Of the friend

FRIENDSHIP HAS BEEN one of the subjects most ignored by almost all the philosophers. Perhaps we take it for granted that we understand what it means; hence we have remained ignorant about its depths, about its possibilities of growth, about its different colors, with different significances.

Zarathustra has spoken on the subject with great insight. The most important thing to remember is:

one needs friends because one is incapable of being alone. And as long as one needs friends, one cannot be much of a friend - because the need reduces the other to an object. Only the man who is capable of being alone is also capable of being a friend. But it is not his need, it is his joy; it is not his hunger, not his thirst, but his abundance of love that he wants to share.

When such a friendship exists, it should not be called a friendship, because it has taken on a totally new dimension: I call it "friendliness." It has gone beyond relationship, because all relationships are bondages in some way or other - they make you a slave and they enslave others. Friendliness is simply the joy of sharing without any conditions, without any expectations, with no desire that something should be returned - not even gratefulness.

Friendliness is the purest kind of love.

It is not a need, it is not a necessity:

It is sheer abundance, overflowing ecstasy.

Zarathustra says, OUR FAITH IN OTHERS BETRAYS WHEREIN WE WOULD DEARLY LIKE TO HAVE FAITH IN OURSELVES.

A man who believes in others is a man who is afraid to believe in himself. The Christian, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the communist - nobody is courageous enough to have faith in his own being. He believes in others. And he believes in those who believe in him.

It is really ridiculous: your friend needs you, he is afraid of his aloneness; you need him, because you are afraid of your aloneness. Both are afraid of aloneness. Do you think your being together means your alonenesses will disappear? They will be simply doubled, or perhaps multiplied; hence all relationships lead into more misery, into more anguish.

The same is true about faith. Why do you believe in Jesus? - can't you believe in yourself? Why do you believe in Gautam Buddha? - can't you believe in yourself? And have you ever thought about the implication? - if you cannot believe in yourself, how can you believe in your belief in Gautam Buddha? Fundamentally, it is your belief. Gautam Buddha has nothing to do with it.

If you cannot believe in yourself you cannot believe in anyone, you can only deceive. It is easier to deceive if you have somebody else as an object of faith, but it is your faith - the faith of a man who is hollow, the faith of a man who knows nothing about himself, the faith of a man who lives in utter darkness and unconsciousness, the faith of a faithless man. It is a worldwide disease, because everybody believes in somebody else. Even Jesus believes in God - he is also not bold enough to believe in himself.

You believe in Jesus, who cannot believe in himself; he believes in God. Of course we don't know in whom God believes but he must believe in someone. It seems to be an infinite chain of unbelievers, of faithless people, hoping that perhaps the other may satisfy their emptiness. But nobody can satisfy your emptiness.

You have to encounter your emptiness.

You have to live it, you have to accept it.

And in your acceptance is hidden a great revolution, a great revelation.

The moment you accept your aloneness, your emptiness, its very quality changes. It becomes just its opposite - it becomes an abundance, a fulfillment, an overflowing of energy and joy. Out of this overflowing, if your trust arises it has meaning; if your friendliness arises it is significant; if your love arises it is not just a word, it is your very heart.

Zarathustra is right when he says, OUR FAITH IN OTHERS BETRAYS WHEREIN WE WOULD DEARLY LIKE TO HAVE FAITH IN OURSELVES. OUR LONGING FOR A FRIEND IS OUR BETRAYER. The desire to have faith in someone betrays only one thing: you are too poor, too empty, too unconscious. And this is not the way to change your situation; this is simply the way to a false consolation.

You don't need consolation; you need a revolution, you need a transformation of your being. You have to come to terms with yourself - that is the first step in having the right trust, the right friendship, the right love. Otherwise all your relationships - of love, of friendship, of faith - are nothing but betrayals. You are exposing yourself and declaring that you are empty, unworthy, undeserving.

If you cannot love yourself, who is going to love you?

