Beloved Osho, can you say something about the mystery of women?

Devageet, it is one of the ancientmost questions. Man has always puzzled about women, and the real problem is neither man nor woman. Reduced to the factual, to the existential, the problem is between the head and the heart.

The head cannot understand the mystery of the heart. The head is logical, rational, mathematical, scientific; the heart knows nothing of reason, nothing of logic. The heart functions in a totally different way. Its functioning creates in the head the idea of the mystery. It is not a question about women; it is a question because women function through the heart and man functions through the head. Have you ever heard any women asking, "What is the mystery of man?" They simply know it.

The problem arises out of logical reasoning. It is a very superficial phenomenon. It is good with objects, with dead things; it deals with them perfectly because a dead thing has no interiority, a dead thing has no inner being, it has no life. The scientist is perfectly right about objects, but the moment he comes to think about subjectivity -- the interiority - he is baffled, because reason cannot function there.

The heart knows without any process of knowing, without any syllogism, without any argument. How do you know that the rose is beautiful? Is it a rational conclusion? If you bring reason in, you will not be able to prove that the rose is beautiful, because reason cannot fathom the phenomenon of beauty.

When you say the rose is beautiful, you are functioning from the heart. When you say the starry night overwhelms you, it is not a rational statement; if you are forced to prove it rationally, you will be at a loss. Then suddenly you will become aware that it was the heart that has spoken, and the head is absolutely incapable of figuring out how the heart functions.

But the heart is not in the same difficulty about the head, because the head is superficial and the heart is deep down within you. The lower cannot understand the higher. The higher simply understands the lower, there is no need of any reasoning. Your heart is both higher than your head and deeper than your head. The woman can be a poet, but cannot really be a mathematician. Mathematics is purely a game of the mind. Poetry is a totally different phenomenon.

I am reminded of Frau Einstein, Albert Einstein's wife. She was a poet, and Albert Einstein was perhaps the greatest scientific thinker of all the ages. Naturally Frau Einstein wanted her husband to know about her poetry. Einstein tried to avoid the subject as much as he could, but finally one night, the full moon in the sky, Frau Einstein could not resist the temptation. She had composed a beautiful poem about the full moon, and she recited the poem.

Albert Einstein looked at her with great surprise, almost shocked. She could not understand, "Why is he looking at me in this weird manner? At the most he can say that the poetry is not great... but he is looking at me as if I am insane!" After the recital of the poem she asked Albert Einstein, "What do you think?"

He said, "I had never thought that you are so crazy. You talk about the moon as beautiful, you talk about the moon reminding you of your beloved. It is sheer nonsense! The moon is too big, it cannot be substituted for your beloved. And the moon is not at all beautiful!

It is just as ordinary as the earth, even more ordinary because there is no greenery, no water, just barren land. And the light that you see reflected from the moon is not its own. That light is borrowed from the sun, it is not coming from the moon. The sunlight falls on the moon and the rays are reflected back, and those reflected rays are coming to your eyes; the moon is not the source of them. I had always thought that you are well educated, but you don't know even the ABC of physics!"

Now was the chance for Frau Einstein to look at him as if he is insane, because for centuries poets have sung songs about the moon -- its beauty, its tremendous magnetic force, its cool light. It has a certain hypnotic spell on the heart... and it is now also proved by facts that it has a certain hypnotic spell.

Osho. The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here. Discourse  #27

Updated on 06-07-2020