My dear sisters, I would like to say a few words at the outset about the atrocities and incest that have been committed against women in human history, and I would also like to say a few words about the harm that has been caused to the entire human race as a result of what has happened to women. The entire human race, the entire human society, the whole of human civilization and culture is incomplete because woman has made no offering, no contribution to its creation. She could not have. Man never gave her any opportunity. For thousands of years woman has been thought lower, smaller, inferior to man. There were countries—like China—where for millennia it was believed that women have no soul. Not merely inferior—women were counted along with inanimate things. Until just a hundred years ago in China, no husband could be punished for killing his wife, because the wife was his property. Whether he kept her alive or killed her, neither the law nor the state had any concern.
In India too, woman was never given any equal opportunity to live as man’s equal. The same was true in the West. Because all the scriptures, all of civilization, all of education have been created by men, men—without asking anyone—declared themselves superior, and saw no reason to confer superiority upon woman. Naturally, there were consequences—fatal consequences.
The most fatal consequence was that whatever qualities belonged to woman could not participate in the evolution of civilization. Civilization was developed by men alone. And whatever civilization evolves from the hands of men alone can have no final result other than war. A life built only upon masculine qualities can lead nowhere but to violence. In man’s very disposition, in the very texture of his mind, there is an inevitable component of violence, anger, war.
Nietzsche, only a few decades ago, declared that Buddha and Christ must have been effeminate, because they spoke so much of compassion and love—these are not masculine qualities. Nietzsche called Christ and Buddha effeminate, womanlike. In one sense perhaps he was right—right in the sense that all the tender qualities of life, all relationships suffused with sweetness, all imagination and feeling for the Beautiful and the Auspicious—these are the intrinsic nature of woman. Human civilization could not be filled with sweetness, love, and beauty; it became cruel and coarse, hard and violent, and in the end brought only war.
Behind this are only two factors. First, women’s qualities were given no respect; and second, woman herself never made any effort, any active endeavor, to cultivate her own qualities. You may be surprised to know: if a woman excels in masculine traits—like Joan of Arc, or Rani Lakshmi Bai—the whole world praises her: very brave, very worthy of honor. But have you ever heard a man being honored for developing the qualities of woman? If a man appears womanly, he is insulted; if a woman appears manlike, she is honored and her statues are raised at the crossroads.
Man has axiomatically accepted his qualities as superior, and—astonishingly—women too have consented to this! Women have never even thought that their own personality has its dignity, its place, its prestige. After three or four thousand years of slavery a rebellion, a reaction arose, and women began to proclaim that they are equal to men, that they demand equal status, equal rights. But now another mistake is being made—perhaps you are unaware of it. It is essential to understand that mistake too.
I want to say that women are neither inferior to men, nor equal to men. Women are different from men—utterly different. There is no question of being below, nor of being equal; women are wholly different. Until women begin to think in the language of their difference, in the language of their distinct personhood, they will either be man’s slaves or his followers—and both conditions are dangerous.
In the West women have revolted, and the result is that in the race to become like men they have entered into competition—whatever men do, however men are, women must become the same. Whatever education man receives, woman must receive the same. If men go to the battlefield to fight, then women too should be present as soldiers on the battlefield.
You have no idea that in imitating men, women will always remain second-rate; they can never be first-rate. Because the qualities in which they are going to compete are natural to men and unnatural to women. In such a state, women will become distorted, deracinated from their nature; they will be deprived of what they could have become—and the consequences will be very fatal, beyond our imagination, beyond even our dreams.
To give women the same education that men receive is a grave error. It is appropriate that men learn mathematics; appropriate that men learn science. But it would be far more appropriate that woman learn something else that men do not learn. She has a different task in life. Life has given her a different responsibility. Upon her rests another burden—of love, of creation.
With mathematics you may run shops; you cannot raise children. With science, factories may run; families cannot. And the result is this: the initiation of women into the same training, the same education, the same sentiment of equality as men has snatched away their significant motherhood. Whatever was glorious in their being wives has been taken away. Whatever was feminine within them is being destroyed. They are being molded almost as imitations of men—and they even appear very pleased by it. For this pleasure, tomorrow if not today, women will have to shed a thousand thousand tears—and men too will weep.
Perhaps we do not notice that there is a fundamental difference in the psyche of woman and man, and this difference is meaningful. The entire magnetic attraction between man and woman depends upon this difference. The more different they are, the more distant, the more polarity there is—like the North and South poles—the greater the pull, the attraction, the gravitation. The more love is born between them—the greater the distance, the difference, the more unique and distinct their personalities are; not copies of each other, but complementary to each other.
If the man knows mathematics and the woman also knows mathematics, these two facts will not bring them closer; they will drive them farther apart. If the man knows mathematics and the woman knows poetry, knows music, knows dance—they will come nearer. They will become better companions, deeper companions in life. And when a woman is initiated in the same way as men, at most she can give man the companionship of another man; but she cannot fulfill that absence in his heart that is thirsty for woman, and filled with the longing for love.
