World Population day

World Population Day is an annual event, observed on July 11 every year, which seeks to raise awareness of global population issues. The event was established by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989. World Population Day aims to increase people’s awareness on various population issues such as the importance of family planning, gender equality, poverty, maternal health and human rights.

Less population is always considered as a fortune, because resources are less and space is constant. Today population is increasing day by day and man is still getting more and more lonely. Osho says communication has disappeared from the world. Everybody is living a lonely life — lonely in the crowd; the crowd is becoming bigger and bigger every day. The world population is exploding; there have never been so many human beings as there are today — and man has never been so lonely.

Osho also says And as humanity has grown in population, murders have grown, crimes have grown, homosexuality has grown, lesbianism has grown. People are committing suicide like anything. War seems to be the only thing we are preparing for; it seems war is the only thing we are born for.

FOR YEARS THE GERMAN POPULATION HAS BEEN DECREASING. OBVIOUSLY GERMAN WOMEN DON’T WANT TO HAVE BABIES WITH THEIR OWN HUSBANDS. WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

German people are fortunate that their population is decreasing. The problem is not with decreasing population, the problem is with increasing population. Thirty years ago when I started teaching about birth control and abortion in India I was stoned, attempts on my life were made because I was teaching something immoral, against God. But at that time India’s population was four hundred million. If they had listened to me they would not have been in such a mess as they are now. Now India’s population is nine hundred million, more than twice as much. It was estimated five years ago that by the end of this century India will have a population of one billion. That will mean that for the first time India will be ahead of all nations as far as population is concerned — even ahead of China. But just now the population explosion has been going beyond the estimates of economists and mathematicians. Now they say, by the end of the century India will not have a population of one billion, it will have a population of one billion and eight hundred million — almost two billions. Now, this country is going to die. No nuclear bombs are needed, its own hunger, its own starvation is going to kill it.

It always happens: poor countries increase their population, richer countries decrease their population. There is some fundamental law behind it. The poor countries increase their population because they don’t have any entertainment other than sex. The rich countries have many other entertainments, have more exciting explorations available to them — sex becomes secondary. Secondly, the richer a country is, the more women are going to be liberated from man’s drawn-out slavery. In the poor countries a woman is simply a child-producing machine. Twelve children is normal; fifteen, eighteen, even two dozen children are not unheard of. Her whole life the woman goes on producing children. No education, no music, no art, no dance — there is no time — just bringing up children takes her whole life. It destroys her beauty, makes her body ugly. In a richer country the woman is not going to allow it. She is now educated; she is now demanding liberation.

And why should she destroy her body by producing children, when children can be produced in test tubes? Why destroy a beautiful woman, her proportionate body, her beautiful breasts? In no cultured country will a woman be ready to feed the child with her own breasts. The breasts cannot remain round if children are going to feed from them. The round breast, as you see in the statues of great art, is very much against the child. If the breast remains round, the child will kill himself by drinking milk, because his nose will be closed by the breast. He cannot breathe and drink milk together — either he can breathe or he can drink the milk. The breast has to be long; then the child is capable of breathing and feeding together. The scientists say that man has the capacity to go on renewing his life for at least three hundred years, if the right food, the right exercise, the right environment is made available. But man has been dying at near about seventy; that is the traditional time to die.

A woman, in a country like Germany, should insist that there is no need to increase the population. You can adopt children from poor countries. That will help in two ways: it will help the rich countries and their people to keep their health and their bodies, and it will help the poor countries. Secondly, the question is that the women in Germany are not ready to produce children by their own husbands.

This is very significant to understand, that being a husband is one thing and being a father is another. The functions are totally different. Being a wife is one thing and being a mother is totally another. You can fall in love with a woman — that’s okay. You can get married, but as far as children are concerned, it is better that the scientists, the medical board, decides who is the right man for the woman, or the right woman for the man, to give the child a better life, a beautiful body, more intelligence. This should be simply a part of intelligent people’s lives.

Why insist that your child should be YOUR child? What difference does it make? Can you recognize your child when he is just a living atomic cell? Can you recognize which is your child? Man’s function in producing children is not more than a syringe.

In each love making the man releases almost one million living sperm, and that is where politics starts: a great race — because only one will be able to reach the mother’s egg. It is a very small passage to us, but for those sperm proportionately it is almost two miles long. For two miles one million sperm are rushing madly to reach to the post of the chancellor! And my feeling is, the best ones will stand aside from the crowd. The best people are not so mad, not so ambitious. The best people want to be left alone. In such a rush hour they would like to wait a little; when the crowd has gone, then they can move — but then they have lost the chance. Only one sperm will enter into the mother’s egg, and then the egg closes. Sometimes it happens that two sperm reach at exactly the same time — that’s why twins are born. Sometimes three, sometimes four… the record is nine, but that is a rare thing. The person who reaches first may not be the best person in those one million sperm. He may not be an Albert Einstein, he may not be a Picasso, he may not be a Gautam Buddha… and I’m certain he is not; otherwise, the world would not be so full of stupid people. The mobs, the masses, are almost retarded. In the first world war for the first time intelligence was tested, the IQ was discovered. And it was a shock: the average individual on the earth has a mental age of only thirteen. He may be seventy physically, but mentally he is only thirteen years of age. This is a strange thing.

It is perfectly good that a woman should decide — and the husband should help her to decide. Take advice from the experts about who will be the right man for the woman. Finally, just as there are blood banks, there should be sperm banks. And generous people should go there and donate their sperm. Out of those millions of sperm, the best people can be chosen. We can fill the earth with geniuses. So I am not against what is happening in Germany, it is just the beginning, the beginning of something more that is going to come. A sperm can be chosen by the medical people, and that can be injected in the woman. And one should be happy that one has a beautiful child; why insist that it should be yours? This possessiveness is primitive. It should be the best, it should be the most healthy; it should be a contribution to the world — its beauty, its grandeur, its fragrance.

It is one thing to live with one person; it is totally a different thing to give birth to a child. For that different laws are needed. And this stupid possessiveness — “The child should be mine” — has to be dropped. If the population is falling, it is very good. If all the rich countries follow the same pattern and their populations start falling, they all can adopt children from poor countries, and we can balance the world in a better way. And remember, crossbreeding is not only helpful in animals, in birds, in fruits. Crossbreeding is a tremendous phenomenon, but man is so unscientific that he has not tried it. If more and more people from other, faraway countries — Ethiopia, India, Thailand, where people are dying from poverty — if their children are adopted by the rich countries, their blood will bring something new to you. Soon they will be able to produce children. Their children will be far higher in every possible way. This is a scientific truth that I am telling you.

Decreasing population is a blessing.
Increasing population is a curse.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries
Chapter #4
Chapter title: The art of not planning life
21 February 1986 am in

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘population control, birth control, Cross breading’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind
2. The Hidden Splendor
3. The Last Testament, Vol 1, 2, 3, 4
4. The Path of the Mystic
5. The Transmission of the Lamp
6. Beware of Socialism
7. Christianity: The Deadliest Poison and Zen: The Antidote to All Poisons
8. From Death to Deathlessness
9. From Personality to Individuality
10. From the False to the Truth
11. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 12
12. Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing
13. Sermons in Stones