Osho Speaks On The Politics Of Population

The eco friendly environment of OSHO International Meditation Resort, Pune, India

Is producing children everybody's birthright? The answer would be a blind, "Yes!" Or maybe a shocked, " Of course!" But think again, give a break to the age-old conditioning of automatically producing children. Looking at this planet, the world that we have created, is it worth adding few more humans to already existing seven billion people here? What do we have to offer the new generation?

We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh the prolonged negative feelings of depression, meaninglessness and so on. And still do we want to bring a child in this life?

It is time every conscious, intelligent man and woman asks this question to himself/herself. And mind you, the politicians or the religious leaders are not going to support this radical thinking. They certainly want the earth to be more and more populated. They definitely want the poverty and misery to continue so that they can control humanity.

Peter Singer, the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University has raised a thought - provoking question in his recent article in The New York Times: " Why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction! If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel guilty about."

Osho says that producing children should not be left to the men and women. A benevolent body of experts should decide about it.
"It is not your birthright to go on giving birth to as many children as you want, because those children are going to live on this earth, and they will do something or other.

"Only a medical board should decide about a couple. Unless you have a clearance from the medical board, you cannot produce a child. And since the pill it is so simple. Nobody is preventing you from making love; make love as much as you want, or as much as you can manage! But as far as children are concerned, you are doing something to the whole world. Making love you are not doing anything to anybody -- just a little fun between two individuals; the world is not involved in it.

"Children should be born only if a couple gets permission from the medical board. Still, that is not the best way to do it, because while he is making love a man releases millions of living beings, millions of living cells; and it is just a chance in that race who will reach the female egg first. You cannot decide it, you cannot even know it. So this is not the best way. The medical board may feel that the woman is healthy, the man is healthy; they can look at your heritage -- three, four generations back -- and they can allow you. "
God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth #1


Moreover Osho gives tremendous importance to meditation because he says in his book (Bodhidharma : The Greatest Zen master # 11) "A man of meditation functions with awareness. If he sees that the world is overpopulated, he cannot produce children. Nobody has to tell him. Why should he bring his children into a world which is going down every day towards a disaster? Who wants his children to go through a third world war? Who wants his children to die hungry and starving on the streets? "

Osho: A Real Old Man Is Ripe and Joyous

It seems happiness, like wine matures with age.
Look what  a research report published in The New York Times says.
"The results, published online  in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were good news for old people, and for those who are getting old. On the global measure, people start out at age 18 feeling pretty good about themselves, and then, apparently, life begins to throw curve balls. They feel worse and worse until they hit 50. At that point, there is a sharp reversal, and people keep getting happier as they age. By the time they are 85, they are even more satisfied with themselves than they were at 18."
And it’s not being driven predominantly by things that happen in life. It is something very deep and quite human that seems to be driving this. Other researchers of psychology wonder why at age 50 does something seem to start to change?

The eastern wisdom has answered this question. The ancient sages have divided life in four stages based on the physical and psychological state of human growth. They have looked at life vertically, not horizontally, namely the evolution of the consciousness.

Osho has talked about a seven-year cycle of change. If we say, life moves in a cycle of seven years, the age 42 is the turning point when a person changes from being materialistic, his need for meditation becomes stronger and if he finds the right doorway he starts growing up instead of growing old.

What Osho has explained in his book The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 1 # 5 explains the enigma why the old age seems to be happier than the youth.

" Youth cannot have depth, and youth cannot have calm understanding. Youth is feverish, it is a tumultuous time. I'm not saying it is wrong: it creates the possibility to grow. You have to pass through many experiences, sweet and bitter. You have to pass through many stages of feverishness, of ecstasy, of excitement; only then a moment comes when you start understanding. Those experiences prepare you, they cleanse you. You have to pass through the fire of youth to become the pure gold of old age. A really old man is wise, he has some light in him. He has lived his life, he has become ripe. He knows what life is: he knows its joys, its sorrows, its ups and downs, he knows its hells and its heavens. He has seen all. Seeing all, a great understanding has arisen in him, and a compassion and a love."

For mystics like Osho life doesn't end with the old age, it spreads beyond death, it includes death as well.

"When you are becoming old joyously, old age has a beauty of its own, a grandeur of its own, a ripeness, a maturity, a centering. Young people have nothing compared to the experienced, who have lived life and who know it is all just a game.

"The moment a person comes to the point where the whole life is just a game, his old age is so beautiful, so graceful; no young person can be compared to it. His white hair will look like white snow -- just on the highest peak of the mountains. He will die with joy. He has lived his life, now he is entering into a new phase -- death. He will not be reluctant. If he accepted old age joyously, he will accept death also dancingly. He will go with death dancing."

Christianity:The Deadliest Poison and Zen: Antidote to All Poisons