In the West the family is breaking; in India too it will break. The causes are not so much economic as the fact that women are educated like men. Educated in the manner of man, woman becomes a counterfeit man; she cannot become an authentic woman. We have no sense of difference—nor any thought for different training and initiation.
This must be said to the women of the world: they have to protect their womanhood. Until yesterday man considered them inferior and low, and thus harmed them; today, if man agrees, saying, you are like us, join our race—in this race where will women reach? And the question is not only that women will be harmed; the question is that the whole of life will be ruined.
C. E. M. Joad, a Western thinker, wrote something remarkable. He wrote: When I was born there were homes in my country; but now, grown old and nearing death, there is no such thing as a home—only houses remain. Is there any difference between a home and a house? Any difference between a hotel and a home? If there is any difference, it depends entirely upon woman, and upon no one else.
A house can become a home, a building can become a dwelling, if at its center there is a woman. But if woman becomes like man, the house remains merely a house; a home cannot be created. Two people live together, but they are not husband and wife. Children are born, but the relationship is between nurse and children; there is no relationship between mother and son, or mother and daughter—because that which could become mother, that feminine being—we have done nothing for her growth.
What are our schools and colleges teaching? What are they giving to women? The same degrees that are given to men. They put them through the same examinations men pass through. They drill them in the same exercises, the same games that men play.
And it is astonishing that in this century, when we know so much about the body and its physiology, we still do not know that the same drills, the same exercises cannot be given to men and women. The laws of a woman’s body, the structure of a woman’s body, are very different. If she is made to do the same drill, the same left-right of the N.C.C. that male soldiers are taught, we will break some fundamental element within her—of which we have no inkling, no awareness.
People of the past were not fools. For men they discovered physical training; for women, dance. There was meaning in this. In dance there is a rhythm, a cadence, which fills a woman’s hormones, the chemistry of her body, with a different kind of movement, with music. Drill is another matter. Its purpose and significance are different. Drill arouses the anger within a person; it intensifies the tendency to fight; it strengthens the impulse to be violent toward the other.
If drill is taught to women, homes are bound to be destroyed—but we have no idea. We are harming their whole bodies. You will be amazed: in countries where women are given military training like men, even young girls begin to grow a moustache on the upper lip. This is very easy to bring about, not difficult at all.
If exactly the same drills as men’s are imposed on girls, hairs will begin to appear on their upper lip. The body’s hormones begin to act differently; the body’s inner arrangements begin to function differently. Small things make a difference. We are trying to shape women’s bodies also after the male pattern—and now, all over the world, we are arranging for them to wear men’s clothes as well. Perhaps we have no idea that the smallest things of life influence the whole of life.
In the East people wore loose clothing; in the West, tight clothing. Tight clothing makes a person ready to fight; loose clothing calms, makes one quiet. No monastic tradition in the world has ever worn tight clothes. This was not for nothing. Loose clothing confers a certain relaxation and peace upon the personality; tight clothing gives a briskness, a tautness. That is why we make soldiers and servants wear tight clothes; but owners have never worn tight clothes. If you wear tight clothes and climb stairs, you will take two steps at a time—you will not even notice that the clothes are making you take them two at a time. If you wear loose clothes, you will climb with a certain grace, a certain dignity.
Women’s clothing should never be like men’s. We expect something else from the life of woman: in the home a climate of stillness; in the home a loving spring, a tranquil lake. Tight clothes cannot be given to her—and if she wears them, she is falling into error, and for this error she will pay a very costly price.
If even clothing affects us, education will affect us certainly. The training of the mind—what we learn—builds our whole personality. What we think influences our whole life; we become what we contemplate. What are we being taught, and what kind of material for thinking is being given to us? What are women being taught? All the same things. One who is initiated in mathematics, one who is initiated in science—his grip on life is of one kind. One who is initiated in music and poetry—his grip on life is of another kind. And a small difference of grip changes everything.
A man began to come to Gandhi’s ashram. Some people complained to Gandhi that this man is not good; it is not right to let him come to the ashram. There are many reports about his bad life. Gandhi said: If bad men cannot come to the ashram, then for whom is the ashram? Let them come; we will welcome them. But one day matters went very far. Some people came and said: Now it has gone beyond limits. The very man we asked you to stop was seen sitting in a liquor shop, drinking—we saw with our own eyes; you may go and see. If a man wearing khadi sits in a liquor shop, it is very shameful for the ashram. Tears of joy came to Gandhi’s eyes and he said: If I were to see that man in a liquor shop, my heart would fill with bliss. I would rejoice, because it would mean good days are coming: even drinkers have begun to wear khadi! Those who brought the report said: A man in khadi is drinking—that is very bad news. But Gandhi said: My heart would be filled with joy if I knew that even drinkers have begun to wear khadi.
