Love and Power
WHY DO WOMEN LIKE TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN WHEN THEY ALSO RESENT THEIR SEXUAL DESIRES?
THERE is A POLITICAL STRATEGY IN IT
The women like to be attractive because that gives power; the more attractive they are, the more powerful they are over men. and who does not want to be powerful? Their whole lives people are struggling to be powerful.
Why do you desire money? -- it will bring power.
Why do you want to become the prime minister or the president of a country? -- it will bring power.
Why do you want respectability, prestige? -- it brings power.
Why do you want to become a saint? -- it brings power.
People are searching for power in different ways.
You have not left women any other sources to be powerful -- only one outlet: their bodies.
That's why they are continuously interested in being more and more attractive.
Have you not watched it, that the modern woman does not care so much about being attractive? Why? Because she is entering into other kinds of power politics.
The modern woman is getting out of the old bondage.
She will fight the man in the universities for the degrees; she will compete in the marketplace; she will compete in politics.
She need not be worried too much about looking very attractive. Man has never bothered much to look attractive. Why? That has been left completely to women. For women that was the only source to attain some power.
And for men there were so many other sources that to look attractive looked a little bit effeminate, sissy. That is for women. This has not been always so.
There was a time in the past when women were as free as men. Then men used to be interested in being attractive as much as women were.
Look at Krishna, his picture -- with beautiful silk robes, with a flute, with all kinds of ornaments, earrings, with a beautiful crown made of peacock feathers. Look at him! He looks so beautiful. Those were the days when men and women were absolutely free to do whatsoever they wanted to do.
Then came a long, long, dark age when women were repressed.
It happened because of the priests and your so-called saints.
Your saints have always been afraid of women, because the woman seems to be so powerful -- the woman seems to be so powerful that she can destroy the saint's sainthood within minutes.
It is said that a mother tries for twenty-five years to make her son wise, and then comes a woman, and within two minutes she makes a fool of him. That's why mothers can never forgive daughters-in-law.
Never! It took twenty-five years for the poor old woman to give some intelligence to this man, and within two minutes all is gone! How can she forgive this woman? It is because of your saints that women were condemned -- they were afraid of women. The women have to be repressed.
And because women were repressed, all sources of competing in life, flowing in life, were taken away. Then there was only one thing left: their bodies.
You ask me: WHY DO WOMEN LIKE TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN?
That's why -- that is their only power.
And who does not want to be powerful?
Unless you understand that power only brings misery, power is destructive, violent; unless through understanding your desire for power disappears -- who does not like to be powerful?
And you ask:... BUT WHEN THEY WANT TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN, WHY DO THEY ALSO RESENT THEIR SEXUAL DESIRES?
For the same reason.
The woman remains powerful only when she goes on hanging in front of you like a carrot -- never available and always available, so close and so far away.
Then only is she powerful.
If she immediately falls into your lap, then the power is gone.
And once you have exploited her sexuality, once you have used her, she is finished, she has no more power over you.
So she attracts you and yet keeps aloof.
She attracts you, she provokes you, she seduces you, and when you come close to her, she simply says NO.!
Now that is simple logic.
If she says yes, you reduce her to a mechanism; you use her.
And nobody wants to be used.
It is the other side of the same power politics.
Power means the capacity to use the other, and when somebody uses you your power is gone, you are reduced to powerlessness. So no woman wants to be used. And you have been doing that down the ages.
Love has become an ugly thing. It should be the greatest glory, but it is not -- because man has been using woman and the woman resents it, resists it, naturally. She does not want to be reduced to a commodity.
That's why you will see husbands just wagging their tails around their wives and their wives in such an attitude that they are above all this nonsense -- holier-than-thou.
The wives go on pretending that they are not interested in sex, ugly sex.
They are as much interested as you are interested, but the problem is: they cannot show their interest, otherwise you immediately reduce them to powerlessness, you start using them. So they are interested in everything else, in being very attractive to you and then denying you.
That is the joy of power. Pulling you -- and you are pulled almost as if pulled by strings -- and then saying no to you. Reducing you to absolute powerlessness. And you are wagging your tail like a dog -- then the woman enjoys.
This is an ugly state.
This should not be so.
This is an ugly state because love has been reduced to power politics.
This has to be changed. We have to create a new humanity, and a new world, in which love will not be a question of power at all.
At least take love out of power politics; leave money, leave politics there -- leave everything there, but take love out of it. Love is something immensely valuable; don't make it a thing of the marketplace.
But that's what has happened.
