Feminine

Are all women really soft, feminine and loving?

I have not said that -- that all women are really soft, feminine and loving. Neither are all men aggressive, violent, ambitious, hard. Because deep down in you the consciousness is neither. The anima and the animus, the male and the female exist in your body chemistry. You can be a man physically, but deep inside you may have chosen the feminine part. A woman may be a woman physically but she may have chosen the masculine part -- both parts are available -- then the body remains feminine but the woman will become masculine. That is what is happening to women connected with the Women's Liberation movement: they are dropping their feminineness, they are becoming as aggressive as man. They are trying to compete with all kinds of foolishnesses that man has. They want to have all those foolishnesses themselves, too -- they cannot be left behind. The idea…

Osho, some women have a masculine nature...

In truth, being male or female should not be marginal. But the order we have developed is gradually becoming marginal; many people have come to stand on the margin. Civilization has done this. Civilization has made the roles of women and men almost the same. This has caused harm: it has reduced the woman’s femininity and the man’s manhood. Whereas it is necessary that the two be at extreme poles. A man should be ninety-nine percent male and one percent female—the one percent will remain; it cannot be escaped. A woman should be ninety-nine percent female and one percent male. For this it is necessary that they have different bodily exercises, that there be some difference in their diet, that their education be different, that the whole discipline of their lives be different. Then we will be able to place them as polarities. And the day human understanding grows, that…

A friend has asked: Osho, do all the enlightened have their consciousness become feminine?

It will, inevitably. But by “feminine” it doesn’t mean they become women. By “feminine” I mean their consciousness shifts from aggression to receptivity, from being aggressive to being receptive. Only when this receptivity arises can one open the inner doors to the divine.

I know I am a woman, but at times I display traits that seem to be very masculine. Are there such things as innately female or male characteristics?

A Jew is a Jew: how can you kill a man when he is talking business? Then you forget all about the wife, that he was making love to the wife, when business comes. There are people for whom politics is more important than love -- money, respectability, morality; a thousand things are there for a man. But a woman loves. She loves totally -- that is her one thing. It is not one thing in many. When a man loves, he loves for a few minutes in a day. When a woman loves, she loves for twenty-four hours. This is natural. But if sometimes a man loves, then no woman be compared to him -- because then his inner woman erupts. Then there arises a Majanu, or a Farihad; a great lover is born. Have you watched this fact?that Majanu and Farihad and this type of man has existed,…