This is to see life from two sides. The friends who came to Gandhi looked at life from the viewpoint of a court, a lawyer’s viewpoint. Gandhi looked from another side—a mother’s viewpoint, a woman’s viewpoint—not the viewpoint of a lawyer, a court, or the law. What is the difference between the two? In the first, there is condemnation of the man, a denouncing, an insistence on abandoning him, stepping away from him. In the second, there is an effort to glimpse the auspicious within the man, to search for the beautiful even there; there is still hope. In the second vision the man is not finished; room for change is still granted. A mother’s son may go on going astray—everyone may say: cast him off, he is ruined, he must not enter the house. But the mother will say: there is still much hope.
I was halted at a small station. My train was delayed, and it was a village station. Some people brought an old woman whose head was bandaged; perhaps someone had struck her with sticks. Two or three women were with her. They had brought her to take her to the big city hospital. I asked: Who beat this woman? The accompanying women said: She has only one son, and that very son struck her with a stick, wounded her head; she fell unconscious, she has just now come to. We are taking her to the hospital. Another woman with her said: Better such sons were never born. But that old woman, with blood flowing from her head, put her hand over the other woman’s mouth and said: Do not say such a thing. If I had no son, who would beat me today? Because I have a son, he has beaten me—but if I had no son, who would beat me? That there is a son is everything; that he has beaten me is a very small matter. And the old woman said: He is a boy—how much understanding can he have? He has beaten me; tomorrow his understanding will return.
This is the heart of a mother—it does not think in mathematics or law, it thinks out of love and hope.
Women’s education must be entirely different, so that their vision is different—so that they can think of life in other ways. But this is not happening. We are initiating them into the same viewpoints, the same philosophies, the same ideas into which men are initiated—and the world created by men has already proven wrong. There is no need to say anything more. In the last three thousand years there have been fifteen thousand wars in man’s world. Rarely is there a day when somewhere on earth a war is not going on. Day after day there is war. Moment to moment humans are being cut down and killed. This is a world made by men alone—it has failed, it has been a defeat; the experiment is done.
Shall we not make one experiment—that women also take a significant part in the making of this world? That they lay some foundation for creating a new world? Or will they too imitate men, and tomorrow, dressed as soldiers, drop atom bombs on cities? Men will praise you greatly on the day you can drop atom bombs; then men will say: now everything is fine—very good women! When you stand on the battlefield with guns, men will give you many medals—Padmashri, Bharat Bhushan, Mahavir Chakra—and say: now women are just right, very brave!
Man thinks only in his own language; he wants to manufacture women in that same language—without realizing how mistaken man himself is. Do not try to increase the number of wrong men. Men alone are enough to destroy the world; if you too behave like men, the end of the human race can only come nearer—nothing else. But if women choose, they can bring a great revolution to the whole world; if women choose, war can disappear from the earth; if women choose, all stupidities can cease, all violence can cease, all anger can cease. But for that, a totally different kind of woman must be born—not an imitation of man, but a woman fulfilled in her own qualities, attaining her own dignity. Work must be done in that direction. The state of affairs created by men—I will try to explain with a small story.
God has become very frightened seeing this world of men—very troubled. What man has done to man—its tale is so full of pain, so sorrowful, there is no measure. How many killings have there been! Our memory is weak, so we forget the numbers. What did Timur, Nadir Shah, Chengiz Khan, and just now Stalin and Hitler do? We cannot even imagine. Stalin alone had six million people killed in Russia. Hitler alone—from the time he ruled—killed five hundred people per day, as a rule; every day the count of five hundred was completed. And now these men have made great inventions—atom and hydrogen bombs. Today or tomorrow they are engaged in arrangements to destroy the whole world. Their preparation is complete: they will not let man survive.
So God must have been very frightened. He called the representatives of the three great nations—Russia, Britain, and America. God said to them: I have become very worried. Since I created man, I have not been able to sleep. My nights pass in restlessness—who knows what this man will do next! Since I created man, as you must know, I have created nothing else; because making man frightened me so much that I stopped my work of creation. And since I stopped, man began to make things—and at last he made atom and hydrogen bombs. Now I am in great panic. So tell me—what do you want? What is your intention, your aim?
Why this arrangement for so much killing? Why such labor? Billions of dollars are spent every day. People are dying of hunger across the earth, and money is being spent to make bombs! People are dying of hunger, without clothing, without medicine—and on the other side we are destroying all wealth by annihilating humanity! Half the wealth of the earth has always been consumed by wars—half. If there had been no wars, how prosperous man would be today—it is hard to say.
God asked them: What do you want? I will grant you boons, fulfill your wishes. Ask one boon each. The American representative said: Lord, we have only one desire—then there will never again be any complaint against us, and no more wars. Let the earth remain—but let there remain no trace of Russia upon it. God had given many boons, but had never imagined such a boon would be asked. Fearfully, he looked toward Russia. If America asks this, what will Russia ask can be easily imagined.
