a beautiful experience, a loving dance without all the ugliness that has happened in the past.

Don't repeat it again.

It is simply the movement of the pendulum: man was doing idiotic things, now woman will do the idiotic things. But humanity as a whole goes on suffering. Who does the stupid thing does not matter, but humanity does not evolve.

Man and woman have to come to an understanding. They have to forgive the past and forget it. And they have to start anew with the new findings, remembering one thing - that the woman should not imitate man, because her attraction, her beauty, has a different dimension.

If she imitates man she will become only a carbon copy of man, she will lose her identity - and she is losing it. The body, in a subtle way, follows your mind. The Western woman's body is losing the old grace, the old contours. The Western woman does not have such beautiful breasts as she used to have.

What happened? The body follows the mind; she used to have a beautiful curvature, now she is becoming a straight line. And a woman without breasts, a straight line, no curves anywhere, is an ugly phenomenon - it will be such a disgrace. But her clothes will affect her body, her mental attitudes will affect her body.

She has not to become a carbon copy of man. She has to become perfect as a woman and create as much difference between man and herself as possible. The bigger the difference the more the attraction, the more the beauty, the more the grace. She has to find her own identity.

I am absolutely in favor of liberation - liberation for both man and woman - because it is a simple law: the enslaver also becomes a slave of his own slaves.

Man has enslaved woman, but he has also become a slave. That's why you cannot find a husband who is not really henpecked - at least I have not found one yet. I have been searching for a husband who is not henpecked. Outside they are all lions - at least members of the Lion's Club. In the house they are not more than rats. And if they had any understanding, they would make a rat's club. That would be true - a henpecked husband's club.

You cannot enslave anybody without becoming a slave. What you give to others, you have to get back. Give love and you will get love. Give slavery and you will get slavery. Whatever you give comes back to you in some form or other. Man and woman both need liberation - liberation from the past, liberation from all the mistakes, all the ugly ideas of the past. And they have to create a new world, a new man, a new woman.

But nothing like this is happening anywhere. I would like my people - particularly the women - to create an authentic women's liberation front, which will not be reactionary, which will not be out of anger and hatred; which will be out of understanding, compassion, love and meditation. Then the Western woman will not lose her grace, will not lose her contentment.

In fact, man also can be more graceful if he allows the woman to be more graceful. Man can also be more beautiful if he allows the woman to be more beautiful. But this means creating more distance - the farther away they are, the more the magnetic pull, the more the attraction, the more the adventure. To see a woman smoking cigarettes - I simply cannot believe my eyes! What else is she going to do next? She will start pissing standing! She has to do everything that man has been doing - all foolishnesses.

The woman has to keep above reactions, and create such a grace and beauty around herself that man will also have to create a more beautiful individuality, a more graceful character. And their meeting should not be anymore in marriage; their meeting should be only of friends - a friendliness, not even friendship. That word 'friendship' reminds one of relationship. That "ship" has drowned the whole of humanity. Now no more "ships" - now friendliness, and a deep understanding that nothing is permanent in life.

Even love is a roseflower: in the morning dancing in the wind, in the sun - as if it will remain forever, with such grandeur, with such certainty, with such authority. So fragile and yet so strong against the wind, against the rain, against the sun. But by the evening the petals have withered away, and the rose is gone. That does not mean that it was illusory, it simply means that in life everything is change. And change keeps things new, fresh.

The day marriage disappears, the life of both men and women will become healthier - and certainly longer than you can even imagine. You may not be able to see what the relationship is between long life and marriage. Because marriage is a kind of going against the changing life, it creates a permanent thing; both husband and wife become dull, bored - life loses interest. In fact, they have to destroy their interest, otherwise there is continuous conflict. The husband cannot take an interest in any other woman, the woman cannot laugh with another man. They become prisoners of each other; life becomes a boredom, a routine.

Who wants to live such a life? The will to live becomes weakened. This brings sicknesses, diseases - because their resistance against death is not there. In fact, they start thinking how to finish this whole vicious circle sooner; they start asking deep down in their hearts for death. A will to death arises.

Sigmund Freud was the first man to discover that there is, in the unconscious of man, a will to death.

But I have my disagreements with Sigmund Freud. This will to death is not a natural phenomenon - it is a by-product of marriage, it is a by-product of a bored life. When one starts feeling that living is no longer an adventure, there are no new spaces, no new pastures, then why go on unnecessarily living? Then an eternal sleep in a grave seems to be far more comfortable, far more luxurious, far more joyous.

In no animal does the will to death exist. In the wild, no animal commits suicide. But strangely, in a zoo it has been found that animals commit suicide. And if Sigmund Freud had been studying only zoo animals, he would have concluded that there is a will to death, just as there is a will to life. But the zoo animals are not real animals; and a marriage makes everybody a zoo animal - confined, chained in a thousand and one subtle ways. Sigmund Freud had no idea of wild animals, or wild human beings.

I want human beings to have something of the wild in them. That is my rebel.

He is not going to be part of a zoo, he is going to remain natural. And he is not going to go against life, he is going to flow with life. If man and woman can come to an understanding - which is not difficult at all, which is the simplest thing to do - that we drop being zoo animals, we can gain liberation from the zoo. That's what is needed - liberation from marriage.

And if the woman grows in her natural wildness, and the man grows in his natural wildness, and as strangers they meet in friendliness, their love will have a tremendous depth, a great joy, a blissful dance.

There is no contract, there is no law - love is a law unto itself. And when it disappears, they will say goodbye with gratefulness to each other for all those beautiful moments that they have lived together, for all those songs that they have sung together, for all those dances under the full moon, for all those musical moments on the sea beach. They will carry all those golden memories with them, and they will be grateful forever. But they will not hinder each other's freedom; their love prohibits it. Their love should give more freedom. In the past it has been giving more slavery.

There is a tremendous need for the women in the West to start a fresh liberation movement, because the leaders of the present day liberation movement are not meditators, are not sane. They are insane women, fighting against insane men. What is needed is some sanity. What is needed is a deep compassion, even for those who have harmed you in the past out of their unconsciousness - it was not intentional.

But now the women's liberation movement is intentionally trying to harm men - that is even more ugly. It has not gone far, and there are not many women in agreement with these reactionaries.

A fresh women's liberation movement can take hold of millions of women who are intelligent and understanding. And this movement will have all the help from men, because then you are not fighting against men, you are fighting against the past - in which you have suffered, in which man has suffered, in which everybody has suffered.

The rebellion is not against man as such, the rebellion is against the past of man and woman both. And then this rebellion will have a quality of religiousness which will bring grace to people, gratefulness to people.

Prem Salila, I hope it is clear to you why the difference in the Western and the Eastern woman has arisen. It was not there before this century.

I have heard...

President Ronald Reagan was gazing down into the center of a famous Greek volcano.

Finally he commented: "It looks like hell."

"Ah, you Americans," said the guide. "You have been everywhere."

The Western woman has become more knowledgeable, she has been everywhere. She has become aware of things which the Eastern woman is absolutely innocent of. In her innocence there is a grace, there is a beauty which is not of this world, which gives you some indications of the beyond.

That should be the case with every woman in the world.

Every woman can become an arrow towards godliness - her grace, her beauty, her love, her devotion can show you the way towards higher realms of being, greater spaces of consciousness.

A woman is not only capable of giving birth to children, she is also capable of giving birth to seekers of truth. But that side of the woman has not been explored at all. I would like my rebellious people to explore that side too.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.