Osho – From Medication to Meditation
A look into the future - Nhìn vào tương lai (Read in Vietnamese)
Recently you spoke of science and how we could produce a new man — more intelligent, creative, healthier and freer. It sounds fascinating and at the same time it is scary because of the feeling of some sort of mass product. Can you say something about the fear I am feeling? It is absolutely fascinating, and there is no need to feel any fear about it. In fact, what we have been doing for millions of years is mass production — accidental mass production.
Do you know what kind of a child you are going to give birth to? Do you know if he will be blind, crippled, retarded, sick, weak, vulnerable to all kinds of diseases for his whole life? Does your lover know what he is doing? While you are making love you have no conception, not even a possibility of guessing. You are giving birth to children just like animals, and you don't feel scared about it, you don't feel any fear about it. And you see the whole world full of retarded people, crippled, blind, deaf, dumb. All this rubbish! Who is responsible for it? And is it not mass production?
My conception of giving scientific birth to a child is that, conscious, alert, knowingly, we are bringing a visitor to the earth. We know who he is, what he is and what he is to become finally; how long he will live, how much intelligence he will have. We are discarding all possibilities of blind children, deaf children, dumb children, retarded in any way — physically, psychologically — and you are feeling fear? Don't be stupid. The scientific birth of a child is not animalistic. You are transcending the animal by giving birth to a child scientifically. It is fascinating, the greatest, most fascinating thing around. We can manage it, it is already a scientific reality. We can manage healthier people, who will live as long as we want, and we can give them as much intelligence as is needed for their work.
A couple comes to a scientific lab and tells them that they want a child like Albert Einstein, but better than him, living two hundred years; and he should never suffer any disease, he should be strong. The scientific lab finds the right egg from the bank, the right semen from the bank, and the child is produced in a test-tube with all precautions.
You will have to adopt the child, you cannot produce the child. Production of children is animalistic. Adoption of children of your own imagination... Everybody wants a Shakespeare to be born, wants their child to be a great poet, a great musician, a great dancer. Every mother thinks that her child is going to be in some way a superhuman being, and every mother is frustrated — the child turns out to be just rotten. He just gets lost in this whole crowd on an overpopulated planet. This is mass production. But adopting a child, you can contemplate on all the qualities that you need. You can ask the advice of the experts as to what other qualities will be helpful in his life, how much he will be capable of love... You want a Romeo? — you can get a Romeo. It is only a question of chemistry. Romeo has more male hormones than anybody else, he is richer; that's why one woman is not enough for him.
You want a poet who will transcend all the poets of the past? A scientist in comparison to whom all the scientists of the past will look like pygmies? A musician who brings the unknown, the invisible, through sounds to you? A poet who sings songs of joy and celebration as nobody else has ever done? You can ask anything, and they have just to work out, calculate which female egg, which male semen will produce such a human being.
That semen is not yours, that egg is not your wife's; you adopt the child. In this way you can get what humanity has always dreamed about: the birth of the superman, a man who is made almost of steel. Your Muhammad Ali the Great will not be able to face him — just one punch on his nose and he will be finished.
What makes you afraid? Don't you want to get above animals? The desire that it will be your semen, that it will be your wife's egg, is simply ugly. Children belong to the universe. What speciality has it got that it is your semen? What is the point of creating a crippled person, just because it is your semen? Science can manage to raise you above animality — and it is not mass production, it will be just the opposite. There is not going to be an assembly line the way cars are produced. It is going to be very individual because every couple has the choice and the freedom to decide what kind of child they want.
How has the idea of mass production come into your mind? Do you think everybody would like the same kind of child? You are wrong. Do you think science labs will go on producing children according to their own desire, and you have to adopt them? Then it will be mass production. I am not for it. You are absolutely free to choose. Right now you are absolutely blind and doing whatsoever you are doing in utter darkness. You are simply a slave of blind biology.
Don't you want freedom from blind biology? Don't you want to go above this stupid attachment to the idea that the child is born out of your semen and your wife's egg? Those eggs don't know to whom they belong. And what is special about your semen? You don't know anything about it. You are completely unaware of what kind of people are struggling within you to be born. You have no choice, you are simply a slave.
What I am saying about scientific birth makes you go beyond slavery, blindness, darkness. It makes you in a certain way more spiritual, because you are no longer concerned that your semen, your wife's egg, are absolutely needed for your child.