The Russian representative said: Sir, we do not even believe God exists. I fear perhaps I have drunk too much and you appear to me; or I may be dreaming and you appear to me. Because you know, in Russia for fifty years we have decided that there is no God; the entire nation has decided unanimously there is no God—then how can you be? And this is the age of democracy—what the people decide is so. We have decided there is no God—how can you be? Surely I am dreaming, or drunk! But still, no harm—
It may be that we shall begin to worship you again, and reinstall your idols in our churches; but one desire must be fulfilled. Let there be a map of the earth, geography of the world—but on that map we do not wish to see any color, any line for America. If this can be done, then everything is fine; then we have no quarrel with you either. We will worship you too. Where we had opened the offices of the Communist Party in your temples, we will rebuild temples there. We have no difficulty—but this one wish must be fulfilled! God looked very nervously toward Britain, and what Britain said is worth remembering. The British representative bowed his head at God’s feet and said: O Lord, we have no desire of our own. If the desires of these two are fulfilled together—our desire is fulfilled. We ask nothing else—grant what both of them have asked, and we need nothing more.
This is where the world made by man, by the male mind, has brought us. Women have had no hand in shaping this world. Will women watch silently? Or will they take part—make a contribution?
I think a great power lies asleep in women. More than half the world’s power is in their hands. I say more than half, because women are half of humanity—and also because boys and girls grow up in their shadow, and as they wish, they can transform those lives. No matter how much power is in a man’s hands, one day he has been in a woman’s lap—from there he begins his journey. And however great he may become, however old—near his wife he continuously experiences his mother, continuously sees the shadow of his mother. He grows in the shadow of his mother. Mother remains overshadowing his life from childhood.
If once the whole power of woman awakens, and they decide to create a world of love where there are no wars, no violence, no politics, no politicians, where life is not diseased—
If women decide to create such a world, it is not difficult that they erect a new world—and that world will be far better than the one made by men. Even today, among those who have given something truly significant to the world, the qualities of woman are remarkable. A woman even wrote of Gandhi, “Bapu My Mother”—“Gandhi, my mother.” Many felt, being near Gandhi, that he had many motherly qualities. Going to Buddha, people felt it; going to Christ, people felt it—that perhaps within these men too there is the extraordinary capacity of woman.
Wherever there is love, compassion, mercy—there woman is present. That is why I say woman possesses more than half the great power—and for five thousand years it has lain entirely asleep, wholly dormant. The power of woman has found no use. In the future it can be used. One principle for its use is that women resolve not to become like men.
Second: that they experience themselves as different from men. Their personhood, their bodies, their minds, their consciousness move along other paths in life, seek life through other routes. Their consciousness is very different from a man’s consciousness. Awareness of this difference must be clear.
Third: their education, their clothing, their reflection, their thinking, their initiation—everything should be different, not like men’s. Then we can bring the power of woman into the service of human culture—and that use can prove exceedingly auspicious.
Who will do this? This cannot be left to men; women will have to take it into their own hands. They will have to think for themselves, reflect for themselves, find their own paths. They have begun to think, but that thinking is only imitation of men. In it there is no original contemplation, no vision of their own, no understanding of their own.
I have said these few things as a prayer—that you may think and reflect. The power of woman has been wasted—or not used at all. And where it has been used, it has been used in wrong directions. And now women are being initiated with such force into the imitation of men—in men’s colleges, in men’s schools—being molded into such frames—that it may happen, a hundred years from now, there will be two types of men on the earth, but no women. Two types of men, and no women—this could happen. No misfortune could be greater. Humanity has known many misfortunes, but if all women become like men, no misfortune could be greater. All the joy and all the charm of life will be destroyed, and life will be filled with melancholy and pain—and in melancholy and pain there remains no option but self-destruction. One thinks only to annihilate oneself, to end it all.
I have said these few things in the hope that perhaps some string on the veena of your heart may be touched; some contemplation may be born; something may become visible to you, something may become active in your life. And if something becomes active in the life of one woman, then the breath of an entire family begins to change. To transform one woman is equivalent to transforming fifty men. Those who hold such great power, such great capacity, such opportunity to transform so many lives—if they do nothing for life, then they are certainly guilty.
Woman is guilty—she has given nothing to life. She has laid no foundation for making life. But these foundations can yet be laid. You have listened to my words with such love and peace—I am deeply delighted and grateful. And in the end I pray to the Divine that this chariot of civilization driven by man is running on a single wheel. Great accidents have occurred, and greater accidents lie ahead. The second wheel is jammed, or has fallen off the chariot altogether.
May the Divine grant completeness to this human culture. May woman add her offering—her love, her joy, her poetry, her music—to this world that has been erected solely by mathematics, physics, and chemistry. May woman add her prayer to that politics which men alone have built upon ambition. May woman add her few lines to the song that man, in his anger and war-madness, has sung alone until now—then perhaps a more all-rounded, more integrated, more whole civilization can be born. And if that civilization is not born, this one is close to death. None will be able to save it. Either another civilization is born—or the moment of the end of mankind has come near. The chances for man’s survival are not very great.
