Man and woman exist in a kind of interdependence

Abhiyana, do you know? – women love a deluded man. They are always searching for a deluded man, somebody who is mad and insane. Because the insane is very attractive: the mad, the deluded, has a certain magnetism. He is full of possibilities, dreams. Women love a dreamer.

And men? Men love a sane woman – otherwise, they will really go mad – to keep them back on the earth. The woman represents the earth. A man needs a woman because he has no roots in his own being. He needs a woman, the warm earth, the dark soil, where he can have his roots and remain rooted in the earth. He is afraid – he has wings but no roots. And he is afraid that if he is not holding to the earth he may be gone, he may disappear into the infinite sky and there may be no coming back. That fear keeps people running after women.

And a woman has no wings. She has roots, great roots; a woman is pure earth. And she is afraid that if she remains alone she will never be able to fly into the unknown. A woman can’t be a dreamer like a man. It is not just accidental that women have not created great poetry or music. They don’t have wings, they are very earthly, very pragmatic, very real – and sane, of course. They are so sane, that’s why they don’t write poetry. You have to have some insanity to write poetry. You have to have some delusions, megalomania, then only can you write poetry.

A woman makes a laundry list, not a poem – a shopping list. Her concern is immediate. She talks about the neighbours; she is not worried about Vietnam or Israel. She simply laughs at the people, at men – why are they so much concerned? And they get into such excitement! If something is happening in Israel, it is happening in Israel – why are you worried? And the woman in the neighbourhood has escaped with somebody else – that is the real thing; it is so immediate.

Women are not interested in gospels, they are interested in gossips. Both the words come from the same root. When it is about the faraway it is a gospel, when it is about the close-by it is gossip. When it is immediate it is gossip, when it is ultimate it is a gospel.

Man cannot live without woman, because then he loses roots. He simply becomes a vagabond. Then he belongs nowhere. Just see a man who has no woman: he belongs nowhere, he has no home, he becomes a driftwood, just waves take him anywhere – unless he gets entangled with a woman somewhere; then the home arises.

Researchers say that the home is the creation of the woman. If man had lived alone, there would have been no home and no civilization either. He would have been a wanderer, a hunter; he would have gone from one corner to the other corner. Look: man is trying to go to the other planets; now he has reached the moon. And women simply laugh at the whole lunacy. Men must be lunatics, they are so much interested in reaching the lunar, the moon. For what? You can’t do shopping there. There seems to be no point at all! And there are no people, no gossiping, nothing of the sort – just empty desert.

Man without woman is a wanderer, a vagabond. Hence, sooner or later, he needs to get rooted. The woman becomes his earth. Unless a man finds something in him that can become his earth, unless the man finds his own inner woman, he will have to look for the outer woman.

Yes, there have been men who have lived without women – a Buddha or a Jesus. But they too have not really lived without a woman – they found a deeper woman in their own being. Because man is both man and woman, and woman is also both woman and man. It has to be so, because you come from two persons – your father and mother. Your father has contributed the man in you, your mother has contributed the woman in you. Each person is fifty percent man, fifty percent woman.

Unless you turn inside yourself and find your woman or man there, you will have to look outside, The outside is a substitute.

You ask me: Why do I allow women to hold power over me?

Because without them you will be insane. And the same is true about women – without men they will be too sane, and to be too sane is also a different kind of insanity. To be too sane becomes heavy; to be too sane, then you cannot sing, you cannot dance. So a woman needs somebody who can dream for her, and a man needs somebody who can become a home for him.

This is a must – unless you have found your other polarity inside yourself. When a man has found the other polarity inside, he becomes a total orgasm. Then there is no need to look out. Still you can go on loving women, but there will be no clinging. And you will not become possessive or possessed. When you have found your unity inside, you will still be loving men but it will not be an obsession, it will be just a sharing. And then love is a joy. Then love has a totally different quality; otherwise, it is going to have something of fever in it. The fever has to be there, for a certain psychological reason.

If you cannot be alone, naturally you feel powerless before the woman or before the man. If you cannot be alone, then your woman is your need, then you are dependent on her. And you are annoyed – your independence is lost. You are annoyed because she is having so much power over you. You cannot forgive her. And the woman cannot forgive you either, because without you she is simply earth. The sky disappears, the stars disappear. Without you she is just earth – dark, waiting for somebody. Waiting for somebody to come and bloom into her being, waiting for somebody to release her fragrance.