You give your requirements; you adopt the child. And you can ask experts what will be the best for the child. Would you not like your child to be a unique genius? For futile attachments you are satisfied with a crippled child. And giving birth to a crippled child, a blind child, are you doing any favour to the child? He will never forgive you! You are responsible. And he will have to live a life which is not life at all.
My vision gives total freedom to you and, of course, great responsibility. Right now you are producing children without any responsibility. You have means available to determine what colour the child should be, what kind of face — Greek, Roman?... You can create children who will look like sculptures, utterly beautiful, with genius in some dimension of life, living a life of love, intelligent enough to discard all the priests and all the politicians. They will not become followers of a leader, they will be enough unto themselves.
Right now, what are you doing? First you create in blindness, darkness, a child, not knowing what he is going to turn out like. Then you force him to become a slave by making him a Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, or politically giving him a certain ideology — socialism, fascism, communism. And he is not intelligent enough to rebel against all these slaveries.
The child of my vision will be absolute freedom. He will not belong to any political party, he will not belong to any organized religion. He will have his own religion, he will have his own political ideology. What is the need for him to hang around Karl Marx and be a communist? He can think better than Karl Marx — and Karl Marx is not a great thinker. He can live so long that he is not in a hurry about anything; patient, ready to wait — he has time enough. Just think of Albert Einstein living three hundred years. He would have given miracles to the world. But because he was living in an accidental body, he had to die.
We can discard disease, old age. We can program life in every way. We can even program the life of the child, so that when he wants to die only then will he die; otherwise he can go on living. If he feels that there are still juices that he has not tasted, if he feels there are still dimensions that he has not explored, if he feels that more time is needed, then he is the master to decide how long to live.
Up to now, you have lived seventy years on average — that includes people who live one hundred and fifty years in some places of the world. In Russia there are people who have passed one hundred and fifty years, and they are still young. There are people in a certain part of Kashmir, which Pakistan has invaded, who live very easily to one hundred and fifty, sixty, seventy. And it is a surprising fact — I have been to those people — a one-hundred-and-fiftyyear- old person is just working in the field the same way he was working when he was fifty, with the same strength, with the same gusto.
All that is needed is better planning, better crossbreeding. It is a known and applied fact about animals. Do you see the many kinds of beautiful dogs around the earth? — small, big, powerful, or just beautiful. Just to see them jump around you is such a joy. Do you think they came out of blind nature? No, for centuries we have been crossbreeding dogs.
You know it as a fact — the whole world accepts it — that a man should not get married to his own sister. Why? That should be the most simple thing, to get married to your own sister. You love her already, you have been together since birth, you know each other. But why have all cultures prohibited it? All cultures have said that marriage should be with distant people, people who don't come from the same family tree, because the bigger the distance, the better the product. If a white American marries a Negro, the child will be far better than a white American marrying another white American, or a Negro marrying another Negro, because the distance between those two is immense — different centuries. They have grown in different atmospheres, their programming is totally different from each other. So when these two totally different cultures, traditions, conventions, lifestyles meet, they give birth to a better man, who has a double heritage: the heritage of the Negroes and the heritage of the white Americans... In a scientific lab it will be possible to find eggs and semen cells as distant as possible. And we can create through that crossbreeding a totally new man.
There is nothing scary about it. It is not mass production. The couple has to say what kind of person they would like to have as their child. It avoids all accidents. And we will be creating the universal man — not the Chinese, not the Indian, not the English, but the universal man. So please, just feel fascinated, don't feel scared and afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of.
You have seen the way children have been produced in the past. For millions of years you have been doing the same thing — what is the outcome? The outcome decides the value of what you have been doing. Once in a while there is an Albert Einstein or a Bertrand Russell — once in a while! This is not right. It should be the ordinary phenomenon, usual. Once in a while perhaps there will be a person who is born out of some unawareness, unalertness on the part of the scientist; otherwise everybody should be a genius. Just think: the whole world full of people like Rabindranath, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger! And we can prevent people like Adolph Hitler, Mussolini, Joseph Stalin from being born, because they have been calamities here. We can close the door completely on all Genghis Khans, Tamerlanes, Nadir Shahs — all those ugly monsters whose whole life consisted of killing people, destroying people, burning people.
The way we have lived has not proved right. We have only a crowd of pygmies all around — this is what you should be scared of! But having a garden of geniuses, creative people, a garden from where we have removed all fanatics, idiots, politicians — in short, we have taken out all that was poisonous, all pollution... There is so much in the idea. Now, how many people are suffering because they have a snubbed nose? Their whole life they feel inferior. How many people are suffering because they have only a nose? If you look at them, everything else is so small and the nose is so big...