In the end I bow down to the Paramatman dwelling within all of you. Kindly accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
In India too, woman was never given any equal opportunity to live as man’s equal. The same was true in the West. Because all the scriptures, all of civilization, all of education have been created by men, men—without asking anyone—declared themselves superior, and saw no reason to confer superiority upon woman. Naturally, there were consequences—fatal consequences.
The most fatal consequence was that whatever qualities belonged to woman could not participate in the evolution of civilization. Civilization was developed by men alone. And whatever civilization evolves from the hands of men alone can have no final result other than war. A life built only upon masculine qualities can lead nowhere but to violence. In man’s very disposition, in the very texture of his mind, there is an inevitable component of violence, anger, war.
Nietzsche, only a few decades ago, declared that Buddha and Christ must have been effeminate, because they spoke so much of compassion and love—these are not masculine qualities. Nietzsche called Christ and Buddha effeminate, womanlike. In one sense perhaps he was right—right in the sense that all the tender qualities of life, all relationships suffused with sweetness, all imagination and feeling for the Beautiful and the Auspicious—these are the intrinsic nature of woman. Human civilization could not be filled with sweetness, love, and beauty; it became cruel and coarse, hard and violent, and in the end brought only war.
Behind this are only two factors. First, women’s qualities were given no respect; and second, woman herself never made any effort, any active endeavor, to cultivate her own qualities. You may be surprised to know: if a woman excels in masculine traits—like Joan of Arc, or Rani Lakshmi Bai—the whole world praises her: very brave, very worthy of honor. But have you ever heard a man being honored for developing the qualities of woman? If a man appears womanly, he is insulted; if a woman appears manlike, she is honored and her statues are raised at the crossroads.
Man has axiomatically accepted his qualities as superior, and—astonishingly—women too have consented to this! Women have never even thought that their own personality has its dignity, its place, its prestige. After three or four thousand years of slavery a rebellion, a reaction arose, and women began to proclaim that they are equal to men, that they demand equal status, equal rights. But now another mistake is being made—perhaps you are unaware of it. It is essential to understand that mistake too.
I want to say that women are neither inferior to men, nor equal to men. Women are different from men—utterly different. There is no question of being below, nor of being equal; women are wholly different. Until women begin to think in the language of their difference, in the language of their distinct personhood, they will either be man’s slaves or his followers—and both conditions are dangerous.
In the West women have revolted, and the result is that in the race to become like men they have entered into competition—whatever men do, however men are, women must become the same. Whatever education man receives, woman must receive the same. If men go to the battlefield to fight, then women too should be present as soldiers on the battlefield.
You have no idea that in imitating men, women will always remain second-rate; they can never be first-rate. Because the qualities in which they are going to compete are natural to men and unnatural to women. In such a state, women will become distorted, deracinated from their nature; they will be deprived of what they could have become—and the consequences will be very fatal, beyond our imagination, beyond even our dreams.
To give women the same education that men receive is a grave error. It is appropriate that men learn mathematics; appropriate that men learn science. But it would be far more appropriate that woman learn something else that men do not learn. She has a different task in life. Life has given her a different responsibility. Upon her rests another burden—of love, of creation.
With mathematics you may run shops; you cannot raise children. With science, factories may run; families cannot. And the result is this: the initiation of women into the same training, the same education, the same sentiment of equality as men has snatched away their significant motherhood. Whatever was glorious in their being wives has been taken away. Whatever was feminine within them is being destroyed. They are being molded almost as imitations of men—and they even appear very pleased by it. For this pleasure, tomorrow if not today, women will have to shed a thousand thousand tears—and men too will weep.
Perhaps we do not notice that there is a fundamental difference in the psyche of woman and man, and this difference is meaningful. The entire magnetic attraction between man and woman depends upon this difference. The more different they are, the more distant, the more polarity there is—like the North and South poles—the greater the pull, the attraction, the gravitation. The more love is born between them—the greater the distance, the difference, the more unique and distinct their personalities are; not copies of each other, but complementary to each other.
If the man knows mathematics and the woman also knows mathematics, these two facts will not bring them closer; they will drive them farther apart. If the man knows mathematics and the woman knows poetry, knows music, knows dance—they will come nearer. They will become better companions, deeper companions in life. And when a woman is initiated in the same way as men, at most she can give man the companionship of another man; but she cannot fulfill that absence in his heart that is thirsty for woman, and filled with the longing for love.
In the West the family is breaking; in India too it will break. The causes are not so much economic as the fact that women are educated like men. Educated in the manner of man, woman becomes a counterfeit man; she cannot become an authentic woman. We have no sense of difference—nor any thought for different training and initiation.
