Man’s mind has been diverted from the realities to fictitious explanations – you cannot do anything to change your past life, you have to go through it. Unbelievable religious sects grew in the East, which no reasonable person can accept, but millions followed them. For example, Jainas believe that a woman cannot attain to enlightenment from a woman’s body because she cannot be really celibate. She cannot stop her menstrual period, and that keeps her a sexual being. So unless she attains by being contented, graceful, prayerful, serving her husband and accepting everything as her fate…this is the only way she will be able to be born as a man in the next life.

So nothing can be done right now; right now one has to simply accept and remain contented. Any rebelliousness will spoil the chances even for the future; any discontentment, any frustration will not only destroy your present, it will destroy your future too. So the better course, the intelligent course, is to be silent. Nobody can help you, because you did wrong things in your past life – although your poverty is not concerned with your past life…. But that is a very recent finding, and it has not penetrated into the Eastern mind yet.

And just as women have their monthly period, men also have one; that is the very latest finding. So if her monthly period prevents a woman from being enlightened, it will prevent a man also – just the expression of it is subtle. The woman’s expression is physical – you can see the blood every month. But if every man keeps a diary, he will be surprised: every month, after twenty-eight days, for four or five days he becomes bad-tempered, exactly the way the woman becomes irritable, annoyed at small things.

The same person would not have been annoyed by the same things at another time, but within those four or five days…his period is more psychological, and the woman’s period is more physiological; that’s the only difference. And it is good for every couple to know perfectly well that when a woman is having her period the man has to be more understanding, that it is beyond her. She will be irritable, she will be easily annoyed, she will become angry, will be more nagging.

In the East, to avoid this they have found a very strange strategy: during the time of her period the woman has to live in a dark cell in the house. She has not to come out, she has not to contact anybody – because even her shadow contaminates everything. She cannot prepare the food, and she has to remain aloof and hidden, ashamed of herself. In a way it was good that she rested for those four or five days, did not come in contact with anyone and did not create any unnecessary conflict. But this was one-sided and unjustified – man also has his period.

The worst combination is when the husband and wife both have their periods together. Then the situation is on the scale of war. But mostly it does not happen – the husband has his period at one time, the wife at a different time. But if the husband keeps a diary for four or five months – just to find which are the dates when his period begins and which are the dates when his period ends – he can allow the wife and the family to know that for these five days, they have to be a little more tolerant and more compassionate towards him, because he will be in the same situation.