If you cannot be a friend to yourself, who is going to be a friend to you?

If you cannot trust in yourself, who is going to trust you?

AND OFTEN WITH OUR LOVE WE ONLY WANT TO LEAP OVER ENVY. Our deceptions are very deep, our cunningness very subtle. We give beautiful names to ugly things; that is our oldest strategy.

In India, when somebody dies, and people take him to the funeral ground, it is called mahayatra - the "great journey." The man has died, but the people are deceiving themselves with a beautiful word: the "great journey." They are trying to hide the reality of death behind a curtain. Basically they are afraid of their own death.

I have been, in my childhood, to many funerals - I loved going to the funeral processions. My father was worried; he said, "You don't understand that the man who has died was not our relative, was not our neighbor, was not even acquainted with us - he was a stranger. And nobody has invited you to go to his funeral rather than going to school."

I said, "I have learnt in funerals much more than I have learnt in my school." And many things became clear to me, even from my very childhood. People in a funeral procession never talk about death - never! I have never heard them talk about death. They talk about everything else: about movies, about politics, about a thousand-and-one things except death, which they are carrying on their shoulders.

And I was amazed - when the dead body is burning on the funeral pyre, people are sitting not facing it, but keeping their back towards it. And they become divided into small groups, because they have to be there for three, four hours, so that the body is burnt completely, and in these three, four hours all kinds of gossip.... I used to move from one group to another. I was just looking for someone who was talking about death - but I have never found anyone.

They are not sitting silently either, because silence is dangerous. They are keeping themselves engaged in talking about something or other. They are creating a barrier of words between themselves and the death that is so close. The man who has talked to them yesterday is burning in the fire; they will never see him again.

It is customary, in the parts where I was born, that before the dead man's body is set on fire somebody important in the locality speaks some beautiful words about the dead man - in his praise.

And all those words are false, because I had known that man and the qualities that were being attributed to him were simply fictitious.

I have asked many so-called respectable men who were speaking, "Have you even thought that whatever you are saying is lies?" And I have received the same answer again and again, that you cannot speak anything bad about a dead man. You can speak lies, but you have to praise him.

It happened once... a man died who was one of the greatest nuisances in the village. He had been harassing everybody, was indebted to everybody; from wherever he took anything, he would never pay. The whole village was against him. He had been punished, he had been to jail two, three times, but he never changed his style of life. He was a parasite; and he was a very strong man, so people were afraid....

I had gone to his funeral, and I was wondering who was going to speak now in praise of him and what qualities they were going to attribute to the dead man. There was dead silence - nobody was standing up to speak. Finally people told the mayor of the town, "Unless something is spoken in his favor, in his praise, the fire cannot be put into the funeral pyre, so what is the point of waiting? We all know... say something, say anything, but the convention has to be fulfilled."

The mayor was a very beautiful man - he was a very creative and talented person. He had written a few very beautiful stories, on which films have been based, so he was well-known all over the country. Basically and professionally, he was a legal expert.

I was sitting by his side and he told me, "Do you have any idea?" He knew me - we used to discuss strange subjects together.

I told him, "I have one idea."

He said, "Then it is better you speak."

I said, "No, because I am not a respectable man. You are the mayor - you speak. I will give you the hints."

He said, "But I cannot conceive... I am a fiction writer, but even I cannot conceive what to say about this man. It will be an absolute lie - and even to utter it, I will feel embarrassed."

I said, "Don't feel embarrassed; you say one thing, that compared to his other four brothers who are still alive, he was an angel."

He said, "That's good. And that is true! You are not lying, there is no question of fiction." And this was the truth; his other four brothers were even more dangerous. They were younger, stronger....

He stood up and said, "He was an angel...." Everybody looked at him: What is he saying? Even a lie has to be limited! For a moment he looked around and then he said, "... compared to his four brothers who are still alive." And people clapped! It was true - it was not a lie. And I have never seen clapping when somebody is being burnt.