The recruit had just arrived at a Foreign Legion post in the desert. He asked his corporal what the men did for recreation. The corporal smiled wisely and said, "You will see." The young man was puzzled. "Well, you've got more than a hundred men on this base and I don't see a single woman." "You will see," the corporal repeated. That afternoon, three hundred camels were herded into the corral. At a signal, the men seemed to go wild. They leaped into the corral and began to make love to the camels. The recruit saw the corporal hurrying past him and grabbed his arm. "I see what you mean, but I don't understand," he said. "There must be three hundred of those camels and only about a hundred of us. Why is everybody rushing? Can't a man take his time?" "What?" exclaimed the corporal, startled. "And get stuck with an ugly one?"
Nobody wants to get stuck with an ugly one -- even though it is a camel.
So who wants to get stuck with an ugly woman? The woman tries in every way to be beautiful -- at least to LOOK beautiful. And once you are trapped into her allurements, she starts escaping from you, because that is the whole game.
If you start escaping from her, she will come close to you, she will start following you. The moment you start following her, she will start escaping.
This is the game! This is not love: this is inhuman. But this is what is happening and has been happening down the ages.
Beware of it!
Respect men, respect women -- they are all divine.
And forget the old idea that it is man who makes love to the woman -- that is so stupid. It makes it feel as if man is the doer and the woman is just there as something to be done to. Even in the language it is man who makes love, it is man who is the acting partner; it is the woman who is just there, a passive receptivity. This is not true.
Both are making love to each other, both are doers, both are participants -- the woman in her OWN way. Receptivity is her WAY of participating, but it is participation as much as the man's. And don't think that only you are doing something to the woman: she is also doing something to you.
You are both doing something tremendously valuable to each other.
You are offering yourselves to each other; you are sharing your energies with each other. You are BOTH offering yourselves in the temple of love, in the temple of the god of love.
It is the god of love who has possessed both of you.
It is a very sacred moment. You are walking on holy ground.
And then there will be a totally different quality to people's behavior.
It is good to be beautiful. It is ugly to appear to be beautiful.
It is good to be attractive, but it is ugly to manage to be attractive.
That management is cunningness. And people are naturally beautiful!
That is no need for any make-up. All make-up is ugly. It makes you more and more ugly. The beauty is in simplicity, in innocence, in being natural, in being spontaneous.
And when you are beautiful, don't use that beauty as power politics -- that is profaning it, that is sacrilegious. Beauty is a gift of God.
Share, but don't use it in any way for domination, for possessing the other.
And your love will become a prayer, and your beauty will become an offering to God.
Rajneesh
THERE is A POLITICAL STRATEGY IN IT
The women like to be attractive because that gives power; the more attractive they are, the more powerful they are over men. and who does not want to be powerful? Their whole lives people are struggling to be powerful.
Why do you desire money? -- it will bring power.
Why do you want to become the prime minister or the president of a country? -- it will bring power.
Why do you want respectability, prestige? -- it brings power.
Why do you want to become a saint? -- it brings power.
People are searching for power in different ways.
You have not left women any other sources to be powerful -- only one outlet: their bodies.
That's why they are continuously interested in being more and more attractive.
Have you not watched it, that the modern woman does not care so much about being attractive? Why? Because she is entering into other kinds of power politics.
The modern woman is getting out of the old bondage.
She will fight the man in the universities for the degrees; she will compete in the marketplace; she will compete in politics.
She need not be worried too much about looking very attractive. Man has never bothered much to look attractive. Why? That has been left completely to women. For women that was the only source to attain some power.
And for men there were so many other sources that to look attractive looked a little bit effeminate, sissy. That is for women. This has not been always so.
There was a time in the past when women were as free as men. Then men used to be interested in being attractive as much as women were.
Look at Krishna, his picture -- with beautiful silk robes, with a flute, with all kinds of ornaments, earrings, with a beautiful crown made of peacock feathers. Look at him! He looks so beautiful. Those were the days when men and women were absolutely free to do whatsoever they wanted to do.
Then came a long, long, dark age when women were repressed.
It happened because of the priests and your so-called saints.
Your saints have always been afraid of women, because the woman seems to be so powerful -- the woman seems to be so powerful that she can destroy the saint's sainthood within minutes.
It is said that a mother tries for twenty-five years to make her son wise, and then comes a woman, and within two minutes she makes a fool of him. That's why mothers can never forgive daughters-in-law.
Never! It took twenty-five years for the poor old woman to give some intelligence to this man, and within two minutes all is gone! How can she forgive this woman? It is because of your saints that women were condemned -- they were afraid of women. The women have to be repressed.
And because women were repressed, all sources of competing in life, flowing in life, were taken away. Then there was only one thing left: their bodies.
You ask me: WHY DO WOMEN LIKE TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN?
That's why -- that is their only power.
And who does not want to be powerful?
