What is the significance of feminine consciousness in spiritual teachings?

A friend has asked: Osho, Lao Tzu says we should be in harmony with nature; won’t we then become like animals?

Humanity can be renounced in two ways: by falling back, and by going ahead. Falling back is animality. Lao Tzu is not telling you to fall back. Lao Tzu is telling you to go forward. He is saying: come into harmony with nature consciously. Consciously become quiet, become silent. Consciously drop all distortion, all uproar, all conflict. Consciously bid farewell to the ego. Consciously do not sow the seeds of strife. Do not clutch dualities; become free of duality—in awareness, in wakefulness. So certainly, Lao Tzu will look just like an animal. Seat Lao Tzu beside a cow and it will be hard to tell the difference in their eyes—just as tranquil. But the cow does not know what Lao Tzu knows. Lao Tzu is aware now; he is drinking the very nectar of dissolving into nature. The friend who has asked whether becoming one with nature might make a…

One friend says, "lao tzu has talked of the profundity of the female-consciousness but no tirthankar, or avatar or paigambara (prophet) or a jesus or a buddha or a mahavira or a krishna is born out of a female-consciousness. If the female-consciousness is so superlative, all religions of the world should have been thereof. All religions have however originated from man. Why?"

This definitely requires to be understood. There is a reason to this. Everything that is born in this world, is a result of the male and female relationship. In the birth of a child, the role of the male is accidental. His contribution is momentary, but he is the initiator. The birth of the child begins through him. All things in this world are born this way. You will be surprised to know that even though Mahavira, Jesus and Buddha give rise to a religion, it was because of the women it was absorbed by the people. It is the women who first absorb it, develop it and spread it. This could never have occurred to you. Go to a temple, a mosque, a church, whom do you find there? Man is missing. If he is there it is only out of fear of his wife. All churches and temples…

Someone has asked: Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, Rajneesh—meaning, all men! Then why has no woman ever carried the news of Buddhahood to the world? Is becoming a bodhisattva harder from a woman’s point of view?

Many things have to be understood in this regard. First, woman and man are fundamentally different. Different does not mean higher or lower; they are equal, but opposite. Neither is above, neither below. Equal—but polar opposites. And their polarity is essential; from the union of these two opposites, birth happens and the current of life flows. Because they are opposite there is attraction; because they are opposite there is also love and there is conflict. Love, because there is attraction; conflict, because they are opposite. Between woman and man there can never be a final reconciliation—nor can there be. Their polarity creates a pull, and the same polarity creates attraction. Man is incomplete without woman; woman is incomplete without man. Man wants to be whole with woman; woman wants to be whole with man. To be whole alone is very difficult—until the inner journey begins, one goes on seeking outer…

A friend has asked, Osho, the Gita says that whatever desire a person holds at the time of death, that is the birth he attains next. So if a person has spent his whole life in sin, and at the moment of death desires to become like Mahavira or Buddha in the next life, can that man become like Mahavira and Buddha in the next birth?

No one really wants to do religion; therefore we postpone it. We say, we’ll do it in old age—what’s the hurry now? There is great hurry to sin! That must be done now, it can only be done in youth. We’ll do religion in old age. And if some young person becomes religious or eager, the so‑called wise advise him, “It is not your age yet. For now, do irreligion.” Their meaning is: now is the age for sin. As long as strength is there, sin away; when strength is gone, then do religion. But is strength necessary for sin and not for religion? Is life necessary for sin, power necessary for sin—do you take religion to be some eunuch’s task that needs no strength! Remember, the very energy with which you sin becomes virtue. And when that energy is no longer in your hands, you can neither sin nor…

Beloved Osho, I love hearing the stories of the old masters and their disciples. It is so beautiful to feel the essence of those small oases of consciousness -- which centuries of religion have since covered in the dust of dogma and deceit. But still, as I look at us sitting here, feeling the joy, the silence, the tears, the laughter, I suspect there is something present that no master may ever have evoked before. Is it, perhaps, a sense of loving tenderness, a juiciness in those around you -- something that could only have emerged had feminine energy been an intrinsic part of those caravanser

I want my people to be naturally, biologically, physiologically, psychologically -- on every level -- healthy. Only then, in these healthy steps, can they move to a healthy spirituality. And their spirituality will not be against anything; their spirituality will absorb everything that is below it. Hence it will be far richer. To me a spirituality that makes you poorer in every dimension of your life is a slow suicide. It is not spiritual. It is not a coincidence that all old spiritual traditions are against me, because what I am trying to do is to uproot them from their very base. If I am successful then ten thousands of spiritual pasts prove to be wrong. So my experiment is very crucial, very definitive, very decisive, and my feeling is that you can get over jealousy only where there is possibility of jealousy; you can get over sex only when…