From the very beginning a boy is told, “You are a boy, not a girl. Behave like a boy! Tears are okay for a girl, but not for you. Be manly.” So every boy goes on cutting his feminine qualities. And all that is beautiful is feminine. So finally, what is left is just a barbarous animal. His whole function is to reproduce children.
The girl is not allowed to have anything with manly qualities. If she wants to climb a tree she will be stopped immediately, “This is for boys, not for girls!” Strange! If the girl has the desire to climb the tree, that is enough proof that she should be allowed.
All old societies have created different clothes for men and for women. This is not right, because each man is also a woman. He has come from two sources: his father and his mother. Both have contributed to his being. And each woman is also a man.
We have destroyed both. The woman has lost all courage, adventure, reasoning, logic, because those are thought to be the qualities of a man. And the man has lost grace, sensitivity, compassion, kindness. Both have become half.
This is one of the greatest problems we have to solve – at least for our people. My sannyasins have to be both: half man, half woman. That will make them richer. They will have all the qualities that are available to human beings, not only half.
-From Death to Deathlessness, Discourse #17
[A sannyasin who had done the Primal group said in darshan that she had been told she should try to be more womanly.
Osho said to listen to her own feelings, and that it was perfectly okay to be boyish, if that is how she wanted to be . . .]
A real world will be bi-sexual. It will not be divided into man and woman. Every woman is also a man and every man is also a woman. It has to be so, because half of you comes from your mother, and half of you comes from your father. So you are both; everybody is both.
This is your choice that you decide in favor of your father; perfectly good. It is the others’ choice if they decide in favor of their mother. But you are neither and you are both. So don’t be worried about it. There is nothing wrong in being a boy in a girl’s body.
-Osho
From Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle, Chapter 22
One thing has to be told to you: just by being in a female body one need not be a woman. Just by being in a male body one need not be a man. Man and woman are more states of the mind. There are men who are psychologically not male but female, and there are women who are psychologically not women but men. These are the people who create many problems, because they cannot be heterosexual. Heterosexuality has no appeal for them, they have to be homosexuals or lesbians. Their psychology is different from their physiology; their biology and their psychology have a gap in them, unbridged.
And there is going to remain a problem with them. In fact in a better world, in the future world – soon, I think by the end of this century – things will be easier. Because if a man is deep down psychologically feeling himself a woman, it is better to go through an operation and become biologically also a woman. Or if a woman is feeling deep down a male, it is better to go through an operation, plastic surgery, and become a man, so it can be bridged.
Once this becomes possible, homosexuality and lesbianism will disappear from the world. Otherwise, it cannot disappear, because it has a certain reason in it. The man looks a man from the outside; deep down he is not a man, he is a woman. His deeper woman wants a man – hence the homosexual.
And there is a third category also: confused people, who don’t know who they are. In the morning, they are women, by the evening they are men. The difference is so small that they shrink; they become bisexuals. One moment they are loving a woman, another moment they are falling in love with a man. Their psychology and biology is in a state of mess; they will live a very confused life. Science can now help these people too, to make things clear.
-Osho
From Take It Easy, Vol 2, Discourse #2, Q4
That’s why scientists are able to change sexes very easily. A man can become a woman, a woman can become a man — just a very small change, a change in the hormones, in the chemistry of their bodies. Just a few more hormones and the woman will start growing a mustache and beard.
Now there are many people in the world who have changed their sexes. Sometimes it has happened automatically because man consists of both, man and woman. Something is contributed by your father, something is contributed by your mother, so you are both: your father and your mother, part man, part woman. Whichever is more in percentage, perhaps sixty percent man and forty percent woman, then you are man, or it may be otherwise, then you are a woman.
This percentage of hormones can be changed just by giving you injections. And in the developed countries there are already men who have been born as women, and women who have changed to men. But in the beginning the very idea came to mind because once in a while there was an accidental case. For example, in the very beginning of this century in London there was a case. A man fell in love with a woman, and he married the woman. But after the marriage he was very much amazed that the woman slowly started changing into a man.
After a year he was so much ashamed because the whole town was laughing at him: his woman had turned completely into a man. He went to the court for divorce. The court was puzzled; there had never been a case like that before the court. And the man was perfectly reasonable. He said, “I married a woman; I have never married a man. Why should I marry a man? Obviously the marriage is canceled; in fact, I don’t need any divorce, but just not to be illegal, I am asking for divorce.”
His wife was sent for a medical examination. There was no need because she had a mustache and beard; her breasts had disappeared. There was not much need, but not taking any chances the judge said, “Let her be medically examined. If the doctor’s report says she has become a man, then there is no question, your divorce is accepted.”
That gave the idea to the scientists that perhaps the woman has a very small difference between her male hormones and female hormones. Perhaps she is fifty-one percent woman, forty-nine percent man, and by some change, climate, food, some medicine… it can be anything that has altered the proportion between man and woman in her. The difference was very slight, very borderline, and she became a man. This opened a door of great research, and it was found that every man can become a woman, and every woman can become a man.
This reminds me that in the East, from the very beginning, almost ten-thousand-year-old statues are available in which Shiva and his wife, Parvati, are represented as one personality: half man, half woman. It is a beautiful aesthetic and artistic sculpture, and that’s how it has been thought always: a beautiful metaphor, but nobody has thought of it as a reality.
The people who created that statue must have come to know that every man is carrying a woman within him and every woman is carrying a man within her — and this change is not impossible. My own feeling is that in the future many more people will be changing — because why not have both the experiences in one life? Most intelligent people will change — the unintelligent always are afraid of any change — otherwise, you have lived as a woman for thirty years, now it is time, why not have a look from the other side? Why go on living on this bank? The scenery from the other side is also very beautiful. Only then will the old idea of the poets that the woman is a mystery will be solved. You can become a woman and know what the mystery is. You can become a man and know what the mystery is. There is no mystery at all; it is just a poetic conception. The difference is only biological, chemical, hormonal. I don’t call that kind of infatuation love; I call it lust. And to be confused between lust and love has created your problem.
From The Invitation, Discourse #28, Q2
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