Osho,
I heard you speak of scientists choosing future people from their genetic analysis of sperms. I have no trust in scientists, or doctors or anybody whose knowledge extends no further than their head. I intuitively feel that genetics plays only a small role in determining what a person becomes. A gardener may well have become a musician; a soldier may have the potential to be a scientist. Surely what a man is, is no measure of what he might have been in different circumstances.
Beloved Master, who could have foreseen an Osho in the sperm and egg of your father and mother? Please speak more on the underlying sanity behind your suggestion – which I cannot see because of my fear of totalitarian regimes.
Devageet, I can understand your concern; it is my concern too. But there are many things to be understood. The first is, never act out of fear. If man had acted out of fear there would have been no progress possible.
For example, the people who invented bicycles…can you ever think of any danger? It is simply inconceivable that bicycles can be dangerous. But then the Wright brothers made the first flying machine out of the parts of bicycles. The whole world rejoiced – because nobody could have foreseen that airplanes would be used to destroy cities, millions of people, in the first world war.
But the same airplanes are carrying millions of people around the world. They have made the world small, they have made it possible to call the world just a global village. They have made bridges between peoples, they have brought together people of different races, religions, languages in such a way that no other invention has been able to do. So the first thing to remember is that acting out of fear is not the right way.
Act cautiously, with consciousness, remembering the possibilities and the dangers, and creating the atmosphere to prevent those dangers. Now, what can be more dangerous than nuclear weapons in the hands of the politicians? You have put the most dangerous thing into their hands.
Now, in fact there is no need to be afraid; even nuclear weapons can be used creatively. And I have a deep trust in life, that they will be used creatively. Life cannot allow itself to be destroyed so easily, it is going to give tremendous resistance. In that resistance is hidden the birth of a new man, of a new dawn, of a new order, of the whole of life and existence.
According to me, nuclear weapons have made a great war impossible. Gautam Buddha could not do it, Jesus Christ could not do it. All the saints of the world together have been talking about nonviolence, no war; they could not succeed. But nuclear weapons have done their job.
Seeing that the danger is so big, all the politicians are trembling deep down, that if a third world war begins the whole of life will be destroyed – and they will be included in it. They cannot save themselves. Nothing can be saved. This is a great chance for all those who love creation. This is the moment when we can turn the whole trend of science toward creativity.
Remember one thing: that science is neutral. It simply gives you power. Now, how to use it depends on you, depends on the whole of humanity and its intelligence. Science gives us more power to create a better life, to create more comfortable living, to create more healthy human beings – rather than preventing…just out of fear that some totalitarian power may misuse it.
Everything can be misused. And Devageet himself is a doctor; he himself belongs to the category of scientists. He should understand one thing, that everything that can harm can also be of tremendous benefit. Don’t condemn anything, just raise the consciousness of human beings. Otherwise you are falling into the same fallacy into which Mahatma Gandhi has fallen.
Once you start acting out of fear, where are you going to stop? Mahatma Gandhi was using the same logic, and he stopped at the spinning wheel. That must have been invented at least twenty thousand years ago and he did not want to go beyond that. He wanted everything that has been invented after the spinning wheel to be destroyed. He was against railway trains, because in India railway trains have been used to make the whole country a slave.
These railway trains in India were not created for people’s comfort and their service. They were created to move armies, so that within hours armies can move from one part of the country to another part. This is a vast country. There are places which, even by railway train, you can only reach in six days’ time. It is almost a subcontinent; and to control this country they had to spread a big network of railway trains. Its basic purpose was the army and the army’s movement.
But that cannot make us decide that railway trains should be destroyed. That would mean the movement of man is curtailed, he falls back into the Dark Ages. Mahatma Gandhi was not in favor even of innocent things like telegrams, telegraphs, the post office, because they were all used in India, in the beginning, to control the country. Slowly, slowly they were changed into public services. Every invention has been used first by the military, by the war-mongers, and finally they have come to be used by the people.
What is needed is not to go backward; otherwise you will destroy the whole humanity. What is needed is to go forward and learn some lesson from the past: so that, as scientific technology develops, simultaneously human consciousness should develop. And that will be the protection against technology being used as something harmful to mankind.
