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freedom, into moksha. Mahavir had a particular reason for saying this. It is not because women are inferior -- which is what it has been thought that Mahavir was saying. No, it is because they are different. Mahavir's method is basically one of will. It is not the right approach for a woman. If a woman can succeed through Mahavir's methods then she is a woman in name only. Her total personality will be that of a man.
One Jain woman achieved moksha and became a great teacher, of the same rank as Mahavir. One woman, Mallibai became a teerthankara. Jains have twenty-four teerthankaras, teachers, and one of them is Mallibai. But according to tradition, there is no Mallibai. The tradition says that no woman can enter, no woman can achieve liberation, so they have called her 'Mallinath Mallibai'. She was virtually a man. Only her physical structure was that of a woman; her inner structure was that of a man.
Why is this so, that a woman cannot achieve on the path of will? It it because the whole biological necessity for a woman is that she must surrender. She cannot be aggressive. Biologically, she must be capable of surrendering; she must be able to receive, to be receptive.
There is a joke about the word 'woman'. It says that woman means 'man with a womb'. The capacity to receive is a biological necessity. The whole feminine structure is built for that: the whole body, the whole mind. But that is not so if the body is that of a woman and the mind is that of a man. Then there will be constant conflict, anxiety, anguish.
A woman cannot be fulfilled unless she becomes a mother and she cannot become a mother unless she surrenders. So Mahavir's technique, based on will, cannot be used. The whole technique is such that it is a great fight, a struggle.
That is why Mahavir denied God. He said that there is no God. The male mind cannot conceive that there is a God, become if God exists then he has to surrender; he has to become just like a woman.
The parallel to this is those who have loved Krishna. They have behaved like women. There is a particular sect exactly the opposite of Mahavir. They think of themselves as women, as lovers of
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