The mayor, coming back home, told me, "You saved the situation! But you are a strange boy; you go to almost all the funerals as if you don't have anything else to do."

I said, "We all have to go one day - before that I want to learn about death as much as I can.

And I am also learning about people's psychology: they are trembling inside, but laughing, joking, gossiping - just to avoid the consciousness that everybody's death is your death. Everybody's death is a signal that you should be ready: your time may be coming any moment."

But we have always given, in all languages, beautiful words to hide realities.

When you say, "I love someone," do you really understand what you are saying? Do you know exactly what love is? More is the possibility that it is only lust which you are calling love. If you tell somebody, "I am lusting for you..." it will be true, but the woman will report immediately to the police station. But when you say, "I love you," then the woman walks, but her feet do not touch the earth; and it is the same! Just a beautiful word covering an ugly reality.

AND OFTEN WITH OUR LOVE WE ONLY WANT TO LEAP OVER ENVY. AND OFTEN WE ATTACK AND MAKE AN ENEMY IN ORDER TO CONCEAL THAT WE ARE VULNERABLE TO ATTACK.

It is a very strange coincidence that neither Machiavelli nor Friedrich Nietzsche could ever have imagined that their grandchildren were going to be my sannyasins. Friedrich Nietzsche's granddaughter is here, Machiavelli's great-granddaughter is my sannyasin - she has been here.

Both will agree with Zarathustra.

Machiavelli's statement will make it clear to you. He says the best defense is to attack. Don't wait until somebody else attacks you - then you are already too late. If you feel vulnerable to being attacked, then it is better to attack first. Never be on the defensive side. To be on the defensive side is to be almost half defeated.

The same is the understanding of Friedrich Nietzsche, from another viewpoint: The people who attack are the people who are afraid of being attacked. It is out of fear that they attack, because they are suspicious, they know their weakness, they know their vulnerability, they know they can be attacked. It is out of this fear, out of this weakness that they attack. Such are the strange ways of human psychology.

You ordinarily think, when somebody attacks, that he must be very powerful, that it is out of power that he is attacking. That is not true: it is out of weakness, out of inferiority, that he does not want to give you a chance.... And attacking first certainly makes him stronger, because the attacked thinks, "Perhaps he is stronger, more powerful; otherwise he would not have attacked."

AND OFTEN WE ATTACK AND MAKE AN ENEMY IN ORDER TO CONCEAL THAT WE ARE VULNERABLE TO ATTACK.

'AT LEAST BE MY ENEMY!' - THUS SPEAKS THE TRUE REVERENCE, THAT DOES NOT VENTURE TO ASK FOR FRIENDSHIP. Have you ever asked anybody, "At least be my enemy?"

I don't think anybody asks anybody to be his enemy. You certainly ask people, "Be my friend." But from where do enemies come? Nobody wants them, nobody asks for them, still there are more enemies than there are friends.

Perhaps when you ask somebody, "Be my friend," it is just out of fear, that if you don't ask him to be your friend he can turn into your enemy. But what kind of friendship will this be? And friends go on turning into enemies every day. In fact to make a friend is the beginning of creating an enemy.

Nietzsche is saying it will be more respectful, more reverent - if you feel that somebody can be your enemy, then it is better to ask him, "At least be my enemy!" Be truthful. It will make you stronger.

Truth always makes a person strong - truth has such an abundance of strength. But we depend on lies. We are continuously making friendships, moving in the societies, in the clubs, creating acquaintances. It is called "socializing," but it is really a defense measure. You are making friends in the high circles of society, with the powerful people, so that you can feel at ease, so that they will not be antagonistic to you. But it makes no difference; it simply weakens you. And it makes your friendship a false thing, a social formality.

