“Female Energy” as described by Osho [must read]

Phenomenal extract from the book – My Way, The Way of the White Clouds by Osho

BELOVED OSHO,
WE HAVE QUITE A FEW QUESTIONS ABOUT FEMALE ENERGY.
SOME WOMEN SAY THAT SINCE THEY’VE MET YOU, ALTHOUGH THEIR PHYSICAL DESIRES CONTINUE, A MORTAL MAN IS NO LONGER SATISFYING ENOUGH FOR THEM. OTHER WOMEN SAY THAT SINCE THEY HAVE MET YOU THEY FEEL MORE LOVING. GURDJIEFF IS REPORTED TO HAVE SAID THAT A WOMAN CANNOT ATTAIN EXCEPT THROUGH A MAN. WOULD YOU TALK TO US ABOUT FEMALE ENERGY?

Yes, Gurdjieff has said that a woman cannot attain except through a man – and he is right. He is right because female energy differs from male energy.
It is just as if someone says that only a woman can give birth to a child. A man cannot give birth to a child – he can give birth to a child only through a woman. The physical structure of the woman carries a womb; the physical structure of a man is without a womb – he can have a child only through a woman. And the same in reverse order happens in spiritual birth: a woman can get enlightened only through a man. Their spiritual energy differs also, just like their physical part. Why? Why is this so?
And remember, this is not a question of equality or of inequality – this is a question of difference.
Women are not lower than men because they cannot attain directly; man is not lower than woman because he cannot give birth to a child directly. They are different. There is no question of equality or inequality, there is no question of evaluation. They are simply different, and this is a fact.
Why is it difficult for woman to attain enlightenment directly? And why for man is it possible to attain enlightenment directly?
There are two ways, only two, basically only two, which lead to enlightenment. One is meditation and the other is love. You may call them Gyana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga – the path of wisdom and the path of devotion. The basic ways are only two.
Love needs another; meditation can be done alone. Man can achieve through meditation – that’s why he can achieve directly. He can be alone. He is alone deep down. Loneliness comes naturally to man. For a woman, to be alone is difficult, very difficult, almost impossible. Her whole being is a deep urge to love, and for love, the other is needed. How can you love if the other is not there? You can meditate if the other is not there – there is no problem.
Woman, the female energy, reaches the meditative state through love; and the male energy reaches love through meditation. A Buddha becomes a great loving force – but through meditation. When Buddha came back to his palace, his wife was very angry, naturally, because for twelve years he had not shown his face. One night he had simply disappeared, not even saying anything to her. While she was asleep he escaped like a coward.
The wife of Buddha, Yashodhara, would have allowed him. She was a brave woman. If Buddha had asked she would have allowed him; there would have been no problem about it, but Buddha would not ask. He was afraid something might go wrong, she might start crying and weeping or something.
But the fear was not because of her – the fear was deep down in himself. He was afraid it would be difficult for him to leave Yashodhara weeping and crying. The fear is always of oneself. It would be very cruel and he could not be so cruel, so it was better to escape while his wife was asleep. So he escaped, and after twelve years he came back.
Yashodhara asked many things. One of the things she asked was: Tell me, whatsoever you have attained there, could not you attain it here, living with me? Now that you have attained you can tell me.
It is said that Buddha remained silent. But I answer: Buddha could not have attained, because a man deep in love…and he was deep in love with Yashodhara; it was a very intimate relationship. If there had been no relationship with Yashodhara, if she had simply been a Hindu wife, no love relationship, then Buddha could have attained even living with her. Then really there is no problem. The other is there on the periphery, you are not related. If you are not related, the other is not – only a physical presence moving on the boundary.

