Politics is a disease, and it should be treated exactly like that. It is more dangerous than cancer and if surgery is needed it should be done. Politics is basically dirty. It has to be because for one post thousands of people are hankering, longing; then naturally they will fight, they will kill, they will do anything.
Our whole program of the mind is so wrong: we have been programmed to be ambitious. And that’s where politics is. It is not only in the ordinary world of politics, it has even polluted your ordinary life.
Even a small child starts smiling at the mother, at the father — a bogus smile; he has no depth behind it. But he knows whenever he smiles he is rewarded. He has learned the first rule of being a politician. He is still in his cradle and you have taught him politics.
In human relationships there is politics everywhere.
Man has crippled woman. It is politics.
Women constitute half of humanity. Man has no right to cripple them, but for centuries he has been crippling them completely. He has not allowed them education. He has not allowed them even to listen to the holy scriptures. In many religions he has not allowed them to enter the temple. Or, if he has allowed them, they have a separate section; they cannot stand with the man as equal even before God.
But the beginning is with God himself. You may not be aware...because ordinarily everybody has forgotten. Christians don’t mention it, Jews don’t mention it. Adam and Eve are emphasized as being the first man and woman; Adam is certainly the first man, but Eve is not the first woman. God made Adam and Lilith, and he made them equal — the same height, the same intelligence, the same strength, the same mind.
But the gods of foolish people cannot be very wise. He made these two, but he could not make a double bed! He made a small bed, and the first night the problem arose of who is going to sleep on the bed and who is going to sleep on the floor. So — the pillow fight is not new, it is as ancient as man — they started throwing things at each other. Both were equal physically and mentally, and the woman was not to be subdued: Adam had to sleep on the floor.
Seeing that all kinds of animals are looking through the windows at what is happening — and the woman was adamant, as she always is — she slept on the bed and poor Adam slept on the floor, but he was very angry. He went to God the next day and said, “This woman won’t do. It is too much trouble. Alone I was good. It was my fault that I told you, ‘I am alone; give me a companion.’
“What kind of a companion have you given me? And couldn’t you have been a little more understanding? How will two persons sleep on a small bed? I need a woman who is not equal to me in any respect.”
Lilith was dismantled. Now Eve was created in a totally different way. The first surgery of the world happened. When poor Adam was asleep — perhaps he was given something similar to chloroform — God took out one of his ribs and made a woman out of the rib so that she would never be equal to him; she will be only a rib. And Eve became known as the first woman, but really she was the second. I would have preferred the first woman; she had some salt, some strength. She managed on the first night to put Adam on the floor. He needed it.
But Eve was very much like a slave. All that she used to do was, whenever Adam would come home late and go to sleep she would count his ribs. She was afraid God may have created other women, taking other ribs. And man, since then...perhaps the idea of God is also man’s. God is also a male chauvinist: in his trinity there is no place for a woman.
Man has tried to cut in every way the freedom of women.
This is politics; it is not love.
You love a woman but you don’t give her freedom. What kind of love is this, which is afraid of giving freedom?
You encage her like a parrot. You can say you love the parrot, but you don’t understand you are killing the parrot! You have taken the whole sky away from the parrot and you have given him just a cage. The cage may be made of gold, but even a golden cage is nothing to be compared with the freedom of parrots in the sky, moving from tree to tree, singing their song…not what you force them to say, but what is natural to them, what is authentic to them.
The woman goes on doing things which man wants. She, by and by, has completely forgotten that she is also a human being.
In China, for thousands of years, a husband could kill a wife. Only in 1951 has a new law been made which prevents it. Up to 1951 the husband was empowered: if he wanted to kill his woman it was his business; it was his woman, a possession. The law has no interest in interfering in your possessions. And, moreover, China thinks that women have no souls; only man has a soul.
That’s why in the history of China you will not find a single woman of the caliber of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Confucius, Mencius…not a single woman. If you don’t have a soul you are just a thing; you cannot compete with man.

Half of humanity, in every country, in every civilization, has been destroyed by family politics. You may not be calling it “politics,” but it is politics. Wherever there is a desire to have power over another person, it is politics. Power is always political…even over small children. The parents think they love them, but it is only in their mind, because they want the children to be obedient — and what does obedience mean? It means all the power is in the hands of the parents.
If obedience is such a great quality, why shouldn’t the parents be obedient to the children? If it is such a religious thing, parents should be obedient to children. But it has nothing to do with religion. All that it has to do with is hiding politics in a beautiful word.
Man needs exposure on every point, wherever politics has entered — and it has entered everywhere, in every relationship. It has contaminated the whole life of man, and it is continuously contaminating it.