Yes, I say Nietzsche is right: if you guess that somebody is going to turn out to be your enemy, then it is better to invite him, "Please, be my enemy!" Give him a good shock. For hours he will not be able to figure it out - what does it mean? - because it is never asked. But you have made an honest statement, and it will make you stronger, nourished. Every sincere act and every honest word is going to make you more and more strong.

IF YOU WANT A FRIEND YOU MUST ALSO BE WILLING TO WAGE WAR FOR HIM: AND TO WAGE WAR, YOU MUST BE capable OF BEING AN ENEMY. These are the implications: if you want a friend, naturally you are agreeing on one point - that his enemies will be your enemies.

Otherwise what is the meaning of friendship?

If you want a friend you must also be willing to wage war for him. You must be ready, because friendship means you are committing yourself, means that you will be on his side in good days, in bad days, in moments of joy, in moments of sadness, in times of glory and in times of failure - but you will be by his side, just like a shadow. To wage war you must be capable of being an enemy.

And if you are afraid and a coward and you cannot be an enemy, then forget the idea of being a friend - they both go together. Either you have to drop both or you have to accept both.

Gautam Buddha will help you to understand. He is reported to have said, "I am no one's friend, because I don't want to be anybody's enemy." To be a friend means to have a readiness to be an enemy to those who are inimical to your friend.

Buddha is right when he says, "I cannot be a friend, because I don't want to be an enemy" - I am simply out of it. I am indifferent to friendship and I am indifferent to enmity.

And one thing is very significant: Zarathustra says, YOU SHOULD HONOUR EVEN THE ENEMY IN YOUR FRIEND, because your friend can turn into an enemy any day, any moment, because friendship and enmity are two poles of the same energy. They are complementary, they are not contradictory. That is why the enemy can become your friend, the friend can become your enemy.

YOU SHOULD HONOUR EVEN THE ENEMY IN YOUR FRIEND. The friend can become an enemy only if, potentially, the enemy exists in him. And you should be able to honor that potential enemy too; only then have you accepted your friend in his totality. That's why friendship is not a game for children to play. It is something very mature because it needs great understanding.

CAN YOU GO NEAR TO YOUR FRIEND WITHOUT GOING OVER TO HIM? You will have to trespass; only by trespassing can you go near to your friend. But nobody wants to be trespassed on, that's where friendship starts turning into enmity. It is a strange phenomenon: to be close you have to trespass; if you don't trespass you remain distant - friendship remains only social.

To be close you have to trespass, but to trespass on anybody is to annoy him, is to irritate him, because you are forcing him to give his secret to you. You are forcing him to be nude and naked before you, and there is every possibility that your trespass will be the beginning of enmity.

IN YOUR FRIEND YOU SHOULD POSSESS YOUR BEST ENEMY. YOUR HEART SHOULD FEEL CLOSEST TO HIM WHEN YOU OPPOSE HIM....

HE WHO MAKES NO SECRET OF HIMSELF EXCITES ANGER IN OTHERS. Zarathustra's understanding of man's psychology seems to be far ahead of any Sigmund Freud.

HE WHO MAKES NO SECRET OF HIMSELF EXCITES ANGER IN OTHERS: THAT IS HOW MUCH REASON YOU HAVE TO FEAR NAKEDNESS! Why are people so much offended by your nakedness? In almost every country, to expose your nakedness is a crime. But it is strange... you are not doing any harm to anybody if you are standing naked in the middle of the road. Of course, not in Poona, because this city has the most perfect camels that you can find in the whole world, and to be naked before camels is not good.

But anywhere, why does your nakedness offend people? Just contemplate on it. You have not done anything to them. If you have taken your clothes off - those are your clothes - why should they be so offended that they make it a crime? The reason is, your nakedness is also their nakedness.

Exposing yourself naked, you have exposed them also as naked. By being naked you have reminded them that inside their clothes they are also naked - that is what irritates them.

Just the other day Neelam was telling me.... One of my sannyasins, an old sannyasin and very understanding and very rare, is Siddhi, from a very rich industrialist family. She was telling Neelam that her husband's elder brother, who is one of the most important industrialists of Maharashtra....