My basic disagreement with Mahatma Gandhi has been this: that he was dragging humanity backward.
First, horses were used by the soldiers. Do you mean to say that horses should not be used any more? In fact, every vehicle has been used in the beginning in the service of death. Now there are all kinds of medicines; and allopathic medicines – which is the official science in the world as far as medicines are concerned – are mostly poisons. They are in the hands of the powerful.
Now there has been great concern that the Soviet Union is developing a certain ray called a death ray. It can be extracted from the sun rays; it does not reach us because there is a certain layer of ozone around the earth which prevents it from entering. Ozone turns the death rays back.
But we only became aware of it when our first rockets went to the moon. They made holes in the ozone layer and death rays entered. And immediately the cancer rate went so high that it was unbelievable – what has happened? And then it was found that there are some rays reaching the earth which have never been reaching before. The Soviet Union has been trying to generate those death rays rather than sending nuclear weapons and missiles and airplanes loaded with bombs without pilots, controlled just by remote control.
They are trying to find a far more refined way. Just sending rays…you cannot do anything against those rays, they are not even visible. And they will not destroy anything, houses will remain intact. They will simply destroy only living things – man, birds, animals, trees, anything that has any kind of life. The moment the death ray touches it, life disappears. It will create really a tremendous nightmare. Houses will be there, streets will be there, shops will be there, everything will be there, just life will not be there.
But even then I would not say, not to investigate death rays. As the Russians began to work on death rays, America immediately started to work on how to prevent them, how to detect them, how to turn them back, how to create anti-death rays. And there is a possibility…Perhaps in the future, even if man does not use these things, if the ozone layer starts breaking in different parts and death rays enter into the atmosphere, we will be able to create anti-death rays to turn them back. We may be able to create, closer to us, another ozone layer.
So one should not act out of fear; one should see the whole perspective. If there is fear, that means the fear comes not from the power generated by science, the fear comes from the unconscious man. In his hands everything becomes poisonous, dangerous.
Change the man, don’t stop progressive science. For example, what I have told you was the latest findings of genetic scientists. Up to now we have lived accidentally, in the hands of blind biology. You don’t know what kind of child you are going to give birth to – blind, retarded, crippled, ugly; and he will suffer his whole life. And in an unconscious way you are responsible, because you never bothered to figure out some way that only healthy children – not blind, not deaf, not dumb, not retarded, not insane – are born.
And particularly now, when children are born with AIDS, you have to take some steps to choose which children should be born and which children should not be born. The children born with AIDS are bringing death to themselves, to their family, to their friends. They will go to the schools, they will go to the colleges, and they will spread it. And finally they will get married, and they will produce children who will have AIDS.
Now, unless we listen to the genetic scientists, there is no way to prevent it. Devageet is perhaps not aware that genetic science is able to exactly figure out a few things: for example, whether the child born out of a certain combination of male and female energy is going to be healthy or not.
In Tibet, in the past they used a very strange method, very primitive; but you cannot be angry against them, they had to use it. It was a very barbarous method. Whenever a child was born, immediately it was dipped in ice-cold water seven times. Out of ten children, nine children used to die – the ice cold water…Immediately after the child is born, the first thing is to dip him into ice-cold water. He will become blue by the seventh time; you are just dipping a corpse.
But it was absolutely necessary, because Tibet is the highest land in the world, at the top of Himalayas. Life is very hard, it needs very strong people, and the cold is killing. Unless a child is able to cope, it is better he dies. It was out of compassion, not out of cruelty. It is better that he dies rather than suffer his whole life. He will not be able to function, will not be able to work. And the land needs people who can tolerate that much cold and still work, produce. This was an ancient type of genetics. They were choosing – although they had no idea how to do it. But somehow they managed to choose the healthiest people.
Hence the outcome has been that Tibetans have lived the longest, because all the people who would have died in the middle somewhere have been finished on their first entry into the world. They were returned unopened! And the people who remained were really strong, really stubborn. They have lived a long life and a very healthy life, because they eliminated all the weaklings from the very beginning. And it was part of compassion. Why allow a person to live who is going to suffer his whole life from all kinds of diseases, sicknesses, weakness? He will not be able to enjoy life at all.
