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BIRTH CONTROL should be an absolute, with medical boards to decide how many new people we need every year. So only a few people should give birth to children, and that too should be done by artificial insemination, so there can be a scientific combination of the best sperm with the best egg.
Up to now the pill the woman has been taking has not been one hundred percent safe: she has to take it every day. If she misses one day, there is a chance it will not be effective. Then suddenly the husband turns up, or suddenly the husband is gone -- it works either way. The opportunity of love arises, and mind tends to take chances. Mind just thinks: "Every time you make love you don't become pregnant."
In the ordinary course of his sexual life a man has intercourse at least four thousand times -- that is the norm. I am not talking about sex maniacs, this is the very average shopkeeper. Four thousand times means billions of potential people. Existence is really abundant. The man may have only two or three children out of those billions. Those billions can fill the whole earth.
Now they have developed two other pills. The first pill that was developed was a great revolution, because it prevented women from becoming pregnant.
In the past a woman's whole life was nothing but a factory to produce children: she was continuously pregnant; her life was nothing more than the life of a cow.
So the first pill prevented her being pregnant, but it was not one hundred percent safe.
The second pill is a greater revolution because it can be taken after you make love. The first had to be taken every day; the second is a greater advancement, because now you need not be worried: you can make love with whomsoever, whenever the possibility arises, and take the pill afterwards.
The third pill that is being developed is even more significant: the woman need not take it, the man can take it.
Using these three pills...all accidental birth can be avoided. Sex becomes just a playfulness, loses all the seriousness that it has carried in the past.
The population has to be reduced if man wants to be, to have his dignity, honor, his right to life.
Up to now humanity has lived with accidental childbirth. Now science has made it possible to protect ourselves against that, and genetic engineering will become the most important science for the future.
Just as we have blood banks, every hospital should have sperm banks. And it can be as easy to have an egg bank as a sperm bank.
Anybody who is interested in children can go and contribute his semen to the scientific lab, and the lab should decide which woman is going to be your child's mother. It need not be your wife; there is no relationship in it.
You love your wife, your wife loves you, but that does not mean to take the risk of burdening the earth with a crippled, blind child -- you don't have that permission from existence.
Why are you taking such an irresponsible burden on yourself and on the whole of humanity?
If you give birth to a child who is crippled or retarded or mad or insane...he will then give birth to other children. That's how idiots are always in the majority in the world.
I will be opposed by all the religions -- it does not matter, I have been opposed my whole life -- but my proposal is that every male who wants children should donate his sperm to a hospital, and a medical science board should work out, for these sperms and the woman's eggs, what the possibilities are.
In those one million sperms there may be great scientists like Albert Einstein, great musicians like Yehudi Menuhin, great dancers like Nijinsky, great philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, great novelists like Fyodor Dostoevsky. They can be picked out and the father and mother can choose what they want. When you can choose the great diamonds, why go for the colored stones? And when you can be the chooser, why be accidental?
They can choose, if they want, a Henry Ford, who will make great riches possible. Money is an art, just as anything else; it has its own geniuses. Everybody cannot be a Henry Ford!
If you want your child to be a Gautam Buddha, then you have to see, according to the genetic analysis, which sperm has the potentiality of being a mystic. The sperm has to be injected, so he need not be in competition with all kinds of fellows in a crowd.
And for the parents, because the child is not to be given birth through sex, sex becomes pure fun. It does not carry any responsibility, any danger.
Insemination is the only scientific way to find the best child.
We have to drop the old idea that: "I am the father." We have to create the idea that: "I have chosen the best child!" That should be the man's pride. Values have to be changed this way.
You don't know what you are carrying in your genes; you don't know what is your potential, what kind of child you are going to give birth to. You love the woman; there is no harm. Love should be absolutely available to you; that is your birthright. You love the woman, but every woman need not be a mother. Every man need not be a father.
You want a child, and if you really love a child, you would like the best child possible. So who contributes the semen and who contributes the mother's womb should not be your concern. Your concern should be that you get the best child possible.
A child should be recognized as a human being when he is born -- and then, too, I have some reservations.
If a child is born blind or crippled, if a child is born deaf, dumb, and we cannot do anything.... Just because life should not be destroyed, this child will have to suffer – because of your stupid idea – for seventy years, eighty years. Why create unnecessary suffering? If the parents are willing, the child should be put to eternal sleep. And there is no problem in it. Only the body goes back into its basic elements; the soul will fly into another womb. Nothing is destroyed.
If you really love the child, you will not want him to live a seventy-year-long life in misery, suffering, sickness, old age. So even if a child is born, if he is not medically capable of enjoying life fully with all the senses, healthy, then it is better that he goes to eternal sleep and is born somewhere else with a better body.
Slowly, science is learning the program of the sperm and the egg. This is developing, but this should be our most emphatic effort. If we know everything about the sperm and the egg, then not only can the population be decreased, the quality of the people can increase a hundredfold. We don't have any idea how many geniuses are going down the drain. The world can be full of geniuses of all types; it can be our choice. In the past they were just accidents, coincidences. But in the future we can make it certain.
We can fill the whole earth with geniuses, talented people, healthy people.
I suggest to create worldwide lobbies to help to understand genetic programs. Man has reached to the moon but he has not made much effort to understand genetic programs. The reasons are simple, because all the vested interests, all the religions are threatened; they know that once the program of the genes is understood, the old cannot exist any longer.
