According to Osho, sati has no future as a social custom; it is a male-egoistic crime. Its only legitimate value is as an inner quality - a woman's freely arising ecstasy and total love - never compelled, praised, or propagandized. True love is fearless and non-possessive; any demand that women die for men is violence. If required, men should do the same, revealing the hypocrisy. The future honors freedom, not funeral pyres.
Burning for love is wrong; only love that arises freely inside matters, and no one should pressure or glorify women to die for men.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the fundamental anguish of human life?
There is only one anguish: that a human being cannot become what he was born to be. There is only one anguish: that the seed remains a seed and does not bloom like a flower; that it cannot scatter its fragrance to the infinite winds; cannot converse with the moon and stars; cannot offer its colors to the sky; cannot be expressed. If the poem within the poet cannot be revealed—anguish. If the painter cannot paint—anguish. If the dancer cannot dance—if chains lie on his feet—anguish. Anguish means only this: that what we are meant to be—our innate nature and destiny—does not come to fruition, and we are forced to be something else. Then anguish is born. Then melancholy gathers over life. And all those countless people you see burdened with sorrow, living in a kind of hell—the reason is only this: each has come carrying the seed of becoming…
Man is such that even the noblest, falling into his hands, sooner or later becomes soiled. Give him what is purest—it soon gathers dust. Man is such that even gold he touches turns to dirt. Thus the highest insights, when they fall into human hands, become chains, become perversions. Merit turns into sin; ethics into non-ethics; religion into irreligion. Such is the grime of man. The vision of sati is most rare. Sati means: having loved one, then not letting that love flow elsewhere. To drown it wholly in the One. Having loved One, to forget the many. And if the many drop away, then in the one alone the vision of God begins. For the One is God. Understand this: The One is God; the many is the world.
Osho, seeing and hearing you speak, one thing continues to strike me: from your earliest childhood, up until the latest split second, you have always had so much self-respect and so much self-delight. Are we all capable of so much?
Each fragment may not give you the idea because it is out of context, but if you put it in the whole context.... I was being expelled from one college, another college, but I was enjoying it -- and that's what was shocking to them. When I was expelled from one college, my first college, it was this same principal who had to expel me. He felt very sorry, because it was not right to expel me; and by and by he had come to have a certain liking for me, for my absolute determination to be myself whatsoever the cost. He had grown, by and by, a certain respect: "This man can sacrifice anything even for buttons, just for the cap." He tried to persuade me, "If you wear the cap I guarantee you that you will get the first class first in the intermediate examination, because it is…
Osho, the scriptures lavishly praise the glory of great devoted wives such as Sati Sakkubai, Sati Anasuya, and Sati Savitri. In your view, what does pativratā mean?
These mahatmas you see—they are runaway husbands. Their wives reformed them so well, carried out the pativratā-dharma so thoroughly, made them keep such vows, such headstands, made such a mess of them, that they thought, “Better to become a saint—at least I’ll be worshiped.” Their wives worshiped them—worshiped them in the real sense, in another sense—so they thought, “Better to become a saint.” If women stopped reforming their husbands, I tell you: the numbers of priests, pundits, mahatmas, sadhus would drop at once. Women sustain religion in two ways. First they harass people so much in the name of being religious that one has to become religious—for self-defense if nothing else. And when they do become religious, then women serve them, wash their feet, drink the water of their foot-washing. In every way the honors due to a mahatma—women bestow them. Men don’t. Men know: Arrey, this one’s a deserter!…
Question: OSHO, HOW CAN INDIA BE FREE WHEN HER WOMEN ARE NOT? But there are different criterions for men and women. These different criterions have to be absolutely destroyed, only then can the woman be free; otherwise she cannot be free. And without the woman being free, the country remains basically unfree. The woman constitutes fifty percent of the population, but she is more important than just fifty percent because all the children will be raised by the woman. If she is a slave she will create the slave mentality, unconsciously, in her children's minds. The girls and the boys -- everybody is raised by the woman; they will be conditioned as slaves. The woman can only give them what she has. So it is not that only fifty percent will remain in slavery, it will amount to almost ninety-nine per-cent.