Osho,
Why is it still so difficult for me to see the worth of my feminine qualities. There is still something in me that judges them as weak. Can you please say something about this?

“…Love, trust, beauty, sincerity, truthfulness, and authenticity – these are all feminine qualities, and they are far greater than any qualities that man has.

“But the whole past has been dominated by man and his qualities.

“Naturally in war, love is of no use, truth is of no use, beauty is of no use, aesthetic sensibility is no use. In war, you need a heart which is more stony than stones. In war, you need simply hate, anger, a madness to destroy.

“In three thousand years, man has fought five thousand wars. Yes, this is also strength but not worthy of human beings. This is strength derived from our animal inheritance.

“It belongs to the past, which is gone, and the feminine qualities belong to the future, which is coming.

“There is no need to feel yourself weak because of your feminine qualities.

You should feel grateful to existence that what man has to earn, you have been given by nature as a gift.

“Man has to learn how to love. Man has to learn how to let the heart be the master and the mind be just an obedient servant. Man has to learn these things.

“The woman brings these things with her, but we condemn all these qualities as weaknesses.

“Even if you have chosen women as great individuals, you can see what you have chosen – you have chosen a man. Because you have chosen the qualities of the man that were in the woman.

“For example, Joan of Arc had all the qualities of man. The Queen of Jhansi in India had all the qualities of man: she could fight with a naked sword, could kill people without any problem.

“Such women have been chosen in history and great tribute is paid to them by the historians.

And they don’t represent women. In fact, that is the reason why they have been chosen, because they are just carbon copies of men.

“The women’s liberation movement has to learn one fundamental thing: that is not to imitate man and not to listen to what he says about feminine qualities, the feminine personality. The feminine qualities are clear….

“Nietzsche had this insight: that men have to suppress women. Otherwise, if things had gone naturally, it would be more possible that the woman would be the master and the man would be the servant, because his qualities are those of a servant – of a soldier at the most.

And the feminine qualities are almost divine. They have a royalty about them.

“Drop all the ideas of man that he has been putting in your heads. And also drop the ideas of the women’s liberation movement, because they are also putting nonsense into your minds.

“Their nonsense is that they are trying to prove that men and women are equal. They are not – and when I say they are not, I don’t mean that someone is superior and someone is inferior. I mean that they are unique.

“Women are women and men are men; there is no question of comparison.

“Equality is out of the question. They are not unequal and neither can they be equal. They are unique.

Rejoice in your feminine qualities, make a poetry of your feminine qualities. That is your great inheritance from nature.

“Don’t throw it away, because the man does not have them. To be equal, you may start doing idiotic things….

“We have a deep respect for feminine qualities and those qualities prohibit many things, encourage many other things.

“The woman should not try to imitate man, because even if you succeed…. It is difficult to succeed. Imitation is always imitation, it is never equal.

“But for argument’s sake, if we accept that you can become exactly like a man, you will lose all that you have and you will not gain anything.

“Because even in the eyes of man, you will not be beautiful anymore, and in your own eyes, you will be shattered. It was better to be unequal than to be equal because now the man takes no interest.

A woman should keep her separateness, should save all her feminine qualities and purify them. In this way, she is going, according to her nature, towards enlightenment.

“Of course once you are enlightened, you have gone beyond the discrimination of sexes. Beyond enlightenment, you are simply human beings. But before that….

“Nor should man try to imitate woman, which he has been doing….

“And there is an unconscious reasoning because the man feels women are beautiful – perhaps if he also takes away the beard and the mustache, he may look more beautiful.

“He’s a hundred percent wrong. It is one thing that women go on tolerating, him because it is a man’s society and he develops ideas and enforces them on everybody else who is in some way dependent on him.

“But if women are free to express their feelings, a beard is as natural, a mustache is as natural as your nose. You don’t shave it.

Be proud of your qualities. Increase them, refine them because they are the path toward godliness.

“Man is not in a better position than woman as far as religious experience is concerned.

“But he has one quality and that is of the warrior. Once he gets a challenge, then he can grow any kind of qualities.

“Even the feminine qualities, he can grow better than any woman can. His fighting spirit balances things.

“Women have qualities inborn. Man needs only to be provoked, given a challenge: these qualities have not been given to you – you have to earn them.

And if men and women both can live these qualities, the day is not far away when we can transform this world into a paradise….”

END

Excerpted and abridged from Osho, Sermons in Stones, Talk #17 – The Poetry Of The Feminine

You can read the complete talk and see all available formats of this talk here.

For Osho videos on femininity please visit the OSHO International Channel on YouTube: Accept Yourself and Respecting Women.