And he knows me personally; I used to stay in his home in Ahmednagar when his father was alive - his father was the speaker of the Maharashtra assembly - and since then Siddhi has known me, her whole family knows me. He came to Poona, so Siddhi must have asked him, "Why don't you come to listen to Osho?"

He said, "I can come to listen to Osho, but I will have to keep my eyes closed, because whatever Osho is saying is significant, but I cannot look at any of his male disciples holding some woman's hand; I cannot look at any woman not properly dressed."

Now he must be nearabout sixty-five or more - what is the fear? He is not coming to listen to me because he is afraid to see some woman not "properly clad"; nakedness is far away....

And what does he mean by "properly clad"? - because people have different definitions of "properly clad." For a Mohammedan, unless a woman's face is covered, she is not "properly clad." You cannot see a Mohammedan woman's face. The Mohammedan woman loses the radiance in her face, her beauty, because her face never comes into contact with the sun's rays - it is always covered with a black veil. You can see only her two eyes, from two holes.

What is being properly clad, and why should anybody be worried about it? It must be something repressed in himself - perhaps a deep desire to see the woman naked. So if the woman is not properly clad, the desire can become strong. It is his own repressed sexuality for which he is condemning somebody else.

The somebody else is not responsible for it - it is your religion which is responsible, it is your monks who are responsible, it is you who have not been intelligent enough to live your life more naturally.

IF YOU WERE GODS YOU COULD THEN BE ASHAMED OF YOUR CLOTHES. Such a sentence should be written in gold - particularly on every street of Poona.

If you were gods, then you would be ashamed of your clothes; then hiding anything would be untrue to existence; then exposing yourself totally would show your trust, show your love, show that you don't have any poisonous snakes hiding within you - that your heart is that of a child, innocent and pure and fragrant.

YOU CANNOT ADORN YOURSELF TOO WELL FOR YOUR FRIEND: FOR YOU SHOULD BE TO HIM AN ARROW AND A LONGING FOR THE SUPERMAN. If you are truly a friend, then what can you do for him? What will your relationship, what will your friendship, what will your love contribute to your friend? Zarathustra says, YOU SHOULD BE TO HIM AN ARROW AND A LONGING FOR THE SUPERMAN. If you can create the urge in him to transcend himself and to become an arrow towards the stars, then you have fulfilled your love and your friendship. Other than that everything is mundane.

HAVE YOU EVER WATCHED YOUR FRIEND ASLEEP - TO DISCOVER WHAT HE LOOKED LIKE?

It is a very good exercise, and because I have been traveling for many years around the country, I have had so much opportunity to watch people sleeping; otherwise, it is very difficult to enter into somebody's bedroom to watch them sleep, but in the railway train....

And it is a revelation: the face that was looking so gentlemanly, so nice, so cultured, in sleep becomes so ugly - because the mask disappears. Obviously when you are asleep you cannot go on holding your mask, you cannot go on looking into the mirror in the middle of the night, again and again putting your lipstick back on. It starts flowing with your saliva on your face....

Watching a man asleep you will be puzzled, because the eyebrows are not true, the redness of the lips is not true. Is there anything true in the face or is everything false? Sleep reveals that which you go on hiding when you are awake.

HAVE YOU EVER WATCHED YOUR FRIEND ASLEEP - TO DISCOVER WHAT HE LOOKED LIKE? YET YOUR FRIEND'S FACE IS SOMETHING ELSE BESIDE. IT IS YOUR OWN FACE, IN A ROUGH AND IMPERFECT MIRROR. Seeing these sleeping people, it is impossible that you will not become aware, at a point, "perhaps this is my face too." They are mumbling in their sleep, they are saying irrelevant things, using obscene words. They are not in their consciousness - consciousness keeps a facade, a false face. But you will become aware that this is your face also.

