Woman Mystics

For centuries, little is known about names such as Meera, Sahajo, Daya, Lalla or Chionyo. Osho has mentioned them here and there, and now by translating the early discourses from Hindi, these treasures are uncovered.
‘The male type will find it easier to go into himself directly;
the feminine type will find it easier to move through the other. Neither is
higher or lower because both reach to the same.’ 

This is an extraordinarily rich and touching book, because we are given the chance to savor the words of an enlightened man, commenting for the first time on the poetry, heart, and being of Sahajo - an enlightened woman from eighteenth-century Rajasthan. Speaking on Sahajo’s "sutras of love" and answering related questions, Osho describes, often very humorously, different paths and pitfalls of the female and male seeker - with beautiful insights into the differences between the female and male ego - and what happens to both women and men as they approach enlightenment.
Osho makes this available for the present day woman to see into her very nature and use the inspiration of this enlightened mystic to retain her femininity and grace on the path.

Chapter Titles
Chapter 1: The Enlightened Woman
Chapter 2: The Paths of Love and Meditation
Chapter 3: Two States of Consciousness
Chapter 4: Rising in Love
Chapter 5: Her Only Companion Is Her Own Being
Chapter 6: Desireless Devotion
Chapter 7: Devotion Has No Cause
Chapter 8: Seek, and You Will Miss
Chapter 9: The Master Gave Me Eyes
Chapter 10: Meditation, the Soul of Devotion

As Osho talks on Sahajo and the sutras of love, he becomes more feminine. These discourses are of immense beauty, supporting the understanding of the woman’s way and the mans way to enlightenment 
This is an extraordinarily rich and touching book, because we are given the chance to savor the words of an enlightened man, commenting for the first time on the poetry, heart, and being of Sahajo - an enlightened woman from eighteenth-century Rajasthan. Speaking on Sahajo’s "sutras of love" and answering related questions, Osho describes, often very humorously, different paths and pitfalls of the female and male seeker - with beautiful insights into the differences between the female and male ego - and what happens to both women and men as they approach enlightenment.
Osho makes this available for the present day woman to see into her very nature and use the inspiration of this enlightened mystic to retain her femininity and grace on the path.

an excerpt from Books I have Loved
I now bring in a woman. I have been thinking again and again to bring in a woman but the men were crowding at the door - very ungentlemanly! - and they won't allow a woman in.
The seventh book is THE SONGS OF SAHAJO.
Another woman, Sahajo. Even the name is poetic, it means 'the very essence of spontaneity'. I have spoken on Sahajo, again in Hindi because English does not allow me to be so poetic. I don't see much poetry in the English language, and what I see in the name of poetry looks so unpoetic that I wonder why nobody rebels against it. Why are there no people to start English afresh, but poetically? It is becoming more and more the language of the scientist, the technician, or to put it better, of the technologist. It is a misfortune. 
Someday it can only be hoped that what I have said on Sahajo will be known to the world at large.  
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"When you remove passion and attachment from love, when your love is pure, innocent, formless, when you give in love and don't demand, when love is only giving, when love is an emperor, not a beggar; when you are happy because someone has accepted your love and you don't trade love, you ask noting in return, then you are liberating this bird of love into the open sky. Then you are strengthening its wings. Then the bird can set out on the journey to the infinite.

Love has made people fall and love has made people rise high. It all depends on what you are doing with love.
So love has to be freed from attachement. Love has not become a bondage, love should be a freedom. Free the person you love. If you free the person you love, then you yourself cannot be enslaved, then nobody can enslave you.
But you want to enslave the people you love, you want to create a wall around them. You want to put chains on their hands. But if you put chains on their hands then they will also out chains on your hands.

Never forget this truth: 
whatever you receive from life is what you have given to life."

What is the difference between love and compassion ?

Understand three words: sex, love, compassion. Sex is the beginning of the ladder of love, it is the first rung of the ladder. Compassion is the last rung of the ladder. Love is the name for the whole ladder.

Sex is the most fallen state of love, the lowest. The meaning of sex is: I want to get something from the other, I am incomplete without the other, I am empty without the other, I have to fill myself with the other. Sex is exploitation. The meaning of sex is: I want to use the other as a means. The husband is using the wife, the wife is using the husband. They are using each other as a means. This is why there is so much anger, because nobody wants to be a means. Each person's soul is an end in itself.

A great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, has defined morality in the same way: "Using the other person whereby he becomes a means, is immorality; using the other person whereby he becomes the goal, is morality."
This is a very fundamental point. To make use of another for yourself is lust. You only talk about love; you say: "I love you," but inside you want that the other should love you. So when people come to me - thousands have come - they say: "I did not receive love from the one I loved." I have not come across a single person who has said: "I have not really loved the one I love." It is an interesting phenomenon. Whosoever comes says: "I certainly love the one I love"; he never doubts it. And he says: "I don't get love from the other." And when the other comes to me, he says the same thing: "The one I love - I have given love but have not received it. I have been deceived. I feel cheated, betrayed." And often both of them come - the husband and the wife come, the father and son come, the friends come - and both of them say the same thing: "I have loved." The truth is that none of them have loved, because I say to you that when one really loves then the same response is inevitable - it echoes, it returns. Whatever you give always returns.

In this world there is an old saying: There may be delay but there is no injustice. I say to you that neither is there any delay nor is there any injustice. Because why should there be even a delay? If there is a delay then it will also become an injustice. This delay can be long. If you love today and you get the response after millions and millions of lives, then it would also be an injustice.
So I say that neither is there any delay nor is there any injustice. If you love, then you will immediately receive; you receive in the loving itself. Receiving is not dependent on the other, it is the echo of your love. It is the resonance of your love. The same will return to you which you give.
So people say: "We loved but we did not receive any love." The reality is that you have not loved; your love was only a pretension, a deception. The reality was that you were expecting love. Without loving, just by talking about love, you wanted to get love. You had only been talking about love and in return you wanted the other's heart, the other's surrender, the other's whole being and you could not get it. The other was also doing the same thing so that the talking about love should continue, the writing poems of love - but no sharing of any kind - so that there would be possession of the other's being. Both wanted to get it for free, both wanted to get it without giving, hence the conflict.

That's why so-called lovers continually fight. In this conflict the reason is the same - both want to make each other a means. And one's soul is born as an end in itself, not as a means. Every person is an end unto himself, so he suffers and feels enslaved if somebody uses him and steps on him as if he were just the rung of a ladder.
Sex is the lowest form of love - when you ask for everything and don't give anything. Compassion is the highest form of love - when you give everything and don't ask for anything in return. It is the ultimate height of love in which you give everything away and don't ask for anything. Then you make the other the goal and you yourself become a means. You say: "I am fortunate that I can surrender. Whether I live for you or I die for you, I am fortunate. I will be happy in every situation, there are no expectations. I will be grateful that you have accepted my surrender. I have given and you have not rejected it, that is enough to be grateful for."

And it is an interesting thing: in sex you ask and you don't receive, in compassion you don't ask and yet you receive. This is the mystery of life. This is the paradox of life. An expecting person dies unfulfilled and a compassionate person is always contented, in each moment contented. Because life resonates - you get whatever you give. In this world what you receive is not dependent on someone else, you receive only what you give.
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