This must be said to the women of the world: they have to protect their womanhood. Until yesterday man considered them inferior and low, and thus harmed them; today, if man agrees, saying, you are like us, join our race—in this race where will women reach? And the question is not only that women will be harmed; the question is that the whole of life will be ruined.
C. E. M. Joad, a Western thinker, wrote something remarkable. He wrote: When I was born there were homes in my country; but now, grown old and nearing death, there is no such thing as a home—only houses remain. Is there any difference between a home and a house? Any difference between a hotel and a home? If there is any difference, it depends entirely upon woman, and upon no one else.
A house can become a home, a building can become a dwelling, if at its center there is a woman. But if woman becomes like man, the house remains merely a house; a home cannot be created. Two people live together, but they are not husband and wife. Children are born, but the relationship is between nurse and children; there is no relationship between mother and son, or mother and daughter—because that which could become mother, that feminine being—we have done nothing for her growth.
What are our schools and colleges teaching? What are they giving to women? The same degrees that are given to men. They put them through the same examinations men pass through. They drill them in the same exercises, the same games that men play.
And it is astonishing that in this century, when we know so much about the body and its physiology, we still do not know that the same drills, the same exercises cannot be given to men and women. The laws of a woman’s body, the structure of a woman’s body, are very different. If she is made to do the same drill, the same left-right of the N.C.C. that male soldiers are taught, we will break some fundamental element within her—of which we have no inkling, no awareness.
People of the past were not fools. For men they discovered physical training; for women, dance. There was meaning in this. In dance there is a rhythm, a cadence, which fills a woman’s hormones, the chemistry of her body, with a different kind of movement, with music. Drill is another matter. Its purpose and significance are different. Drill arouses the anger within a person; it intensifies the tendency to fight; it strengthens the impulse to be violent toward the other.
If drill is taught to women, homes are bound to be destroyed—but we have no idea. We are harming their whole bodies. You will be amazed: in countries where women are given military training like men, even young girls begin to grow a moustache on the upper lip. This is very easy to bring about, not difficult at all.
If exactly the same drills as men’s are imposed on girls, hairs will begin to appear on their upper lip. The body’s hormones begin to act differently; the body’s inner arrangements begin to function differently. Small things make a difference. We are trying to shape women’s bodies also after the male pattern—and now, all over the world, we are arranging for them to wear men’s clothes as well. Perhaps we have no idea that the smallest things of life influence the whole of life.
In the East people wore loose clothing; in the West, tight clothing. Tight clothing makes a person ready to fight; loose clothing calms, makes one quiet. No monastic tradition in the world has ever worn tight clothes. This was not for nothing. Loose clothing confers a certain relaxation and peace upon the personality; tight clothing gives a briskness, a tautness. That is why we make soldiers and servants wear tight clothes; but owners have never worn tight clothes. If you wear tight clothes and climb stairs, you will take two steps at a time—you will not even notice that the clothes are making you take them two at a time. If you wear loose clothes, you will climb with a certain grace, a certain dignity.
Women’s clothing should never be like men’s. We expect something else from the life of woman: in the home a climate of stillness; in the home a loving spring, a tranquil lake. Tight clothes cannot be given to her—and if she wears them, she is falling into error, and for this error she will pay a very costly price.
If even clothing affects us, education will affect us certainly. The training of the mind—what we learn—builds our whole personality. What we think influences our whole life; we become what we contemplate. What are we being taught, and what kind of material for thinking is being given to us? What are women being taught? All the same things. One who is initiated in mathematics, one who is initiated in science—his grip on life is of one kind. One who is initiated in music and poetry—his grip on life is of another kind. And a small difference of grip changes everything.
A man began to come to Gandhi’s ashram. Some people complained to Gandhi that this man is not good; it is not right to let him come to the ashram. There are many reports about his bad life. Gandhi said: If bad men cannot come to the ashram, then for whom is the ashram? Let them come; we will welcome them. But one day matters went very far. Some people came and said: Now it has gone beyond limits. The very man we asked you to stop was seen sitting in a liquor shop, drinking—we saw with our own eyes; you may go and see. If a man wearing khadi sits in a liquor shop, it is very shameful for the ashram. Tears of joy came to Gandhi’s eyes and he said: If I were to see that man in a liquor shop, my heart would fill with bliss. I would rejoice, because it would mean good days are coming: even drinkers have begun to wear khadi! Those who brought the report said: A man in khadi is drinking—that is very bad news. But Gandhi said: My heart would be filled with joy if I knew that even drinkers have begun to wear khadi.
This is to see life from two sides. The friends who came to Gandhi looked at life from the viewpoint of a court, a lawyer’s viewpoint. Gandhi looked from another side—a mother’s viewpoint, a woman’s viewpoint—not the viewpoint of a lawyer, a court, or the law. What is the difference between the two? In the first, there is condemnation of the man, a denouncing, an insistence on abandoning him, stepping away from him. In the second, there is an effort to glimpse the auspicious within the man, to search for the beautiful even there; there is still hope. In the second vision the man is not finished; room for change is still granted. A mother’s son may go on going astray—everyone may say: cast him off, he is ruined, he must not enter the house. But the mother will say: there is still much hope.
