You are wondering, “How could I? I am a man.” That’s why you can be – because you are a man. There is a deep psychological background to it which has to be understood. Man has always felt inferior in comparison to woman, because woman can give birth and man cannot. Woman can become a mother – the beginning of a new life; man cannot do it. To substitute for it man started finding in what ways he could also be creative and productive. It was a deep spiritual need to destroy that inferiority.

He has given birth to great paintings, to great poetry, to great dances, to great music – they are all substitutes. That is why women have not bothered about creating poetry, music, literature. You will be surprised to know that women are not even the best cooks in the world; and they have not even written a book about the art of cooking. The best cooks in all the great hotels of the world are men. It is strange….

The woman feels satisfied – she knows she can give birth to life. You may create a beautiful statue, but still it is dead. You may create great music, but it is ephemeral; it comes like the wind and goes away. You may create great dance, but it cannot be a living child, a smiling child – a child who sees wonders, breathes, whose heart beats.

All your art and all your creativity seem to be a poor substitute to the woman. I have been asked many times why women are not great poets, great musicians, great painters, great sculptors. The reason is that because they can give birth to life, they don’t feel any need to create anything else.

Only on one point, in one place, man and woman meet, and that I call the space of meditation – where man and woman are really equal, because both can give birth to themselves. They can be reborn; both can be pregnant with enlightenment.

Except in the space of meditation, man and woman are two different species. They meet only in deep meditation. And unless the whole of humanity is meditative, men and women will go on fighting with each other. Their love is always going up and down – there are moments of beauty, and there are moments of ugliness; there are moments of joy, and there are moments of misery.

But in meditation – if two meditators share their energies – love is a constant phenomenon, it does not change. It has the quality of eternity; it becomes divine.

The meeting of love and meditation is the greatest experience in life.

To have love without meditation is to live in a very troubled, anxiety-ridden state – in anguish, angst, always in a turmoil. There are moments of silence, but that silence is nothing but cold war – preparation for another war, that’s all. Obviously, to prepare for another war, for a few days, for a few moments, you have to be silent.

But it has not been possible up to now, because all the religions have decided on a wrong path. They have decided to separate men and women; they have decided to make them enemies. And they are all against me because I am trying for a single thing: that as far as meditation is concerned it is nobody’s monopoly – neither male nor female. It is the only meeting point, where man is no more a man, nor a woman is a woman; both are just human beings, potential gods, seeds of godliness.