Have you seen a woman without love and one in love? They smell differently – actually, they smell differently; their fragrance is different. When a woman is alone she has sadness all around her: depressed, lonely, forlorn, in a despair, just anxiety. The moment she falls in love she starts blooming. Something immediately opens up. Then she has beauty.

A woman not in love shrinks, closes up; she starts living in a shut-upness. She closes the doors and the windows. There is nobody to wait for – why keep the windows open or the doors open? She starts living in a kind of grave; she is no more alive. She starts dying, she becomes suicidal. Just mathematics, just arithmetic, just sanity, is not enough. Some poetry is needed to keep balance.

And man alone looks lost; he does not know who he is. Unless he sees himself in the eyes of a loving woman, he will never know who he is. He can go on doing Amida’s Enlightenment Intensive and go on asking “Who am I? Who am I?” And no answer will come – unless he looks into the eyes of love. Only then will he be reflected, only then in the mirror will he see who he is.

The woman gives him form, substance, The woman makes him aware of who he is. By her love she creates the man. It is not only that you are created by your mother in her womb; you are created by each woman whenever you fall in love. Whenever you fall in love the woman gives you shape, colour, polish; she makes you human. Otherwise, man will be very very barbarous, violent, aggressive, uncaring, uncompassionate.

But the problem is that both depend on each other and both feel hurt – nobody wants to depend. And on whomsoever you depend, you will never be able to forgive him or her. You will take revenge.

That’s why lovers go on fighting. The fight is nothing but to show that “I am still independent – what do you think?” The fight is just to feel that “I am still independent. If I want I can leave her.” The fight is just… the woman thinks, “I am not so dependent on him. I can still bloom alone. I will still be happy without you – what do you think of yourself?”

Hence they fight, just to test their independence. But within hours the fight is gone and they are hugging each other. Because the moment they start separating from each other, they start feeling suffocated, hungry, thirsty. They start losing whatsoever they had. The warmth is missed, the man starts feeling cold. And if there is nobody to hold the woman she starts feeling absolutely lonely.

If there is no love we are all alone. If love is not possible, then loneliness is the truth and has to be accepted. Only love gives you glimpses that loneliness is not ultimate.

You ask me: Why do I allow women to hold power over me?

It is not a personal question, Abhiyana. Every man allows that power. And resists it. Every husband becomes a hen-pecked husband – every, I say. There is no other kind of husband. Whatsoever the pretensions, the only kind that really exists is the henpecked husband.

When the tree takes so much nourishment from the earth, it becomes dependent; it cannot remain independent. It is a simple phenomenon. And when the earth sees its own joy. its celebration, its potential, being expressed by the tree – the green foliage and the red flowers, and the branches raised high into the sky – that the earth always wanted, to have wings, and now they are there – how can the earth remain independent?

Man and woman exist in a kind of interdependence. Independent, they are half – hungry, starved for the other. Interdependence is the truth – but then independence is lost.

It is not an accident that all the monks of the world, down the ages, have been escaping from woman. The woman represents the world. They are really escaping from the feeling that they are dependent; they want to be independent.

This is a human phenomenon, not personal at all.

The woman cannot feel happy without a man. Without a man she cannot flow in dreams. A deluded man is more attractive than an ordinary man. That’s why women fall in love with people who have great illusions about themselves. An ordinary man is one who has no illusions; no woman is attracted towards an ordinary man. A deluded man looks magical. He has magic. His eyes flare up with something unknown, and that is the desire of the woman. He has the sense of possibility – that sense of possibility gives him the quality of magic.

In nature, watch: the bird with the best dance and the best song gets the best female. And so is the case with human beings too. Ever observe how many good-looking women hang around the musicians, singers and actors? For what? Something magical, something not of this earth, something of the beyond – and they immediately become attracted. This is a natural attraction; both fulfill each other. And this is going to remain.

You ask me: I want to get out.