I have heard: one millionaire had a very big nose and very small eyes, but he was the richest man in the community. People used to laugh behind him, but nobody ever dared.... He was invited by a family for dinner. The family was concerned about only one thing: their child, who was a born philosopher, asked about everything.
From the morning they were teaching him, "You can ask anything, but when the rich man comes, you are not to ask about his nose." They told him so many times that he became immensely interested: "What is so great about his nose?" They had never prevented him from asking any question. Why was this nose so important? He was really excited, eagerly waiting for the millionaire to come. When he came in, the child laughed. He said to his parents, "He has only a nose, nothing else! And why were you preventing me...? He is a rare specimen!" He destroyed the whole effort.
But people... almost everyone is suffering from something or other. Somebody is suffering from his colour, somebody is suffering from his tallness; somebody is too tall, somebody is too small. What have you produced? This is mass production — accidental, produced in darkness. At least human beings — who are the crown in existence — should not suffer any more from an inferiority complex. The only way is scientific production of children. And there are immense possibilities in it.
For example, if the child is produced in a scientific lab they can produce a similar child simultaneously. The other child will be kept in the lab growing simultaneously; exactly as the one who has gone out to be adopted by a family, the other will be growing in the scientific lab. Just the existence of the other gives great opportunities. For example, you get a fractured leg. Now no need to bother to fix the fracture — the leg from the other fellow can be taken and given to you. Something goes wrong, berserk, in your head — now there is no need for all the psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists. Your head is just removed, you get a fresh head. The other person will remain in anaesthesia his whole life, in a deep freeze. He will not know anything of what is happening. He is just there in case something goes wrong with you — and many things go wrong in life, even with every precaution. Something can always go wrong; life is a long affair. You may have a car accident... now, that cannot be prevented by scientific reproduction of children.
But all depends on whether we have courage enough to rise over our fearful selves. We have to rise above the scary feeling. Be fascinated with the new man! The new man must have a new kind of birth. The new man must have a new kind of life, a new kind of love, a new kind of death. He will be new in every possible way. He will replace the old models who are overcrowding the earth — junkyards. They are not needed.
It is a simple process of programming the first cell. And only the first cell can be programmed, because then it goes on reproducing itself — that is an autonomous process. You can program it for everything. Right now it is difficult; it is programmed for all kinds of diseases, it is programmed for death, old age. You can't have any control over it. There is no way to change the program now, because all the cells have the same program. If they are programmed for a particular disease that you get by inheritance, you will suffer from that disease. It could have been changed, but only in the first meeting of the male and the female cells. Everything can be programmed, and an exact copy of you can be kept in the lab. If your heart is not functioning well, the new heart is available — which will fit you exactly, because it comes from your copy, your twin.
Any new thing scares, but it scares only cowards. Any new thing fascinates, but it fascinates only the brave ones. Be brave, because we need a new, brave world. "I am a research scientist. For eleven years I have been involved in a medical research programme to develop artificial organs, including hearts, skin, and blood. I enjoy my work, but I do not have a right sense about what I am doing, as natural organs are always better. I have a deep love and respect for nature, and there is much to do to keep the natural balance of which you speak; but I cannot find any institution or organization where research is done with respect or love. Please help me to find a way our or a better way in.
I can understand your difficulty. There is no organization or institute on the whole planet earth where research is being done with respect and love towards nature. Just the contrary is the case. The research is being done to conquer nature. A man has even written a book, Conquest of Nature. It is simply unbelievable that you are part of nature, a small part, a tiny part, trying to conquer the whole — as if one of my fingers is trying to take possession of my whole body. Man is nature too. So wherever you are, do not bother about the organization or the institution or their attitude; but you work with deep love, respect. You are not working against nature.
And remember one thing: why have you been given intelligence? It is the natural growth. Nature is trying to improve upon itself through your intelligence. Right now it may be that natural organs are superior to artificial organs. But remember, the artificial organs can be superior to the natural organs, for the simple reason that nature works blindly. Through man nature is trying to have eyes.
The natural heart can certainly be replaced by an artificial heart. The artificial heart will not have heart attacks. And the artificial heart will be easily removable, replaceable. Human blood is going to be a great need soon. You have to improve upon nature, because as the religious disease, AIDS, is spreading throughout the world, blood transfusion is becoming more and more dangerous. Through a blood transfusion you can become a victim of AIDS. Artificial blood will be purer because artificial blood is not going to be religious and homosexual, it is not going to be the source of your death. And what a death! — ugly; in your own eyes you fall down.