ARE YOU PURE AIR... AND BREAD AND MEDICINE TO YOUR FRIEND? MANY A ONE CANNOT DELIVER HIMSELF FROM HIS OWN CHAINS AND YET HE IS HIS FRIEND'S DELIVERER. You are yourself a slave, but you pretend to be a deliverer to your friend. And the same is true about your so-called saviors: they themselves are not saved, but they are ready to save the whole world.

Jesus insists continuously, "I am the savior, and if you believe in me nothing else is needed. You will be saved, saved from hell, saved from any pain and anguish and darkness." And millions and millions of Christians still go on consoling themselves that on the last day of judgment Jesus will come with his father, God, and point out who are his sheep; they will be saved and taken into paradise. And the remaining ones...? And the remaining ones, who will number millions of times more, will be thrown into the abysmal depths of hellfire - for eternity!

Even in the twentieth century, at the very end, millions of people are still believing that all that they need to do is to believe in Jesus - that he is the only begotten son of God - and then they can go on doing anything they want, they will be saved. Very cheap - just believe.

The first night when I was forced into the jail in America.... The other prisoner in my cell must have been a very devout Christian. He had THE BIBLE on his bed, and kneeling down on the ground, he put his head on THE BIBLE very piously. And just above THE BIBLE there were all kinds of pornographic pictures, cut out from magazines, that he had pasted all over the wall.

I watched the whole thing, and when he had finished his prayer, I asked him, "Who has put these pictures here? They are really beautiful."

He said, "I have done it - do you like them?"

I said, "They are so beautiful. I am also a pious man." That made him a little suspicious, when I said, "I am also a pious man." He said, "What do you mean by that?"

I said, "Can't you see the contradiction? You are praying to God, putting your head on THE BIBLE, kneeling down on the ground, hoping that you will be saved...."

He said, "Certainly I will be saved. I am a believer in God, I am a believer in Jesus Christ."

And I said, "What about these pornographic pictures?"

He said, "That does not matter. Once you believe in Jesus, you are saved."

I said, "Perhaps that's why... how many times have you been in jail?"

He said, "This is only the fourth time."

"And what kind of crimes have you been committing?"

He said, "All kinds. But I always pray in the morning and in the night - jail or no jail. These are small things. My belief in Jesus is absolute; he cannot go against his promise."

I said, "Do you have any guarantee? If he does not appear on the last judgment day, you will be in trouble. If all these naked girls appear and they say, 'He is our follower. He has been kneeling before us every morning, every evening....'"

He looked at me. He was angry; he said, "It seems you are not a Christian."

I said, "I am a Christian; otherwise, why should I bother about you? But you are bowing down before these naked girls in different pornographic, obscene pictures. All these girls will appear on the last judgment day and I will be there, you remember, as an eyewitness."

He said, "My God! I have heard about you, I have seen you on television, and they say, perhaps rightly, that you are a dangerous man. Forgive me, but don't mention these pictures on the last day."

I said, "You take them down."

He said, "That's a little difficult. I cannot pray twenty-four hours a day, and that is my only entertainment - cutting them from magazines, putting them all over.... And not that I alone am doing it, all the cells in the prison are full of pornographic pictures." The jail provides all these magazines for the prisoners and the jail also provides THE BIBLE. The next day when the jailer came I asked him, "You are providing both these things for these poor inmates of the jail, can't you see the contradiction?"

He said, "Nobody ever pointed out the contradiction."

I said, "Do you need that somebody should point it out? You cannot see it yourself?"

He told me, "You come with me into the office. There we can discuss it, not before the prisoners - you can provoke them."

I said, "I am not provoking them against THE BIBLE, I am provoking them against these ugly pictures that are all over the walls. You come round every day and you see all this happening, and you are silent about it. I will expose you also to the media when I get out."

He said, "Don't do that!"

I said, "That's what that prisoner was saying to me, 'Don't do that on judgment day.'"