I was halted at a small station. My train was delayed, and it was a village station. Some people brought an old woman whose head was bandaged; perhaps someone had struck her with sticks. Two or three women were with her. They had brought her to take her to the big city hospital. I asked: Who beat this woman? The accompanying women said: She has only one son, and that very son struck her with a stick, wounded her head; she fell unconscious, she has just now come to. We are taking her to the hospital. Another woman with her said: Better such sons were never born. But that old woman, with blood flowing from her head, put her hand over the other woman’s mouth and said: Do not say such a thing. If I had no son, who would beat me today? Because I have a son, he has beaten me—but if I had no son, who would beat me? That there is a son is everything; that he has beaten me is a very small matter. And the old woman said: He is a boy—how much understanding can he have? He has beaten me; tomorrow his understanding will return.
This is the heart of a mother—it does not think in mathematics or law, it thinks out of love and hope.
Women’s education must be entirely different, so that their vision is different—so that they can think of life in other ways. But this is not happening. We are initiating them into the same viewpoints, the same philosophies, the same ideas into which men are initiated—and the world created by men has already proven wrong. There is no need to say anything more. In the last three thousand years there have been fifteen thousand wars in man’s world. Rarely is there a day when somewhere on earth a war is not going on. Day after day there is war. Moment to moment humans are being cut down and killed. This is a world made by men alone—it has failed, it has been a defeat; the experiment is done.
Shall we not make one experiment—that women also take a significant part in the making of this world? That they lay some foundation for creating a new world? Or will they too imitate men, and tomorrow, dressed as soldiers, drop atom bombs on cities? Men will praise you greatly on the day you can drop atom bombs; then men will say: now everything is fine—very good women! When you stand on the battlefield with guns, men will give you many medals—Padmashri, Bharat Bhushan, Mahavir Chakra—and say: now women are just right, very brave!
Man thinks only in his own language; he wants to manufacture women in that same language—without realizing how mistaken man himself is. Do not try to increase the number of wrong men. Men alone are enough to destroy the world; if you too behave like men, the end of the human race can only come nearer—nothing else. But if women choose, they can bring a great revolution to the whole world; if women choose, war can disappear from the earth; if women choose, all stupidities can cease, all violence can cease, all anger can cease. But for that, a totally different kind of woman must be born—not an imitation of man, but a woman fulfilled in her own qualities, attaining her own dignity. Work must be done in that direction. The state of affairs created by men—I will try to explain with a small story.
God has become very frightened seeing this world of men—very troubled. What man has done to man—its tale is so full of pain, so sorrowful, there is no measure. How many killings have there been! Our memory is weak, so we forget the numbers. What did Timur, Nadir Shah, Chengiz Khan, and just now Stalin and Hitler do? We cannot even imagine. Stalin alone had six million people killed in Russia. Hitler alone—from the time he ruled—killed five hundred people per day, as a rule; every day the count of five hundred was completed. And now these men have made great inventions—atom and hydrogen bombs. Today or tomorrow they are engaged in arrangements to destroy the whole world. Their preparation is complete: they will not let man survive.
So God must have been very frightened. He called the representatives of the three great nations—Russia, Britain, and America. God said to them: I have become very worried. Since I created man, I have not been able to sleep. My nights pass in restlessness—who knows what this man will do next! Since I created man, as you must know, I have created nothing else; because making man frightened me so much that I stopped my work of creation. And since I stopped, man began to make things—and at last he made atom and hydrogen bombs. Now I am in great panic. So tell me—what do you want? What is your intention, your aim?
Why this arrangement for so much killing? Why such labor? Billions of dollars are spent every day. People are dying of hunger across the earth, and money is being spent to make bombs! People are dying of hunger, without clothing, without medicine—and on the other side we are destroying all wealth by annihilating humanity! Half the wealth of the earth has always been consumed by wars—half. If there had been no wars, how prosperous man would be today—it is hard to say.
God asked them: What do you want? I will grant you boons, fulfill your wishes. Ask one boon each. The American representative said: Lord, we have only one desire—then there will never again be any complaint against us, and no more wars. Let the earth remain—but let there remain no trace of Russia upon it. God had given many boons, but had never imagined such a boon would be asked. Fearfully, he looked toward Russia. If America asks this, what will Russia ask can be easily imagined.