Genetic scientists cannot say in detail that this man will become a doctor, or an engineer, or a gardener, but they can say a few things very definitively and a few things as possibilities. About health they can say very definitively; what kind of diseases the child will suffer from they can say very definitively. So precautions can be taken, and the child can be saved from suffering from those diseases. They can certainly and very definitively say how long the child will live. Measures can be taken to prolong his life.
On the side of possibilities, they can say that this child has a possibility, a potential for being a musician. That does not mean that he cannot become a doctor; that simply means that if the right opportunities are given to him he will become a musician rather than becoming a doctor. And if he does not become a musician and becomes a doctor, he will never find fulfillment. His innermost being will remain missing something.
So if the genetic scientist can say that these are the possibilities, the society, the parents, the commune, can make certain opportunities available to the child. Right now, we don’t know what his potential is. We have to decide; parents are in a dilemma where to send the child: to an engineering college, to a medical college, to a carpentry workshop, or to a car mechanic. Where to send him, and how to decide? Their decision comes out of financial considerations. That is the only way for them to decide – which way the child will be a success, comfortable financially, prestigious. That may not be the potential of the child, but parents have no idea.
The genetic scientists can simply give you the possibilities. They are not saying these are certainties, that whatever you do this child will become a musician. They are not saying that, because nature can be diverted by nurture. If you stop all possibilities for him to become a musician and you force him to become a doctor, he will become a doctor; but he will be a doctor his whole life unwillingly, without any joy.
Nurture is important, but if we know exactly what the possibilities are, we can help the child through the right kind of nurture. Then nature and nurture can function harmoniously together and create a better human being, more contented with himself, more joyous, and creating a more beautiful world around him.
Only on one point are you right: genetics is capable of giving the potential about everything except enlightenment, because enlightenment is not part of a biological program. It is something beyond biology.
Hence, in genetic science there is no way to say that this person is going to become enlightened. At the most they can say this person will have a leaning more toward spirituality, mysticism, more toward the unknown; but if these leanings are known, we can provide the nurture for him. And the world will have more enlightened people than has ever been possible before.
The fear that Devageet feels is that if genetics falls into the hands of totalitarian governments, they will start choosing children who will be obedient to the status quo, who will not be revolutionaries, who will never become rebellious, who will be always ready to become slaves without any resistance.
That fear is there, but that fear can be avoided. Why give the power to totalitarian governments? I am giving you a whole program for society.
My first idea is, nations should disappear. There should be a world government which is only functional. And there is no problem of its being afraid about revolution because it will be a servant of the people. And the functionaries of the world government will be only a Rotary Club. They will go on changing each year. Nobody will be in power for more than one year, no one will be allowed to be in power in the government again.
Only one time, for one year – what can he do? And his power is not totalitarian. The people who have chosen him have the right to recall him at any moment. Just fifty-one percent of the voters who have chosen him give a signature to the government that they want him to be recalled – he is going against the interest of the people – and the person loses all his power. His power is not given to him for five years without any restraint. Anyway he is going to be out of power at the end of the year, and he will never see power again, so he will make the most of it, to do something that will make him be remembered. And if he tries to do any harm, we have the possibility of recalling him. Just fifty-one percent of the voters are needed to sign a petition and the person can be out.
My plan is complete for the whole society; it is not fragmentary. Big cities, by and by, should disappear; small communes should take their place. Families should disappear, so there is no loyalty toward a family, no loyalty toward a nation. Children are brought up by the commune, not by the parents. And it is to be decided by the commune how many children are needed, because as people’s lives become longer we will need less and less children. If the old people are going to stay longer, then for new guests we don’t have any room.
In the past it was possible – go on producing children, as many as you can. A woman was almost always pregnant, until the day she became unable to be pregnant. She went on producing like a factory – because people’s life span was very small.
The findings are that five thousand years ago, nobody lived more than forty years. Not a single skeleton has been found, of this age, in the whole world, which has been proved to be more than forty years old. When a man died, he was not more than forty years old – and this may be the highest age limit, not the average. When people were dying at thirty-five years or forty years of age, naturally there was much space for the new people to come up and take over.