But Buddha was in deep love. And it is difficult for a man to attain meditation when he is in love – this is the problem. Very difficult, because when he is in love, whenever he sits silently, the other arises in the mind; his whole being starts moving around the other. That was the fear, that’s why Buddha escaped. Nobody has talked about it before, but Buddha escaped from that house, from the wife, from the child, because he really loved. And if you love a person, then whenever you are occupied you may forget him, but when you are unoccupied the other will come to the memory immediately, and then there is no gap for the divine to enter. When you are occupied, working in a shop, or…. Buddha was on his throne and looking after the affairs of the kingdom, then it was okay – he could forget Yashodhara. But whenever he was not occupied, there was Yashodhara – the gap was filled by Yashodhara and there was no passage for the divine to enter.
Man cannot attain to the divine through love. His whole energy is totally different from female energy.
First he should attain to meditation – then love happens to him. Then there is no problem. First he must reach the divine, then the beloved also becomes divine.
After twelve years, Buddha comes back. Now there is no problem, now in Yashodhara the god is.
Before, Yashodhara was too much, and it was difficult to find the god. Now the god is totally there, there is no space left for Yashodhara.
The totally opposite happens to a woman. She cannot meditate because her whole being is an urge towards the other. She cannot be alone. Whenever she is alone, she is in misery. So if you say: To be alone is bliss, to be alone is ecstatic – a woman cannot understand it. This emphasis on being alone has existed all over the world because of too many seekers who are men – a Buddha, a Mahavira, a Jesus, a Mohammed. They all went into loneliness, and they only attained in loneliness. They created the milieu.
A woman, whenever alone, feels anguish. If there is a lover, even in her mind, she is happy. If someone loves, if someone is loved – if love exists around a woman, it nourishes her. It is a nourishment, it is a subtle food. Whenever a woman feels that love is not there, she is simply starving, suffocating; the whole being shrinks. So a woman can never think that loneliness can be blissful.
This female energy has created the path of love and devotion. Even a divine lover will do – there is no need to find a physical lover. Krishna will do for Meera, there is no problem, because for Meera the other exists. He may not be there, Krishna may just be a myth, but for Meera he is, the other exists – and then Meera is happy. She can dance, she can sing, and she is nourished.
The VERY idea, the very notion, the very feeling, that the other exists and there is love, and a woman feels fulfilled. She is happy, alive. Only with this love will she come to a point when the lover and the beloved become one. Then meditation will happen. For female energy, meditation happens only in the deepest merger of love. Then she can be alone, then there is no problem – now she can never be alone – the beloved has become merged, now it is within. Meera or Radha or Teresa, they all achieved through a lover – Krishna, Jesus.
This is my feeling, that whenever a male seeker comes to me he is interested in meditation; and whenever a female seeker comes to me she is interested in love. She can be made interested in meditation if I say that love will happen through it. But her DEEP desire is for love. Love is God for a woman.
This difference has to be understood, deeply understood, because everything depends on it – and Gurdjieff IS right. Female energy will love, and through love will flower the meditative state, the samadhi. Satori will come, but deep down in the roots will be love and satori will become the flower. For male energy, satori will be in the roots, samadhi will be in the roots, meditation will be in the roots, and then love will flower. But love will be a flowering. When female seekers come to me, it is bound to happen: they will feel more love, but then a physical partner will be less satisfying. Whenever there is deep love, a physical partner will always become unsatisfactory, because the physical partner can fulfill only the periphery, he cannot fulfill the center.
That’s why, in ancient countries like India, we never allowed love – we allowed arranged marriages. Once love is allowed, the physical partner is going to be unsatisfactory sooner or later, and then there will be frustration.
Now the whole West is disturbed. Now there will be no satisfaction at all. Once you allow love, then an ordinary man cannot fulfill it. He can fulfill sex, he can fulfill the superficial, but he cannot fulfill the deep, the depth. Once the depth is functioning, once you have disturbed the depth, only God can fulfill – nobody else.
So when female seekers come to me, their depth is shocked. They start feeling a new urge, a new love arising. Now their husbands or their boyfriends, their partners will not be able to satisfy it. Now this can be satisfied only by a much higher quality being. This is going to be so. So either your boyfriend, your husband, has to become more meditative, create higher qualities of being…only then will he be fulfilling. Otherwise the relationship will break, the bridge cannot remain; you will have to find a new friend. Or, if it is impossible to find a new friend – as it would have been for Meera – difficult, then you have to love the divine. Then just forget the physical part – now it is not for you.
The same happens to male seekers in a different way. When they come to me, they become more meditative. When they become more meditative, the bridge between their old partners is broken, becomes shaky. Now their girlfriend or their wife has to grow, otherwise the relationship is on the rocks, it cannot be maintained. Remember this, that all our relationships, so-called relationships, are adjustments. If one changes, the adjustment is broken – for the better or for the worse, that is not the point. People come to me and they say: If meditation brings higher qualities, then why is the relationship broken? That is not the question. The relationship was an adjustment between two persons as they were. Now one has changed, the other has to grow with them; otherwise there will be trouble, things will become false. Whenever a man is here, he becomes more meditative. The more meditative he is, the more he wants to be alone. The wife, the beloved, will be disturbed by it. If she is not understanding then she will start creating trouble – this man wants to be more alone. If she is understanding, then there is no problem; but that understanding can only come to her if her love grows. If she feels more loving, then she can allow this friend to be lonely, alone, and she will protect his loneliness. She will try to see that it is not disturbed – this will be her love now. And if this man feels…if Buddha feels that Yashodhara is protecting, safeguarding, seeing, caring, that his meditation is not disturbed, that his silence is helped, then there is no need to escape from this Yashodhara. But this happens only if Yashodhara’s love grows. When a man’s meditation is growing, a woman’s love should grow. Only then can they keep pace, and a higher harmony will arise and it will go on, higher and higher. And a moment comes when the man is totally in meditation and the woman is totally in love – then only the PERFECT meeting, then only the real, supreme orgasm between two persons. Not physical, not sexual – total! Two
existences meeting into each other, dissolving. Then the lover becomes the door, the beloved becomes the door, and they both reach to the one. So whosoever comes to me should come perfectly aware that it is dangerous to be near me. Your old arrangements will be disturbed – and I cannot help it. I am not here to help your adjustments; that is for you to decide. I can help you grow – grow in meditation, grow in love. To me, both words mean the same, because they reach to the same end.
Enough for today.