The Russian representative said: Sir, we do not even believe God exists. I fear perhaps I have drunk too much and you appear to me; or I may be dreaming and you appear to me. Because you know, in Russia for fifty years we have decided that there is no God; the entire nation has decided unanimously there is no God—then how can you be? And this is the age of democracy—what the people decide is so. We have decided there is no God—how can you be? Surely I am dreaming, or drunk! But still, no harm—
It may be that we shall begin to worship you again, and reinstall your idols in our churches; but one desire must be fulfilled. Let there be a map of the earth, geography of the world—but on that map we do not wish to see any color, any line for America. If this can be done, then everything is fine; then we have no quarrel with you either. We will worship you too. Where we had opened the offices of the Communist Party in your temples, we will rebuild temples there. We have no difficulty—but this one wish must be fulfilled! God looked very nervously toward Britain, and what Britain said is worth remembering. The British representative bowed his head at God’s feet and said: O Lord, we have no desire of our own. If the desires of these two are fulfilled together—our desire is fulfilled. We ask nothing else—grant what both of them have asked, and we need nothing more.
This is where the world made by man, by the male mind, has brought us. Women have had no hand in shaping this world. Will women watch silently? Or will they take part—make a contribution?
I think a great power lies asleep in women. More than half the world’s power is in their hands. I say more than half, because women are half of humanity—and also because boys and girls grow up in their shadow, and as they wish, they can transform those lives. No matter how much power is in a man’s hands, one day he has been in a woman’s lap—from there he begins his journey. And however great he may become, however old—near his wife he continuously experiences his mother, continuously sees the shadow of his mother. He grows in the shadow of his mother. Mother remains overshadowing his life from childhood.
If once the whole power of woman awakens, and they decide to create a world of love where there are no wars, no violence, no politics, no politicians, where life is not diseased—
If women decide to create such a world, it is not difficult that they erect a new world—and that world will be far better than the one made by men. Even today, among those who have given something truly significant to the world, the qualities of woman are remarkable. A woman even wrote of Gandhi, “Bapu My Mother”—“Gandhi, my mother.” Many felt, being near Gandhi, that he had many motherly qualities. Going to Buddha, people felt it; going to Christ, people felt it—that perhaps within these men too there is the extraordinary capacity of woman.
Wherever there is love, compassion, mercy—there woman is present. That is why I say woman possesses more than half the great power—and for five thousand years it has lain entirely asleep, wholly dormant. The power of woman has found no use. In the future it can be used. One principle for its use is that women resolve not to become like men.
Second: that they experience themselves as different from men. Their personhood, their bodies, their minds, their consciousness move along other paths in life, seek life through other routes. Their consciousness is very different from a man’s consciousness. Awareness of this difference must be clear.
Third: their education, their clothing, their reflection, their thinking, their initiation—everything should be different, not like men’s. Then we can bring the power of woman into the service of human culture—and that use can prove exceedingly auspicious.
Who will do this? This cannot be left to men; women will have to take it into their own hands. They will have to think for themselves, reflect for themselves, find their own paths. They have begun to think, but that thinking is only imitation of men. In it there is no original contemplation, no vision of their own, no understanding of their own.
I have said these few things as a prayer—that you may think and reflect. The power of woman has been wasted—or not used at all. And where it has been used, it has been used in wrong directions. And now women are being initiated with such force into the imitation of men—in men’s colleges, in men’s schools—being molded into such frames—that it may happen, a hundred years from now, there will be two types of men on the earth, but no women. Two types of men, and no women—this could happen. No misfortune could be greater. Humanity has known many misfortunes, but if all women become like men, no misfortune could be greater. All the joy and all the charm of life will be destroyed, and life will be filled with melancholy and pain—and in melancholy and pain there remains no option but self-destruction. One thinks only to annihilate oneself, to end it all.
I have said these few things in the hope that perhaps some string on the veena of your heart may be touched; some contemplation may be born; something may become visible to you, something may become active in your life. And if something becomes active in the life of one woman, then the breath of an entire family begins to change. To transform one woman is equivalent to transforming fifty men. Those who hold such great power, such great capacity, such opportunity to transform so many lives—if they do nothing for life, then they are certainly guilty.
Woman is guilty—she has given nothing to life. She has laid no foundation for making life. But these foundations can yet be laid. You have listened to my words with such love and peace—I am deeply delighted and grateful. And in the end I pray to the Divine that this chariot of civilization driven by man is running on a single wheel. Great accidents have occurred, and greater accidents lie ahead. The second wheel is jammed, or has fallen off the chariot altogether.
May the Divine grant completeness to this human culture. May woman add her offering—her love, her joy, her poetry, her music—to this world that has been erected solely by mathematics, physics, and chemistry. May woman add her prayer to that politics which men alone have built upon ambition. May woman add her few lines to the song that man, in his anger and war-madness, has sung alone until now—then perhaps a more all-rounded, more integrated, more whole civilization can be born. And if that civilization is not born, this one is close to death. None will be able to save it. Either another civilization is born—or the moment of the end of mankind has come near. The chances for man’s survival are not very great.
In the end I bow down to the Paramatman dwelling within all of you. Kindly accept my pranam.