You will have to get in. You cannot get out so easily – everything has a price. Get in, as deeply as possible. Don’t be in such a hurry. If you get out, and you are not mature enough to get out, you will have to get in again. Go through the whole lot, go to the very end of it. See it through and through.

Meanwhile, go on meditating and seeing the phenomenon. Don’t take it personally, it is not personal. If you take it personally, you misunderstand the whole thing from the very beginning. It is something between man and woman, nothing between you and your woman. It is something between man-energy and woman-energy, it is something between masculine energy and feminine energy.

Just watch it as a detached observer. Don’t bring your small egos in it – they are irrelevant. They create a mess, they don’t help any understanding. Just see what is happening with your energies. And, slowly slowly, that very meditation will help you to be able to find a woman within you – she is there.

And the day that happens and you start turning in, then you can get out. By getting into yourself to such a depth where you can find your inner woman… it is there. If you are a man, then your conscious is masculine, your unconscious is feminine. If you are a woman, then your conscious is feminine, your unconscious is masculine. Just dive deep into the unconscious.

And that is what meditation is all about. Go on loving, go on experiencing the joys and the miseries that love brings. They are all needed to make you ripe and mature. And meanwhile go on meditating. Both these processes, love and meditation, if they continue simultaneously, slowly slowly will make you aware that whatsoever you are finding outside can be found inside in a far better way.

And once that happens, then your unconscious and conscious meet, you become ardhanarishwar – you become man and woman together. Then there is a difference, a total difference; your quality is no more the same. Then you can still love a woman, but it is no more a dependence. It is now a sharing. You can still love a man, but it is just pure joy, it is just overflowing energy. You have so much that you have to give it to somebody. But you can be alone too – and as happy as together.

When a man is capable of being alone and as happy as when he is together, then he will never be in the grip of anybody else. He will not feel that “Somebody holds power upon me.” Then you will not be fighting with your woman or man, because then there is no question of fight. Then you are two independent people sharing out of your independence, sharing out of your immense freedom. But there is no necessity to share, it is for no other motive – just because you are overflowing. Then you don’t feel hurt, then you don’t feel that you have become a slave. Then you remain a master and she remains a master. And nobody possesses anybody. All possessiveness disappears.

Why does this possessiveness come in the mind again and again? Why are you so jealous and so possessive? The reason is; you are dependent, you are afraid. If your woman leaves you tomorrow, you are afraid you will lose your earth. And what are you going to do in the cold nights, being lonely? You cannot imagine yourself lonely. It is frightening; hence you are afraid.

If your woman is laughing with somebody else, talking to somebody else, you become suspicious. Or if your man has gone to the movies with some other woman, you boil, you become feverish. You are sitting on a volcano, you are ready to explode into ugliness. Why so much possessiveness, jealousy? The fear!

Who knows? He loves you, he can love another woman. He loves you as a woman, his love for women is still alive – he can find another woman. And maybe the new is more attractive than the old – naturally – the unfamiliar more attractive than the familiar. He has become completely aware of you. Now it is a kind of repetition, you know it. He still loves you, but it is a kind of repetition. It has lost that glamour, it has lost those beautiful beginning days; those honeymoon days are no more there. Things have settled in a routine. Now you are afraid. He may fall into somebody else’s love and may have again those honeymoon days. And you will be left alone.

Fear arises. Death arises in you. You have to stop it – you have to create a China Wall around your man or around your woman. You have not to allow him or her to have any kind of relationship with anybody, any friendship with anybody, so that you can be certain that tomorrow also he will be available to you.

But the more you become possessive, the more relationship becomes ugly, the more relationship becomes repulsive. The more you become possessive, the more it becomes a boredom. And the man at least starts dreaming about other women, the woman starts thinking about other men. Deep inside, they are no more together; just physically they are together.

And the more you see it happening, the more panicky you become and the more you possess. Possessiveness is the poison that kills all love. But that seems to be bound to happen, almost inevitable. In this state of dependence it is bound to happen.

You can only be non-possessive, non-jealous, when a different kind of love has arisen in you which is no more dependent, which needs nobody, which simply goes on overflowing. If somebody partakes, good, you are grateful. If nobody partakes, very good, you are alone, absolutely happy.

Osho, Take It Easy, Vol 1, Ch 14, Q 2