You can wake up either by total effort or by total letting go—but don’t mix them.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
No, but you made this distinction: one path is of self-surrender, the other of masculine effort. Then breaking the sleep would be the same in both. So why are you calling it something particular to the masculine path?
No, no, no. The sleep will break by entirely different routes. If the one who surrenders carries even a little of masculine will, it will not break. Because surrender demands a purely feminine attitude, sheer passivity. That is to say, in surrender the only “manliness” is that there is none at all—and in the one of will, the “manliness” is precisely that there is not even the slightest trace of surrender in him. You cannot get Mahavira to fold his hands before anyone. You cannot even imagine Mahavira standing anywhere with folded hands.
Without the other her being becomes almost non-being. All her juice and life reverberate from the other. If her son is happy, she is happy. A man does not live in the other; he lives in himself, self-centered. A woman lives other-centered. Paramatma is other-centered. Therefore as the science created by men triumphed in the world, the forms of bhakti were shattered. Science is the search of man, not of woman. One Madam Curie may get a Nobel Prize — an exception. And Madam Curie had a masculine mind, not a feminine one. Science is the search of man. As science triumphed, the fundamental stones of religion were broken — because their paths are different. If you have the capacity to surrender, any feet can become the feet of Paramatma for you. Therefore women could say, the husband is God.
So on Mahavira’s path it is not, as the question suggests, that women are neglected; it is the feminine consciousness that is set aside. The feminine consciousness will indeed be set aside—just as on Meera’s path the masculine consciousness will be set aside.
Meera went to Vrindavan. There was a great sadhu there—a priest, a saint—and she went for his darshan, standing at his door. He sent word: “I do not look at women, I do not meet women.” Meera sent back a reply: “I had thought there is only one Man in the world; I did not know there was a second! Are you also a man?” He too was a devotee of Krishna. So Meera sent word: “I had thought Krishna alone is the Man—and you, being a devotee of Krishna, are also a man?” The priest came running, saying, “Forgive me, I was mistaken. Come inside.” There is great meaning in this. First, the priest said a wrong thing. If he is a devotee of Krishna, he himself should be feminine. For with Krishna, none but the sakhis—the intimate companions—can be in harmony; there is no other way there. There…
Osho, up to the fourth body there remains an electrical difference between woman and man. Therefore, does the effect of shaktipat on a female seeker and on a male seeker differ when the conductor is a woman or a man who has reached the fourth body? And why?
In a spiritual land, a predominance of feminine personality When the history of the world is written spiritually—and when we cease to take only material events as history, and take events in consciousness as true history—we shall understand that whenever a country becomes spiritual, it becomes feminine; and whenever it becomes feminine, civilizations far cruder than itself will defeat it. It is a striking fact that those who defeated India were far behind India—practically wild and barbaric. Be they Turks, Mughals, or Mongols—any of them; they had no civilization to speak of. But in one sense they were men—wild men—and we had become receptive. We could only assimilate them; there was no way to fight. Thus, the female body assimilates, needs a medium; the male body can give and can also receive grace directly. For this reason, someone like Mahavira even had to say that for the ultimate attainment a…
People in the west today are crying out of theoretical solutions to their problems. You have often spoken about 112 major techniques that have been used to reach the divine. Will you please tell us about some of those methods?
Mozart said, "It will be impossible for you. I never went to anybody and asked them anything. You have come to me and asked something. If I tell you, I will be your teacher. You are not a person who can become a great musician without a teacher. Those who can, do so without asking anyone for advice. If you are to become a great musician you will have to grow through discipline, you will need guidance, a teacher. Even this much you cannot understand yourself: how to become a musician without a teacher. You have asked me even this." So those who hear Krishnamurti go on fooling themselves. They are not the right people to follow his teachings. Had they been, they would never have gone to Krishnamurti But they have been going to him for forty years! For forty years they have been going to him to learn…