But genetic scientists also say that everybody is by nature capable of living at least three hundred years – and remain young. Old age can be abolished. And it will be a great revolution, because if an Albert Einstein can go on working for three hundred years, if a Gautam Buddha can go on preaching for three hundred years, if all the great poets and mystics and scientists and painters can go on working, refining their methods, refining their language, their poetry, refining their techniques, technology, the world will be immensely rich.
This is a very great wastage as it is now. When a man really comes of age, death starts knocking on his door. It is very strange – it brings new people who know nothing. Now bring them up, educate them, train them, discipline them, and by the time they are really mature, retire them. When they are really capable of doing something, the time of retirement comes. And after retirement nobody lives more than ten or fifteen years, because after retirement one becomes absolutely useless, and he himself starts feeling a burden on the children, on the society. He loses all his respectability, prestige, power. He becomes an outsider, an unwelcome guest who is just reluctant to die.
You may not be aware that the generation gap has never been in existence in the past. The generation gap is a new phenomenon that has come into existence just now because people are living longer. Now a ninety-year-old father…three other generations have come into existence. His son is seventy years old, his grandson is fifty years old, his great grandson is thirty years old. Now the distance is so great that the great grandson has no connection at all: Who is this old man, and why does he go on hanging around? – an unnecessary trouble and always irritated, always angry, always ready to freak out. What purpose is there?
In the past, people never saw four or five generations together; hence there were no generation gaps. I don’t even know the name of my great grandfather. I asked my father. He said, “I don’t know myself. The names that you know are the names I know. More than that, I know nothing.”
Now in the Caucasus, where there are a few people who are living at the age of one hundred and eighty, what do you think? Seventh, eighth generation children will be in their houses and they will not recognize them. These people should have been in their graves long before – that was the usual way. So foreigners are living in the house, one house. They don’t speak each other’s language because the times have changed. They don’t understand each other’s fashions, they don’t understand each other’s music, each other’s religion. There is nothing in common at all.
If we continue to live accidentally, then the situation is going to become worse. It is better that society takes a new formulation, a totally new program. Old programs have failed. The commune is the new unit of the world. No more family, no more nation – communes and an international humanity.
The commune is decisive in creating what is needed, because right now you need doctors but doctors are not there. Engineers are unemployed because there are too many engineers; or you need engineers and engineers are not there. There is no planning of life, it is just going zigzag, accidentally. That’s why there are so many unemployed people; otherwise there is no need, there should not be a single person unemployed. You should not produce more people than you can give employment to.
As machines are becoming more and more capable of doing the work of man, more efficient than man, without asking for higher wages, without going on strike, without changing shifts – twenty-four hours they go on producing; a single machine can work in place of a thousand people – more and more people will be becoming unemployed.
It is better to plan, so that you have only as many people as you need. And why not have the best? Why not drop this mob that surrounds the earth? This mob is the most dangerous thing, because it plays into the hands of any cunning politician.
The mob has no mind of its own, no intelligence of its own. We can create individuals with great intelligence, individuality, and each generation will be a better generation than the outgoing one. Then evolution will be in leaps and bounds; otherwise we are stuck. We have been stuck for thousands of years, only things go on growing – better cars, better airplanes, better bombs, but not better human beings.
If man is stuck and everything goes on growing, it is a dangerous situation. Man will be burdened with his own progress, with his own technology, with his own science. Man should also grow; man should always remain ahead.
I understand Devageet’s concern, but I don’t agree with it. I always see a ray of light in the darkest night. And howsoever dark the night may be, there is always a possibility for the dawn to be very close.
I am in favor of every scientific progress, but the progress should be in the hands of creative people, the progress should not be in the hands of war-mongers. War can now be stopped and war-mongers can disappear. This is possible for the first time in the history of man. Hence, don’t be afraid of totalitarian people.
It is true that genetic scientists cannot say anything definitely; perhaps in the future they will be more definite. It is a very new discovery, to read the future possibilities in human sperm. It is just the beginning. Perhaps within five years, ten years’ time, what we are now just able to say as a possibility we will be able to say as a certainty. Then the nurture is in our hands, so that we can give a harmonious nurture, knowing the possibility, and create more harmonious beings.
Devageet, look positively at things, don’t look negatively.
I have heard….