crea Written by:

25 Comments

    • September 10, 2010
      Reply

      Ahh well! You read what you are meant to read at the right time! 🙂 You read it now…now is the best time! 😉
      Love n Light!
      Deepti Gujar

  1. June 10, 2011
    Reply

    Absolutely beautiful…….interesting that such things are beyond the realm of mind but the mind nevertheless realizing that the being has traversed beyond the mind and if opposed his/her established equation with the divine, the mind may get dropped forever, the mind also goes in agreeing with something which is just against it……..lots of love

  2. September 9, 2011
    Reply

    Powerful stuff Deepti.. thanks so much.. it comes at the right time!
    Love
    Kiran

  3. January 24, 2013
    Reply

    Namaste Deepti, I hope you have not censored my response on here, because this does reach into the core of the ‘sexual objectivism’ you are now speaking of….
    thank you

    • January 24, 2013
      Reply

      Dear Lion Girl,
      I am so glad you visited, and yes I received your response through another channel, to which I did reply. 🙂 Wonder if you received that?
      In any case, if this is the core of objectivism, I am glad it is brought to ‘light’. It is such a delicate issue that if we even see one layer of our prejudice, it is a reward because it is an opportunity to let go of that layer too.
      Love and light. 🙂

  4. January 24, 2013
    Reply

    I had written a much longer post in response to this which i will repost later. But i remind all that it is NOW the time to listen deep within ourselves and question anything that makes us lesser than others, through the words and actions of others, especially when those ‘others’ have much to gain for maintaining a specific way of seeing and being and keeping women, especially, in those roles.
    I truly hope my earlier long post was not lost.

    • January 24, 2013
      Reply

      Dear Lion Girrl,
      This comment comes in now into my mailbox! 🙂 So responding to it what I feel: I honestly am not able to understand the context where you come from completely. So please help me over here – “by question anything that makes us lesser than others” does it mean that this article seeks to make women lesser than men or vice versa? Secondly by saying “especially when those ‘others’ have much to gain for maintaining a specific way of seeing and being and keeping women, especially, in those roles” – are you talking about Osho?
      Thanks Love and light 🙂

  5. January 26, 2013
    Reply

    HI Deepti! thanks for your response… i’m not clear, did you get my long post where i deconstructed what i was having a problem with (in particular that many other cultures have said exactly the opposite of Osho’s ‘men get enlightened through meditation, women through love’) – and how that simply reaffirms that women are dependent on men? I’ll happily rewrite that to give you the context, over the weekend, because i too feel this is a deep part of the discussion that never sees the light. And there are quite hidden/energetic levels to all of this that are doing women a disservice, simply in their thinking and perception of themselves, that like your ‘sexual objectivism’ post, need real discussion.
    Because yes, i do think that so many male-dominated institutions establish dogmas that just-so-happen to make women dependent on men, who are ‘above ‘ all this. Regardless of Osho, there are plenty of ancient cultures that perceive women as far more powerful and certainly fully capable (even more capable!) of attaining higher states/personal power/enlightenment – fully on their own. Propagating the idea that men can do it alone while women need men to do so, is i feel extremely damaging. Nor is bhakti yoga our only path! Why NOT karma yoga, jnana yoga, so many of the other paths!
    Sorry if i am testy, i do get tired of men (even if they ARE God, or if they aren’t) – telling women what is possible or not possible for them!
    Blessings to you my dear 🙂

  6. vijay khalage
    June 24, 2013
    Reply

    i belive it!……..i love osho!…….

