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

CHAPTER 20. BASE YOUR RULE ON THE RULE
Up to now, almost every culture has rejected man as he is and insisted on the creation of an
imaginary ideal man – man as he should be. The ideal has been all-important and man has all
along been urged to struggle to reach that ideal, that utopia.
Freud is the forerunner of a worldwide intellectual awakening, an upsurge, a renaissance, a cultural
revolution which has come to realize that man has utterly failed in his efforts to reach utopia and that
he has suffered immeasurably in its pursuit. If once in a while someone reaches utopia, he is the
exception, not the rule. And the exception proves the rule. So for the first time after Freud, honest
thinking is being done which seeks to understand man as he is. What we have to really understand
is that which is, not that which should be. What is, not what should be is the crux.
For instance, every wife wants that her husband should not be interested in any other woman. This
desire, which is natural for a woman, runs counter to the male nature which is basically polygamous.
The problem is that if social laws and conventions are laid in obedience to the male nature, women
will suffer, and if they are laid to conform to feminine nature, men will be unhappy. And the core of
the problem is that neither can be happy if one of them is miserable. But until now we have followed
this zigzag course alternately and as a result the whole of mankind has perpetually been in misery
and anguish.
So the only way out is that both man and woman try to understand and know each other as they
basically ate. When a husband gets interested in some woman, let the wife understand that this is
in the nature of man, and she need not suffer on this score. Similarly when a wife is depressed and
unhappy about her husband taking interest in other women, let the husband understand her with
love and sympathy instead of flying into a rage over it. If we want to create a humanity free from
anxiety and anguish, there is no way but to go into and understand the basic nature of man and
woman to its very roots.
And if we have to change our nature, its roots will need to be changed – moral teachings and
moralist discipline will never go deeper than the surface of the problem. The woman will continue to
be jealous as long as she is economically dependent on man. She will be jealous so long as she
has to bear the burden of children alone, so long as she remains a second-class citizen, an inferior
human being.
When the society gives her a place of equality with man, when she is economically on her own,
when she does not suffer from the biological handicap of bearing and rearing children alone, she
will not take a day longer to drop jealousy. And then she too will take interest in other men besides
her husband. Then she will not insist on monogamy.
It was not possible in the past, but now that man’s understanding of himself has grown, a
transformation of both the individual and the group is quite feasible. All of our old order was based
on the needs of man, not on the understanding of his nature. We made laws according to the needs
of our society, not according to needs of human nature. But after Freud, a revolution is taking place
in man’s mind, and I believe the return of Krishna is in the offing.
And Krishna will return through the door of Freud, who has prepared the ground. But a lot more
remains to be done; Freud is only the beginning. The ball has been set rolling however. In the
coming future, more and more people will be inspired by Krishna’s life and philosophy. His way of
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 400 Osho