Hymie Goldberg goes to visit his gay friend lying on his deathbed. Hymie’s friend is whining and sniveling about the negative side of his life. Hymie, in an attempt to cheer up his friend, says in a consoling voice, “Don’t just look at the dark side of things. At least your AIDS test was positive!”

Just look at the positive side, whatever the circumstance may be.
The genetic scientists have also been trying to change the program which is already determined by biology. Up to now they have not been able to split the living cell of the sperm, just the way they have been able to split the atom. But it took three hundred years of physical research to split matter into atomic energy. It may take a few years, but I am absolutely certain that they will be able to split the living human sperm also. And once they are able to split it, they can reprogram it. The whole program is there.
You will be surprised to know that once in a while there are twins born. Twins are of two types: two-egg twins and one-egg twins. Once in a while this accident happens, that the mother releases two eggs – which is very rare. Then naturally two male sperm enter the two eggs. These are also twins, but they have differences because their mother cells are different. Once in a while just one egg is released but two male sperm reach the mother cell exactly at the same time, so as the door opens they get in. Then a rare variety of twins is born, which is one-egg twins.
They look exactly similar, and experiments on these twins have given great insights to genetic scientists, because these twins…One may be living in Europe and one may be living in China. In China there may be some disease that the child falls sick of. In Europe the disease is not there, but the twin child in Europe will fall sick of the same disease of which his brother has fallen sick – without being informed about it.
They will have at the same time colds, headaches, and they will die almost simultaneously, wherever they are. That gave genetic scientists the first idea that there must be a fixed and determined program; otherwise how is it happening? It cannot be infection because one boy is in Europe and one boy is in China. Why should they have headaches at the same time? They feel angry at the same time, they feel sad at the same time.
It seems it is beyond their capacity to be sad or angry – it is something in their program. They die almost simultaneously; at the most the difference has been found to be three months, but not more than that. Mostly it is the same day, but at the most the difference has been only of three months.
If we can change the genetic program, life can have a very different flavor. We can change the many stupidities that man is prone to. We can change man’s lust for power, we can change man’s desire to be somebody special, we can change jealousy – we can simply remove it and we can put in new qualities, as a program.
It is not that you are not ashamed of your jealousy, your anger, your lust for power, but what can you do? Somehow you feel that you are caught in some blind force that drives you nuts.

A husband and wife were having a fight. “Look, honey,” the husband said, “can’t we discuss this sensibly?”
“No, no, no!” she shouted, and stamped her foot. “Every time we discuss things sensibly I lose.”

We have to change the woman’s genetic program, so that every time she discusses sensibly she does not have to lose. She knows perfectly well, that “sensibly” is not the way to win. Behave as crazily as possible, do absolutely absurd things. Make the whole neighborhood know and the husband will be afraid, and he will say, “You are right.”
They know the whole question is not being sensible or not sensible. The question is, who wins. Victory decides whether your means were right or wrong. But this has to be changed. This destroys something in the individuality of women. Reason will give them a beauty. Intelligence will give them something that will make them not only physically beautiful, but will make them also mentally more developed.
Otherwise, even the most beautiful women in the world are not capable of having a good conversation. They are mostly vegetables. They look beautiful, so it is always good to look at somebody else’s woman because you are only looking; the other man knows how she behaves, what she says, what she does. But she is not responsible, it is the biological programming.
Genetics relieves you of your burden. Man has a very chauvinistic, egoistic idea about himself. That is his program. It makes him look very stupid.

Jerry was visiting his married friends Ethel and Richard. “Rich, I can’t help it,” said Jerry, “but Ethel really turns me on. If I could pinch her on the backside just once, I would give her five thousand dollars.”
“For that kind of money,” said Richard, “I don’t think Ethel would mind. Go ahead, pinch her.”
Ethel leaned over a chair, lifted her skirt and exposed her bare behind. Jerry took a long, thoughtful look at it. Finally, after about five minutes he said, “I just can’t do it.”
“Why not?” asked Richard. “Have you not got the nerve?”
“It is not that,” said Jerry. “I have not got the money.”

But the desire is there…what to do?
