The third question:

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO, I HEAR YOU, YOUR LOVING COMPASSION FOR ME AS A WOMAN, BEHIND YOUR WORDS, WHICH SOMETIMES JAR ME. AND I ALSO FEEL THAT MY VERY WOMAN-NESS IS THE MAIN BARRIER TO MY EVER EXPERIENCING THE BLISS OF ENLIGHTENMENT, BECAUSE ALL OF THE ENLIGHTENED BEINGS YOU EVER TALK ABOUT ARE MEN, AND BECAUSE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES ARE AS A MALE. PLEASE SHARE WITH ME WHAT YOU CAN ABOUT HOW ENLIGHTENMENT IS FOR ME AS A WOMAN.

First thing: womanliness is never a barrier to understanding. In &ct, you cannot find a better opportunity to understand me. It is difficult for a man to understand because a man has an aggressive mind. A man can easily become a scientist, but it is very difficult for him to become a religious person because religion needs receptivity, a passive state of consciousness where you don't aggress, just invite. The feminine mind is exactly the right mind to understand, to be a disciple. Even a male mind has to become feminine. So don't take it as a barrier; it is not.

The second thing: it is really a great problem because we don't understand it. Problems are there only because we don't understand them. Again and again it is asked of me, that I am always talking about men who become enlightened but never about women. Many women have become enlightened, as many as men. Nature keeps a certain balance. Watch... in the world, the number of men and women is almost always the same. It should not be so, but nature keeps balance. To one person there may be born only boys, ten boys; to another person only one boy may be born; to another, one girl -- but on the whole, the world always keeps balance. There are as many men as there are women. Not only that, but because a woman is stronger than a man -- stronger in the sense of her resistance, stability, capacity to adjust, flexibility -- to a hundred girls, one hundred and fifteen boys are born. But by the time those girls become marriageable, fifteen boys have disappeared. Boys die more than girls; nature keeps that too. A hundred girls and one hundred and fifteen boys are born, then fifteen boys disappear by the time they become marriageable. The balance is kept completely. Not only that, but in wartime more men die.

The First World War created a problem for psychologists, biologists. They could not believe what had happened. In a war, more men die, but immediately after the war, more men are born and less girls are born. Again the balance is kept. That happened in the First World War. The reason was not clear at all. It was simply a mystery. It happened again in the Second World War. After a war the number of boys becomes greater. More boys are born to replace the dead men, and less girls are born because already there are more girls alive. When the World War is over and the balance is again regained, the number comes back to the same old pattern: one hundred girls to one hundred and fifteen boys -- because fifteen boys will die.

Boys are less strong than girls. Men live five years less than women. That's why, in the world, you will always find more old women than old men, more widows than widowers. If the ave-age age for a woman is eighty, then the average for men is seventy-five. It is five years more. But why, why do women live five years more? That too seems to be a great inner balance somewhere. A woman is capable of accepting more than a man. If a man dies first, the woman will cry, weep, suffer, but will be able to accept the fact. She will regain balance. But if a woman dies the man cannot regain balance. The only way he knows to regain balance is to marry again, find another woman again; he cannot live alone. He's more helpless than a woman.

Ordinarily, all over the world the marriage age is somehow unnatural. Everywhere man has imposed a pattern which is unnatural, anti-nature. If the girl is twenty years of age, then we think that the age of the boy who is going to marry her should be twenty-five, twenty-six. It should be just the reverse, because later on girls are going to live five more years. So the age limit for the girls should be twenty-five if it is twenty for the boys. Every man should marry a woman who is at least five years older than him. Then the balance will be perfect. Then they will die almost within six months of one another, and there will be less suffering in the world.

But why has it not happened? -- because marriage is not a natural thing. Otherwise, nature would have managed it that way. It is a man-made institution. And man feels a little weak if he is going to marry a woman who is older, more experienced, more knowledgeable than him. He wants to keep his male chauvinist ego: he's greater in every way. No man wants to marry a woman who is taller than him. Nonsense. What is the point? Why not marry a woman who is taller than you? But the male ego feels hurt moving with a taller woman. Maybe this is the cause of why women don't grow so tall -- the feminine body has learned it. They have learned the trick, that they have to be a little shorter, otherwise they will not be able to find a man. It is a survival of the fittest. They fit only when they are not too tall. A very tall woman... just think of a woman seven feet tall; she will not find a husband. She will die without a husband. And she will not give birth to children, so she will disappear. A woman who is five feet five will find a man easily. She will survive: she will have a husband, she will have children. Of course, taller women will disappear, by and by, because they will not have any survival value. That's how, by and by, ugly women disappear from the world -- because they cannot survive. The world helps those who can survive, and those who cannot survive disappear. Man has become taller, stronger, but in every way he wants to keep himself a little higher than the woman. He should always be at the top of everything.

