Man has not been helpful. He would like his children to fulfill all the desires that he has not been able to fulfill. He wants his children to become prime ministers, presidents, the richest people in the world. Those were his desires, those were his father’s desires, those were his grandfather’s desires and in heritage he will give those desires – which are maddening – to his children. He cannot talk about enlightenment.
Latifa is German. Even a German husband cannot manage to force a woman to become enlightened – what to say of other races? – because even the German husband is as henpecked as any husband. In that, there is no difference between the German and the Chinese and the Indian and the Japanese; it does not matter. There is only one kind of husband: henpecked. Whatever you do, you cannot change the situation. And it will be hilarious: a henpecked husband leading a wife towards enlightenment, and that too, in Germany!
No Latifa, don’t wait for a husband. You will have to do it yourself. Yes, once you have done it for yourself, you can drive one or many husbands towards enlightenment, like cattle!
People have been asking me, “Why, in the long history of man, have so very few people become enlightened?”
I said, “What to do? There was nobody to chase them!”
If women decide, you will see husbands in every house standing on their heads meditating, crying, that the time is wasted and the customers must be there and the shop…. But in enlightenment you are not supposed to think about such things as shops and customers.
Women can help, but that much understanding has not come to men yet.
Even the smallest girl has qualities of a grown-up mother; a kind of motherliness surrounds her. That is not true about a boy. You will not find any vibe of fatherliness around him. To be a father is a social institution and to be a mother is a natural phenomenon. Husband and wife are faraway categories.
In India, although we have participated in the crime, the universal crime against women…. There have been people in the East – few, but at least there have been a few people – of great insight, and their insight can be seen in many ways.
In India, you can go and see temples of Sita and Rama, or Radha and Krishna – but have you observed that you always put the name of the woman first and the man second? It is always Sita first, Radha first…and the companion is no ordinary human being; it is a Krishna, it is a Rama. But still the woman is placed first because to her, enlightenment is far easier than a pregnancy. It is also a kind of pregnancy.
The woman knows the language. The man cannot understand it – pregnancy? He can make a woman pregnant but he remains an outsider. His work in giving birth to children is negligible; any syringe can do it. And nature has no preference for men over syringes – they are better used once and disposed of. With man, the difficulty is that once you get caught, it is very difficult to get rid of him. Then the syringe goes on hanging around you for your whole life and the syringe thinks itself very important.