Unless you understand that power only brings misery, power is destructive, violent; unless through understanding your desire for power disappears -- who does not like to be powerful?
And you ask:... BUT WHEN THEY WANT TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN, WHY DO THEY ALSO RESENT THEIR SEXUAL DESIRES?
For the same reason.
The woman remains powerful only when she goes on hanging in front of you like a carrot -- never available and always available, so close and so far away.
Then only is she powerful.
If she immediately falls into your lap, then the power is gone.
And once you have exploited her sexuality, once you have used her, she is finished, she has no more power over you.
So she attracts you and yet keeps aloof.
She attracts you, she provokes you, she seduces you, and when you come close to her, she simply says NO.!
Now that is simple logic.
If she says yes, you reduce her to a mechanism; you use her.
And nobody wants to be used.
It is the other side of the same power politics.
Power means the capacity to use the other, and when somebody uses you your power is gone, you are reduced to powerlessness. So no woman wants to be used. And you have been doing that down the ages.
Love has become an ugly thing. It should be the greatest glory, but it is not -- because man has been using woman and the woman resents it, resists it, naturally. She does not want to be reduced to a commodity.
That's why you will see husbands just wagging their tails around their wives and their wives in such an attitude that they are above all this nonsense -- holier-than-thou.
The wives go on pretending that they are not interested in sex, ugly sex.
They are as much interested as you are interested, but the problem is: they cannot show their interest, otherwise you immediately reduce them to powerlessness, you start using them. So they are interested in everything else, in being very attractive to you and then denying you.
That is the joy of power. Pulling you -- and you are pulled almost as if pulled by strings -- and then saying no to you. Reducing you to absolute powerlessness. And you are wagging your tail like a dog -- then the woman enjoys.
This is an ugly state.
This should not be so.
This is an ugly state because love has been reduced to power politics.
This has to be changed. We have to create a new humanity, and a new world, in which love will not be a question of power at all.
At least take love out of power politics; leave money, leave politics there -- leave everything there, but take love out of it. Love is something immensely valuable; don't make it a thing of the marketplace.
But that's what has happened.
The recruit had just arrived at a Foreign Legion post in the desert. He asked his corporal what the men did for recreation. The corporal smiled wisely and said, "You will see." The young man was puzzled. "Well, you've got more than a hundred men on this base and I don't see a single woman." "You will see," the corporal repeated. That afternoon, three hundred camels were herded into the corral. At a signal, the men seemed to go wild. They leaped into the corral and began to make love to the camels. The recruit saw the corporal hurrying past him and grabbed his arm. "I see what you mean, but I don't understand," he said. "There must be three hundred of those camels and only about a hundred of us. Why is everybody rushing? Can't a man take his time?" "What?" exclaimed the corporal, startled. "And get stuck with an ugly one?"
Nobody wants to get stuck with an ugly one -- even though it is a camel.
So who wants to get stuck with an ugly woman? The woman tries in every way to be beautiful -- at least to LOOK beautiful. And once you are trapped into her allurements, she starts escaping from you, because that is the whole game.
If you start escaping from her, she will come close to you, she will start following you. The moment you start following her, she will start escaping.
This is the game! This is not love: this is inhuman. But this is what is happening and has been happening down the ages.
Beware of it!
Respect men, respect women -- they are all divine.
And forget the old idea that it is man who makes love to the woman -- that is so stupid. It makes it feel as if man is the doer and the woman is just there as something to be done to. Even in the language it is man who makes love, it is man who is the acting partner; it is the woman who is just there, a passive receptivity. This is not true.
Both are making love to each other, both are doers, both are participants -- the woman in her OWN way. Receptivity is her WAY of participating, but it is participation as much as the man's. And don't think that only you are doing something to the woman: she is also doing something to you.
You are both doing something tremendously valuable to each other.
You are offering yourselves to each other; you are sharing your energies with each other. You are BOTH offering yourselves in the temple of love, in the temple of the god of love.
It is the god of love who has possessed both of you.
It is a very sacred moment. You are walking on holy ground.
And then there will be a totally different quality to people's behavior.
It is good to be beautiful. It is ugly to appear to be beautiful.
It is good to be attractive, but it is ugly to manage to be attractive.
That management is cunningness. And people are naturally beautiful!
That is no need for any make-up. All make-up is ugly. It makes you more and more ugly. The beauty is in simplicity, in innocence, in being natural, in being spontaneous.
And when you are beautiful, don't use that beauty as power politics -- that is profaning it, that is sacrilegious. Beauty is a gift of God.
Share, but don't use it in any way for domination, for possessing the other.
And your love will become a prayer, and your beauty will become an offering to God.
Rajneesh
posted by Dr. Joe at 4:06 AM
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