Even in the West, people had not heard of any woman making love on top of the man before coming to the East and coming across Vatsayana's sutras on sexology. The West had not known it. And in the East, you may be surprised to know that the man making love on top of a woman is called the missionary posture, because the East for the first time came to know about it through Christian missionaries. It is a missionary posture. Man has to be on top in every way, even while making love. He has to have a taller height, must be at least a D.Lit.; only then can you marry a Ph.D. woman. Otherwise, naturally, a woman has to be five years older than the man. And this seems to be a perfect arrangement because the woman needs to be more experienced. She is going to become the mother: not only the mother of her children, but the mother of her husband also. And a man remains childish. Whatsoever the age, he hankers to be a child again. He remains a little juvenile.

Now the same has happened with enlightenment also -- nature keeps an exact balance. But we don't hear about many enlightened women -- that's true -- because the society belongs to men. They don't record much about women. They record much about Buddha; they don't record much about Sahajo. They record much about Mohammed; they don't record much about Rabia. They record in such a way that men seem to be very prominent. It has happened in India: one Jain Teerthankara, one Jain Master, an enlightened man, was not a man; she was a woman. Her name was Mallibai, but a great following of Jains has changed her name. They call her Mallinath, not Mallibai. Bai shows that she was a woman; nath shows that she was a man.

There are two sects of Jains, swetambaras and digambaras. Digambaras say that she was not a woman: Mallinath. They have even changed her name. It seems to be against the male ego that a woman could become a Teerthankara, a great Master: enlightened, a founder of a religion, a founder of a ford towards the divine? No, it is not possible. They have changed the name.

History is recorded by men, and women are not interested in recording things. They are more interested in experiencing and living them: that is one thing. The second thing is that a woman finds it very easy to become a disciple, very easy to become a disciple, because she is receptive. For a man, it is difficult to become a disciple because he has to surrender, and that is the trouble. He can fight but he cannot surrender. So when it comes to disciplehood, women are perfect. But just the opposite happens when you have to become a Master.

A male can easily become a Master. A woman finds it very difficult to become a Master, because to become a Master you have to be really aggressive. You have to go out and destroy others' structures. You have to be almost violent; you have to kill your disciples. You have to brainwash them. So a woman finds it difficult to become a Master; a man finds it difficult to become a disciple. But then again there is a balance: women find it easier to become disciples, and by becoming disciples they become enlightened, but they never become Masters. A man finds it difficult to become a disciple, but once he becomes a disciple, is enlightened, it is very easy for him to become a Master, very easy for him, easier. That's why you never hear... but don't be worried about that.

Your own experiences are as a female. Remember, the experience of the ultimate has nothing to do with male and female. The experience of the ultimate is beyond the duality. So when you become enlightened, in that moment you are no more man or woman. In that moment you transcend all duality. You have become a complete circle; no division exists. So when I am talking to you, I am not talking about enlightenment as a man. Nobody can talk about enlightenment as a man because enlightenment is neither male nor female. In India, the ultimate reality is neither male nor female, it is neutral.

You will be in a difficulty: God is male in the Western mind. For God you use 'He' -- except for the Lib. Movement women, who have started to use 'She'. Otherwise, nobody uses 'She' for God; you use 'He'. And I also think that 'She' will be better. 'He' has been used enough; now 'She' will be better. 'She' includes 'He' -- after 's' there is 'he' -- but 'he' does not include 's'. It is better, it makes God a little bigger. 'She' is bigger than 'He'; nothing is wrong in it.

But in the Western mind, God is 'He'. In Western languages there are only two genders, male and female. In Indian languages, particularly in Sanskrit, we have three genders: male, female, and the neutral. God is neutral. He is neither He nor She; He is It, That -- the personality has disappeared. It is impersonal, just energy. So don't be worried about this either.

"Please share with me what you can about how enlightenment is for me as a woman."

Stop thinking about yourself as a woman, otherwise you will cling to the feminine mind. All minds have to be dropped. In deep meditation you are neither. In deep love also, you are neither. Have you watched it?

If you have made love to a woman or to a man, and the love was really total and orgasmic, you forget who you are. It is mindblowing. You simply don't know who you are. In a certain moment of deep orgasmic bliss, oneness happens. That is the whole effort of Tantra: to transform sex into an experience of oneness -- because that will be your first experience of oneness, and enlightenment is the last experience of oneness. Making love, you disappear -- the man becomes like woman, the woman becomes like man, and many times they change roles. And there comes a moment, if you are both in a total let-go, when a circle of energy arises which is neither. Let that be your first experience. Love is the basic experience of enlightenment, a first glimpse. Then one day, when you and the whole meet in a deep orgasm, that is samadhi, ecstasy. Then you are no more male or female. So from the very beginning start dropping the division.

In the Western consciousness the division has become very, very solid, because man has oppressed woman so much that the woman has to resist. And she can resist only if she becomes more and more conscious of being a woman. When you from the West come to me, it is going to be hard for you, but you have to understand and drop the man/woman division. Just be beings. And my whole effort here is to make you your original being, which is neither.