Your mind is so much fragmented - you go on doing all kinds of things. In the day somehow you keep yourself together; in the night it becomes very difficult.

I have heard: A man's wife... and almost all wives watch their husbands a little bit in the night, particularly if they are talkative husbands, if they talk at night. That night the man was saying again and again, "Sophia, darling Sophia...."

The wife could not control herself - she woke him up and asked, "Who is this Sophia?"

He said, "Sophia? - it is the name of a horse, and I am thinking of betting on the horse race."

The wife was not convinced - no wife is ever convinced of what the husband says - so she looked for other evidence. In his diary there was Sophia's name and phone number! In the morning she brought the diary, and she said, "Just now the horse phoned, and I said, 'He is asleep - just give your number.' So this is the number: you can reply to the horse."

Zarathustra saying, "Watch your friends while they are asleep"... is not only about your friends, it is basically about you. And only an honest man, sincere to the core, can be the same while he is awake or he is asleep. If he is a joyous man, even in his death his face will show the same radiance, the same joy - what to say about sleep?

One should be one piece. That gives you strength; that gives you a totally different kind of power - a power that is not destructive but creative.

ARE YOU A SLAVE? IF SO, YOU CANNOT BE A FRIEND. There are people who are not aware of their deep tendency to be slaves. They want to be enslaved, because while they are enslaved all their responsibilities are taken by the person who enslaves them.

Unless you are ready to take all the responsibilities of life something in you will always want to be a slave, because only the slave is free of responsibilities. But a slave cannot be a friend - he is searching for a master, not a friend. And the same is true from the other side.

ARE YOU A TYRANT? IF SO, YOU CANNOT HAVE FRIENDS. Because you are in search of slaves, you are not in search of friends. And anybody who has dignity is not going to be enslaved in the name of friendship.

IN A WOMAN, A SLAVE AND A TYRANT HAVE ALL TOO LONG BEEN CONCEALED. The responsibility goes to the man. Zarathustra has not mentioned it. Perhaps he still thinks of himself only as a man - he has not transcended the duality of man and woman. He talks about women as a man; hence he takes no responsibility. Otherwise for much that is wrong in women, the responsibility goes to the man.

IN WOMAN, A SLAVE AND A TYRANT HAVE ALL TOO LONG BEEN CONCEALED. Man has forced her. He has made her almost a doll - just a showpiece. He has not given her the same respect that he asks from her to be given to him. He has forced her to be spiritually a slave, and naturally there has been in women, for thousands of years, a burning desire for revenge.

It comes out in small ways: she tortures the husband, nags him, is continuously bitchy. But the responsibility, I want you to remember, is man's. The woman has not been given freedom. You have made her a slave, and she wants to get out of that slavery, but you have broken all the bridges around her. You have not allowed her to be educated, you have not allowed her free movement in society, you have not allowed her financial freedom... and you have kept her continuously pregnant.

You have used her. You have not given her the respect a human being deserves - naturally there is vengeance.

And she takes her vengeance in her own ways: she tortures you, she makes your life a hell. You have made her life a hell; she makes your life a hell. Your ways and her ways are different, but the ultimate outcome is that you both live in a hell.

FOR THAT REASON, WOMAN IS NOT YET CAPABLE OF FRIENDSHIP: SHE KNOWS ONLY LOVE. Woman is not capable of friendship because she is not free. Her individuality is not recognized, her independence is not respected - how can she be a friend?

Zarathustra on this point is wrong, when he says she knows only love. If she cannot even know friendship, how can she know love? She knows only lust. And she hates the man for the same reason, because she knows perfectly well that all these sweet words "darling" and "honey" and "I love you" are nothing but prefaces for lust. Naturally she reacts in her own way - that she has a headache. You are saying "darling" and "honey," and she is saying she has a headache. She has her own ways to torture you - you have tortured her enough.