Much more emphasis should be how we can also change the program. We are learning about health, diseases, age, coloring. First we have to learn how to change the programs. A man, for example, may have the mind of a Nobel Prize winner, but the body may be sick. He may not be able to use the mind if the body cannot support it – unless we can change the program. Once we know how to change the program, thousands of possibilities open up. We can give every man and woman the best of everything. There is no need for anyone to suffer unnecessarily. Being retarded, crippled, blind, ugly – all these will be possible to change.
Criminals can be avoided -- politicians can be avoided, priests can be avoided, murderers can be avoided, rapists can be avoided, violent people can be avoided. Or if they have some special quality in them, their genetic program can be changed. Their violence can be taken out, rather than teaching people not to be violent, not to be thieves, not to be criminals.
In the future it will also be possible to avoid old age completely.
Man can go on living youthfully up to the point of death.
The scientific calculation is that the present body of man is capable of living at least three hundred years -- just the right food, right medical care, right ecological environment and people can live for three hundred years.
I cannot conceive what treasures will be revealed if Gautam Buddha can live three hundred years, Albert Einstein can live three hundred years, Bertrand Russell can live three hundred years. Up to now, the way we have lived is such a sheer wastage. People who are trained, educated, cultured, become old and die at the age of seventy. And new visitors, absolutely uneducated, barbarous, go on coming from the wombs.
This is not a very scientific way of arranging the world. Now we are forcing people to retire, and these are the people who know. And then you have to employ people who know nothing. Men's lives should be made longer and birth control should be more strict. A child should be born only when we are ready to allow a Bertrand Russell to leave the world. And there is every possibility to find a replacement, because we can read the whole program in the genes, all the possibilities – whether he will be a painter of the quality of Picasso or he is going to be a poet of the genius of Rabindranath Tagore, how long he is going to live, whether he will be healthy or sick.
So I am absolutely in favor of birth control methods and of genetic engineering in the hands of an international academy of science.
But I am aware that genetic engineering is going to be opposed by almost everybody. I would like to remind you that every development, every evolutionary step in mankind's life has been opposed in the beginning as "against nature."
Every new thing is opposed.
For example, in India birth control is opposed by all the religious leaders, with the argument that it is not natural.
There is no question of genetics being unnatural. The fear I can understand, but every new thing creates fear. And once you become accustomed you completely forget that there was a day it was a new thing. Do you know, when electricity was invented nobody was ready to have electric lamps: who knows, it may burst, put the whole house on fire. Now you are not afraid.
And I know there is another fear about genetics, and that is: "Who will control it?" You are not afraid about medicine, who will control it. You trust the doctor, a doctor you don't know at all, that he will not kill you, that he will not cheat you, that he will not keep you sick as long as possible.
My idea is simple -- that there should be a world academy of scientists with different departments: genetics will be the most important department. And scientists should be trusted – there is no other way. Either trust a blind force of biology, or trust a human being who is at least a little conscious, who understands his responsibility. When you produce children, you don't ask whom you are trusting, who is sending all these children. It is a blind biological force, certainly natural; but the scientist is also natural. And whatever he produces is of a far higher value, because it is coming from a consciousness.
And I want to make meditation an absolute for all students, whatever subject they may be studying, so their awareness becomes more and more clean and clear. And out of that clarity we can create a beautiful world.
Those scientists, if they are also meditators, will not create atomic bombs to destroy.
They may find atomic energy to move trains, so they don't pollute the air, to use that atomic energy in the factories so they don't pollute the air. Rather than killing man, the same atomic energy can be a tremendous help to save man and his future.
The question has been raised again and again that if the control of genetics falls into the hands of men like Ronald Reagan, and he decides what kinds of people should be produced, then there is certainly danger. But when Ronald Reagan decides that Charles Darwin and his theories should not be taught in the universities, you don't see the danger. When President Truman decides to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you don't see that politicians should not exist at all, that they are dangerous.
You have to understand the whole implication of my proposition.
Meditation should be the central subject for every branch of knowledge.
Particularly branches like genetics -- which are very important, which are going to produce new generations, new men, a new world – should be in the hands of very clear, silent, loving people. So side by side just don't think of genetics, also think we can add meditation as an essential part of education.
Otherwise I can understand this difficulty. Any intelligent person will think that if genetics is in the hands of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, what will be the fate of the world? They will create slaves, idiots.
But all the arms are in the hands of these people now. Nuclear weapons are in their hands and you are not worried, and you are not taking any action on your part. They can destroy the whole world without any difficulty. So what more can they do?
But genetics can be freed, in fact all of science can be freed from their hands.
With one world government, one world educational system, we will be able to create all the barriers to prevent science and its discoveries from being misused.
The possibilities are so tremendous that we should put our fear aside and we should take cautious steps so that genetics is not being used against humanity but for humanity.
And anyway, if you don't do anything, then what you are afraid of is going to happen.
Genetics cannot be prevented from developing. Every government which has power enough is interested in it. So fear and paranoia will not help. If cautious efforts are made – and worldwide protests and movements are made, that at least sciences like genetics should not be in the hands of nations, but in the hands of a world community of scientists themselves – then it can be used for the creation of a golden future on this earth. |
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