Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. NUDITY AND CLOTHING SHOULD GO TOGETHER
they become shy and bashful, when they know that they have something to hide from others. This
is exactly the time when boys become interested in them, in knowing and seeing their bodies. The
two things happen together. Those gopis, his girlfriends, must have been about the same age as
Krishna. That is why Krishna is interested in seeing them in the nude and they are trying to hide
their nudity.
In this context it is necessary to understand that among the many differences there are between the
male mind and the female mind, one prominent difference is this: while a man is interested in seeing
a woman in the nude – he is a voyeur – the woman is not that interested in seeing a naked man. It
is amusing that a man is deeply interested in the nude body of a woman. It is for this reason that
there are so many statues of nude women all over the world.
Statues of male nudes are rare, and they are available only in cultures that accept homosexuality.
For instance, such nude male statues were made in Greece in the times of Socrates and Plato when
homosexual relationships were in vogue. So those statues of male nudes were also made by men
and for men. Women are not in the least interested in nude males. So magazines for men come out
with any number of pictures of naked women, but no magazine meant for women prints pictures of
naked males. Women simply laugh at this craze of man’s.
You may not have noticed but in deep moments of love it is the man who wants to disrobe his
beloved; it is not so with the woman. While making love a man keeps his eyes open, but the woman
invariably keeps hers closed. Even when she is being kissed by her lover, a woman usually shuts
her eyes. She is not interested in seeing; she is interested in absorbing her lover, in being one with
him. But a man is deeply interested in seeing his woman, and it is this male interest which gives rise
to a desire in the woman to hide herself.
So women all the world over hide their bodies in many ways. But this desire to hide their bodies,
creates a problem for them, because they cease to he attractive if they hide too much. So they do
two things together they hide their bodies and at the same time they hide them in a manner that
they are exposed. They hide and expose their bodies together. The same clothes are used to hide
them and to expose them in a clever way. They hide because they are afraid of voyeurs in general,
but they need to expose their bodies in order to attract men as well. So they are always in a conflict
between hiding and exposing themselves at the same time; they have to find a balance between the
two needs.
So it is natural that the gopis emerged from the river hiding their sexual organs with their hands.
This episode is quite natural. And Krishna’s asking them to salute the water God with folded hands
is equally natural. There is nothing odd about it. This is how the male mind behaves. And Krishna
has a very simple and natural male mind; one should say he has a perfect male mind. There are no
distortions, no suppressions, no affectations so far as his mind is concerned. And the people who
wrote those stories were also very simple and innocent people, without any pretensions. They wrote
them exactly as they happened; they did not have any inhibitive principles, or sense of guilt about
the matter.
It is significant that these stories, which you call erotic, are written into the Bhagawad, which hails
Krishna as the perfect incarnation of God. The authors of the book did not think for a moment, as
you do now, that these stories may make his being a god suspect. But I tell you God alone, and
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 108 Osho