I am in every way in favor of genetic reprogramming of men and women. What kind of nonsense is this? Pinching! And in every crowd men are doing that. Every woman knows when she has been pinched, and she cannot conceive what this man is getting out of it. But the man is ready to give five thousand dollars, which he has not got! Some blind force which is not within his control…
Unless we change the whole program of men and women, we will not have a new world. We have to drop all fears. And I repeat again, never act out of fear. Any action out of fear is going to lead us backward.
Act with consciousness, cautiously. Use every preventive measure so that what you are doing cannot be misused, but don’t look backward. Life is ahead and in the future. Because of this point I have angered all of India’s Gandhians; if it weren’t for this they would be my followers. Even the president of the ruling party and the ministers and the chief ministers, all used to attend the meditation camps.
But the day I started saying things against Mahatma Gandhi, they became afraid. Nobody answered me, but they became afraid: “You should not say anything against Mahatma Gandhi.”
I said, “I am not saying anything against him, but what he is proposing is a backward step, taking man back to primitive ages, making him more barbarous. He is already barbarous.”
But the people who are acting out of fear think perhaps it is good that all scientific progress is stopped and all scientific technology is drowned in the ocean, and man goes back to when there was not even kerosene oil, when there were no clothes – you had to spin your own clothes.
If you spin your own clothes eight hours per day, in a year you will be able to clothe yourself, your bed, but what you are going to eat? And if some day you fall sick, from where will you get the medicine? And what are you going to feed to your children, and how are you going to feed your old father and mother and your wife? And how are the children going to be educated? – who is going to pay their fees and their expenses? One man has to be involved for eight hours just making his own clothes.
Such a society will be so poor…no education. But Gandhi is against education because education is being misused. His whole philosophy is based on fear: anything that can be misused…But you are talking such nonsense – anything can be misused. There is not a single thing in the world which cannot be misused. If you are just living in paranoia then everything has to be renounced.
In my home town, my father’s shop was in front of a row of barber’s saloons. And I used to go to those saloons because they used to have newspapers, magazines for their customers. I was not a customer of anybody, but I used to go for their magazines and their newspapers.
The principal of my school used to come to a certain shop for his beard to be shaved, his hair to be cut. But he never talked with the barber. And that barber was so talkative that a thing that could be done in five minutes would take fifty minutes, because he would go so slow and he would talk so much. And I saw that my principal was simply saying, “Yes, yes, mmm, yes…” He would never talk to him.
One day I caught hold of him outside the shop. I said, “This is strange, he goes on saying anything and you don’t even talk.”
He said, “You don’t understand, that man is almost mad. Have you heard what he is saying? He is saying anything – I have not asked, I am not interested. And moreover, he has that big razor blade just near my throat. If I say something…And he looks like a very angry man, because he is always saying that ‘We will destroy this whole government,’ and this and that, so I have to simply be silent.
“Politics cannot be discussed, religion cannot be discussed, because he is such a fanatic. Instead of cutting my hair he will cut my throat! He will not take a single moment to think. My life is at risk and you are asking me, ‘Why don’t you talk to that man?’”
I said, “Then I can help you to find a better barber.” He said, “No, I don’t want to change either because this one I am accustomed to. I don’t know about others.” He was an outsider in the city.
So he said, “I don’t want to get into trouble. This one at least simply talks and bores me, takes a long time – but no harm…And I have become accustomed.”
I said, “It is up to you; otherwise I have an acquaintance with a barber. If you want he can do you without taking any money.”
He said, “I don’t want to take any risk. A man who can do it without money – he is dangerous from the very beginning. Why should he do it without taking money?”
I said, “Because he does things. He is an opium addict.”
What punks are sometimes doing in the West now, that man in that village was doing fifty years ago. He would simply cut off half of your hair – just on any whim. And when you asked, “What are you doing?” when you looked in the mirror, “What have you done?” he would say, “Don’t be angry. If you don’t like it, don’t give me any money, I have done it for free. You get lost. I have wasted my time and you don’t have any appreciation.”
But, the man could not move in that situation because punks were not known at that time. They are not known even now in India. Sometimes he would cut half the mustache and would say, “Wait, I am coming.” And the man would say, “Where are you going?”
He said, “I am just going to take a cup of tea. Just sit down. And I have cut half the mustache considerably, so that you cannot escape from here.”