Zarathustra is wrong on this point, and his being wrong is because he identifies himself with manhood. He is not different in that way from Buddha or Mahavira or Jesus - they are all identified with the manhood; the woman is a subhuman species.

IN A WOMAN'S LOVE IS INJUSTICE AND BLINDNESS TOWARDS ALL THAT SHE DOES NOT LOVE. Zarathustra does not understand women. Perhaps he has not known the depths of a woman's heart. It is not true that in a woman's love is injustice and blindness.

Still woman's love is more insightful than anything else in her. Her logic has been destroyed by man. Her intelligence has been spoiled by man. Only her love... although every effort has been made down the centuries so that she simply remains a useful instrument for man's sexuality, still her love has remained intact. And that is the only hope for woman's liberation. That is the only hope for women to attain, for the first time in history, their dignity, their uniqueness, their spiritual growth.

They are in no way inferior to any man.

But this is the problem: it is very difficult for even men like Gautam Buddha and Zarathustra to rise above their manhood. The woman remains something of the lower, not belonging to the height of man. She remains somewhere down in the dark valleys.

I cannot accept Zarathustra on that point. If there is anything alive in woman, in spite of man's continuous violence against her, it is her love. Her love is in her eyes, her love is her whole being.

And he says, AND IN THE ENLIGHTENED LOVE OF A WOMAN TOO, THERE IS STILL THE UNEXPECTED ATTACK AND LIGHTNING AND NIGHT, ALONG WITH THE LIGHT. The responsibility again is of the man. A man and a woman can remain at peace only when their equality and their uniqueness become an accepted phenomenon. Then friendship can flower. Then the night and the unexpected attack will disappear.

Woman has been driven almost crazy by man. It is a great miracle that she has survived amongst a society in which all the religions are man-made, all the governments are man-made, all the laws are man-made, all the societies are man-made, all the educational systems are man-made. How has the woman survived? That is a miracle.

As far as I understand, this miracle has been possible because of her love. Even though man has mistreated her, she has still loved him. Even though she has been enslaved and chained, she has remained a mother, a sister, a beloved, a daughter.

Her survival, against so much attack on her personality, is possible only because existence needs her more than it needs man. Existence has been protective of woman because woman is the mother, from where all life flows. It is through her love that life can still sing, can still dance, that there is still some beauty and still some grace left in the world.

Women constitute half of the population of the world. If they are liberated, given their basic birthrights, the world will go into a tremendous metamorphosis - which it needs tremendously.

Woman has been prevented from contributing anything, except children. She can contribute so much, and its quality will be totally different. It will have more beauty, it will have more aliveness, it will have more love, it will have more juice.

WOMAN IS NOT YET CAPABLE OF FRIENDSHIP: WOMEN ARE STILL CATS AND BIRDS. OR, AT BEST, COWS. On this statement I condemn Zarathustra. This kind of statement is available in all the religious scriptures. Here Zarathustra has completely forgotten... and nobody has condemned him for the simple reason that only men read, women have been prohibited for centuries even from reading; they don't know what is written in the scriptures about them.

Chinese scriptures don't accept that women have any soul. The ancient Chinese law, which was prevalent up to this century, allowed the husband even to murder his wife. It was not considered a crime because the wife was only a thing, just like furniture, and if you want to destroy your chair it is not a crime.

But women were not allowed to read these scriptures - only men were writing them and men were reading them. Up to now we have lived in a man-made world, which is absolutely wrong about women. Neither has woman been explored, nor has she been considered.

WOMAN IS NOT YET CAPABLE OF FRIENDSHIP. BUT TELL ME, YOU MEN, WHICH OF YOU IS YET CAPABLE OF FRIENDSHIP? A certain sanity comes back to Zarathustra, because he was talking against woman... and he must have remembered at the end that he is saying that the woman is not capable of friendship - but what about man? He is a sincere man in that way, that he made the point: But tell me, you men, which of you is yet capable of friendship?

... Thus spake Zarathustra.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.