  7. rohit
    July 13, 2013
    Reply

    what a depth,when u grow the other must also grow otherwise he starts moving away from her

  8. Dipika Kapadia
    August 29, 2013
    Reply

    I can’t help but feel that there’s something missing in this… I disagree with the statement made by Gurdjieff that a female cannot achieve except through a man [but a man is OK without a woman]. You need a man of great meditation to match a woman of great love and surely the whole is greater than the sum of parts: for *both* the man and the woman, not just the woman. Can a man of great meditative capability partner with a woman who can’t match his depth? If one is not seeking to live as a householder, both a man and woman can meditate their way to higher planes of consciousness. But both men and women are looking to live the middle path and a spiritually evolved person of either gender will not flower in a relationship with a partner who is not able to match his or her energy.

    • September 2, 2013
      Reply

      Thanks Dipika for these reflections. This piece is a journey in itself. Every time I have reflected on it, something new has opened up for me. I resonate with what you are saying because right now in my world I am seeing both men and women feeling this angst of having reached a space where their partner does not match their depth. And yet the longing to share this depth, this love with a partner does not end. What I have experienced is at one point being filled with love, through meditation or healing, has turned me into a solitary person. At another point, the immense love has made me seek a partner with whom I can share it. If one were to categorise this as male or female, then I see myself shifting between both periodically. At this point, I am not identifying with any, rather I am learning to enjoy both these urges/outcomes. Both are life itself moving through you, evolving through you. When I understand Osho here, I do agree with Gurdjieff for myself. My primary seek to turn into this journey was love. There was an ‘other’ for whose love I stepped into this path and persisted. And yet I know now that what Osho talks about is not really about a woman. He talks of a feminine mind. Mind is duality At times I see my mind as being feminine, and at times it has been masculine. And I can see a lot of men having a feminine mind, and a lot of women having a masculine mind. Also, that these change over time as you meditate, etc. 🙂 Hope that opens up your insights. Love.

  9. kaleeena
    January 29, 2014
    Reply

    I was thinking about the same, what Dipika Kapadia . woman can’t be enlighted without man?
    I love Osho, but why he said that woman can’t stand alone? Iam probably woman and I love being alone!!! also I think I lost my heart and its hard to reach it again, like no loving anyone and only last time I get where I buried my heart, also I dont need man.. where the point is? If Im woman and act like that? what about is my mind? If I like my lonliness, not looking for partner or dont need really sex – I can’t be enlighted ?

  10. September 4, 2014
    Reply

    This is so interesting … in many ways. Mostly because I felt my own reaction and it makes me pay attention. I too like to be alone and do not feel the need to have a loving human male in my life. I am drawn to the idea of love being the inner guide for women. Overall, I question whether our inner divinity is aligned with the idea of male and female. After all, this is something that males have created in texts for millennia and is replicated in religions around the globe.
    I hear this as Osho’s truth but it does not ring true to my truth.
    Thank you for bringing this provoking piece to the attention of western men and women with different cultural heritages <3
    I will revisit this again!
    Val x

    • September 4, 2014
      Reply

      How lovely! Agree with it or disagree but in any case you get triggered. 🙂 thanks for going through it and responding instead of reacting 🙂 much love

      • alaana
        September 5, 2014
        Reply

        Osho realy didnt mean about woman but female mind… I Read IT in his books he id talking there is female and ma le type of mind..body is only body and we are soul. Mind is making trouble, Osho says enlighment doesnt ddpend on sex, only showinistic monks made IT opinion dont miss undersand him

        • September 5, 2014
          Reply

          Yes Alaana, the masculine and feminine here is huge mind’s quality. 🙂 thanks for going through and commenting. Love

          • alaana
            September 5, 2014

            Greetings :))

  11. arjun mehta
    February 1, 2015
    Reply

    awsm…..

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