I have seen people sitting for hours. Once he was gone, he was gone. If he came back on the same day it was great fortune, because he was such a good conversationalist that anybody could catch hold of him and he would sit there and he would start talking. And he would forget all about his shop. I have seen people sitting there for hours, and they would say, “My God, is this man going to come back or not?”
I said, “Don’t be worried, he will come because he has to close the shop.”
They said, “To close the shop? That is the whole day. Shops are closed at eight o’clock in the evening and now it is just ten o’clock in the morning.”
I said, “You can go and have your lunch and come back. You don’t be worried, he will come.”
And mostly it happened that he would come only when the shop had to be closed; otherwise that was an illegal act, keeping the shop open after eight o’clock. That’s why he had to come. And he would see the man sitting there and say, “What are you doing, when there is nobody here? Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The man said, “Have you forgotten me? In the morning you cut half of my mustache.” He would say, “Yes, I remember. I remember that sometime I cut half of somebody’s mustache. So you are that fellow! Come tomorrow, because now it is time to close the shop. Otherwise I will be in trouble – the police may come and you will be in trouble. Why are you sitting here?”
The man said, “This is strange.” So he said, “You can go, I will not charge you.” And the man had wasted the whole day!
He said, “At least cut my half mustache. And I had not told you to cut my mustache at all. I had come to have my beard shaved. I have been always proud of my mustache and you have destroyed my mustache.”
The barber was a very philosophical man. He said, “Don’t be worried, hairs grow. They will grow again. Don’t be worried, I have not cut off your nose. Just feel fortunate, because once the nose is cut off, it never grows.” He would cut half of the mustache and the man would rush out angry – but what to do? And the principal knew about it, he had heard many stories.
When I told him that “This is the place,” he said, “You are getting me into trouble. Can’t you stop making trouble for people? You create trouble for your teachers, you create trouble for your fellow students. I don’t get in your way. Every day I receive reports against you. I just go on keeping them in the file, because I don’t want to encounter you unnecessarily. I have not done any harm to you and you are introducing me to that opium addict.”
There are all kinds of people in the world. These people could have been totally different, just they need a different program from the very beginning.
There are so many criminals in your jails. In America, they have so many jails and so many criminals that American judges have been telling the government, “If you don’t create more jails, close the courts, we cannot send anybody to jail – there is no space. Once we send somebody to jail, we have to release somebody else, although he should still remain in jail for two or three years. We have to release him just to make space for the new criminal.”
The whole world is full of jails, and these people only have the wrong genetic program. They are victims of a blind biological force. And, Devageet, do you want to continue this accidental humanity? Don’t you want it to be well-planned – intelligently, consciously? I understand your fear, but that can be avoided. That should be avoided. But progress cannot be dropped.
In every way we can create a man who is really a superman, who has never existed except in the dreams of great poets and great mystics. That superman has to be made a reality. Genetic science and engineering can help immensely.

Little Eddy was doing his arithmetic homework. “Three plus one, the son of a bitch, is four,” he was saying. “Three plus two, the son of a bitch, is five. Three plus three, the son of a bitch, is six.” And so on.
Eddy’s mom was horrified when she overheard him. The next day she went to see what kind of arithmetic his teacher was teaching.
“I don’t quite understand where Eddy has picked this language up,” said the teacher. “I simply teach the children to say: three plus one, the sum of which is four; three plus two, the sum of which is five.”

But not only little Eddy, even your oldest citizens of the world are living in such a misunderstanding about everything.
In spite of the dangers we have to take steps to change this situation. Man’s intelligence is absolutely dependent on his genetic heritage. We can have as many Albert Einsteins as we need, we can have as many Rabindranath Tagores as we need, we can have as many Nijinskys as we need. The world can be such a beautiful place. But certainly there are risks and there are dangers, and I am aware of them more than you are aware of them, Devageet. But still, I want to take all the risks because man has nothing to lose – he has got nothing. So why be so much afraid? He has everything to gain and he has nothing to lose.
The risk can be taken – yes, with consciousness, with awareness. Hence I am teaching all the time how to be more aware, how to be more conscious, because much has to be done once we have a certain portion of humanity alert and conscious. Those will be our guardians, our guards against technology being used in any way for evil purposes.
We can take every protective measure, but we cannot go backward.

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