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

CHAPTER 9. THE COSMOS IS A DANCE OF OPPOSITES
together under the open sky and dance with abandon for hours and hours. While dancing, they forget
their family relationships and mix freely with each other as men and women, and dance madly, as if
all of life is meant for dancing and celebrating. They go to sleep only when they are utterly tired, and
so they enter into a sleep so deep it may cause the civilized societies envy. It is for this reason that
the peace of mind and the joy of life these poor people enjoy is unknown to the most affluent people
who, just by wishing, can have all the good things of life. The rich are missing some basic truths of
life for certain, and somewhere they are erring very grievously.
Question 2
QUESTIONER; LEGEND HAS IT THAT AHILYA, A WOMAN TURNED INTO STONE, HAD WAITED
LONG ENOUGH FOR THE COMING OF RAMA TO RESURRECT HER, AND THAT ANOTHER
ORDINARY WOMAN, KUBJA, PERSUADED KRISHNA TO MAKE LOVE TO HER. DO THESE
STORIES HAVE SOME SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE?
Everything in existence happens in its own time, a time for which one has to wait with tremendous
patience. Everything has its season; nothing happens out of season. Time and occasion have great
importance in life. And it is necessary to go into it from different angles.
I don’t believe that Ahilya had actually turned into stone; this is just a poetic way of saying that she
lived a stony life, a dull and dreary life until she met Rama whose love transformed her life. It is
possible a woman will come to her flowering only through a particular man like Rama, and that she
will patiently wait for such a man to come into her life.
It is a poetic metaphor to say that Ahilya had turned into stone. It means to say that with the right
opportunity, with real love, even stone comes alive. It also says that no one except Rama could
have fulfilled her. The crux of the story is that everybody and everything has its own season, its own
moment of fulfillment for which one must wait with patience. Until this moment comes, it is not going
to happen. Only the touch of her lover, his warm hug can fulfill her.
Let us understand it in another way. Woman is passive; passive waiting is her way. She cannot be
aggressive; she is receptive. She has not only a womb in her body, even her mind is like a womb.
The English word woman, ”wo-man”, is very meaningful; it means a man with a womb. Woman’s
whole makeup is receptive, while man’s makeup is active, aggressive. And although these two
qualities, receptivity and aggressivity, seem to be contradictory, in reality they are complementary
to each other. And as man and woman are complementary, so are their attributes. Man has what
woman lacks and woman has what man lacks. That is how both together make a complete whole.
Woman’s receptivity turns into waiting and man’s aggressivity into search, into exploration. So while
Ahilya will wait for Rama like a piece of stone, Rama will not do so. Instead, Rama will search many
paths. It is interesting to note that a woman never takes the initiative in proposing love to a man,
she always receives proposals from the man. She does not take the first step; it is man who takes
it. Not that she does not begin loving someone, but her love is always a kind of waiting. Waiting is
her way of love, and she can wait long – for lives.
In fact, when a woman becomes aggressive she immediately loses a part of her femininity, she loses
her feminine attraction, Her beauty, her significance, her very soul lies in passive waiting, in infinite
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 166 Osho