The disciple is the feminine. Even male disciples are feminine, because the attitude of a disciple is that of a receiver and the attitude of the master is that of a donor. The master gives, the disciple receives – that is the male/female asserting on a new plane.

It goes on in that way. It will be so always. Don’t be deceived by the fact that Buddha no more needs a woman. Now he gets the feminine energy on a more subtle plane. And don’t think that a Meera does not need the man. Now the man of her dream has become Krishna himself. She may not need the husband – who bothers about an ordinary husband when you can have Krishna as your husband? Now she lives on another plane; the ordinary husbands have disappeared, the ordinary lovers don’t mean anything. But the male is there. Now the male is functioning as pure energy – as Krishna.

This is so. Never does it happen, never can it happen, that a man can be full alone or a woman can be full alone, because man-woman is a unity. Action-passivity is a unity, day-night is a unity, life-and-death is a unity. Life cannot exist without death, and death of course cannot exist without life. And so on and so forth.

So whenever I am talking about spontaneity, authenticity, love, I am not talking about men, I am not talking about women – I don’t divide them. That is my fundamental approach. All divisions are dangerous, and all divisions create a kind of schizophrenia. Enough of it! Drop that very idea! Don’t start moving to the other extreme. Man has suffered much – by “man” I mean “human being” – humanity has suffered much because of the division. The people who think they are trying to bring a new world, a new humanity, still go on thinking in the same old rotten way of division.

Just think of humanity. Don’t think of east and west, don’t think of black and white, and don’t think of the oppressed and the oppressor. Start thinking in terms of oneness. That very approach will dissolve many problems.

But the question is significant: “Could you say something about the real and authentic woman….” Woman or man – that doesn’t matter… “or even your ideal woman?”

I have no ideals. I am a man without ideals. I am utterly iconoclastic – I destroy ideals. I believe that when there will be no ideal, man will be free. When there will be no goal, man will be free – never before it.

All ideals create slavery – because the ideal stands there in the future, it starts dominating you from the future. It starts condemning your present. It starts telling you that you are falling short: Become perfect! be this! be that! It brings a thousand and one shoulds and should-nots. With all those shoulds and should-nots, how can you imagine to live in freedom? They hamper you from everywhere, they limit you from every direction, they destroy you in every possible way – because they condemn your present. And there is only one way to live and that is in the present.