So don't feel that you are working against nature. Nobody can succeed against nature. All the successes of science are not conquests, the way they have been described. All that we have discovered is through the compassion of nature allowing us its secrets. We are part of nature, the best part of it. And nature wants through human consciousness to reach newer heights.
Science is not against nature, cannot be. It has to follow natural laws, it cannot go against the natural laws. So all discovery, all research is to find out how nature functions, what its laws are. And you have intelligence that is given by nature; nature is ready to reveal its secrets to that intelligence. Follow the laws of nature, and you will be able to improve upon nature itself. Intelligence is nature trying to improve upon itself; up to now it has worked blindly. In man's intelligence there is a hope. So don't be worried that you are doing something against nature. Do it with great love, respect, with great gratitude, meditativeness; and be certain that it is nature trying to improve upon itself through you. In the beginning, of course, your artificial organs will not be so good. But it is only the beginning: there is immense possibility of going on improving.
Blood will be needed soon, and artificial blood will be better. Perhaps if things like AIDS become a wildfire, then the only alternative we have is to reproduce children in the test-tubes, where they can be protected; otherwise they will bring AIDS from their very birth. Three children in Europe have been found with AIDS. What an ugly world we are creating for our children! — that AIDS has come through natural birth. 'Natural birth' does not mean that we cannot improve upon it...
Every woman and every man should be standing in a queue before hospitals to be tested. If he is declared a positive case of AIDS, then something has to be done for the poor man; something so that he does not need sex anymore, some biological change. Otherwise, he is going to live two years — what is he going to do with his biology, with his physiology, with his male sperm? Something has to be done, and that can be done only by scientific investigation into how to divert the old blind biological process of creating sperm in man.
If for two years we can stop the production of sperm in the man, he can live without repression — he can enjoy these two years more than anybody else. Everybody is going to die. He is a rare person because death is giving him notice.
You may die tomorrow. Everything remains incomplete. Everybody has been dying on the earth leaving things incomplete because nobody knows when death will come and knock on your door. But the man with AIDS — if science can help him not to produce sexual energy, or can channel it into different directions of creativity, because it is creative energy — perhaps for these two years he will be grateful. He will not feel bad about AIDS; he may even feel proud of it, because for these two years he will be able to paint, play music, write the novel he always wanted to but there were so many things to do...and now there is a clean two years of time. He can meditate. It is difficult in the ordinary world to find such a long stretch of time — two years — to sit silently, do nothing, and just be a witness. He can do that.
Then AIDS becomes a blessing in disguise. The men whose sperm is found not to be carrying any AIDS or other diseases can donate their sperm to the hospital. Just like blood banks, there should be sperm banks. If we want humanity to continue, and certainly we want to continue, then artificial insemination will be the only way to produce children — either in the test-tubes or, if the woman is happy and ready, then in her womb...
So you are in the great service of humanity and nature. Go deeper into the research. Don't just do it as a job, let it be your worship. These things are going to be needed. Nowadays if you have a fracture, then for six weeks you are carrying the cast — unnecessarily] If we can create artificial organs, limbs... if a leg has a fracture, it is better to replace it. Why bother with rotten old things? Just replace it with a new, brand-new leg, and that can be done very easily. And the artificial leg can be made as strong as we want; it can be absolute steel, with no fear of any fracture.
It is perfectly in tune with nature. Just remember one criterion: whatever you do should not be in the service of destruction, it should be in the service of creativity. Do you see experiments on human ye, such as artificial birth and the exchange of hearts and brains, as an advance, or as an action against nature?
I all depends who is going to do it. If the politicians are going to do it, or the so-called religions are going to do it, then it is against nature. They cannot do anything natural, they are against nature. But if it is being done by an international academy of scientists — I say international academy of scientists — it can be a tremendous, progressive step, and it will not be against nature. It will be nature's growth. But it all depends on who is doing it. The experiments themselves are neutral. No experiment has any vested interest, it is neutral. You can use poison to kill you; the same poison can be used by medical people to save you. It all depends who is doing it.
For example, the discovery of atomic energy was a step of tremendously great progress, a quantum leap. We had found a key to transform the earth into paradise — so much energy in such a small atom. And they are in everything... just in a dewdrop there are millions of atoms. Any atom, if it is exploded, releases so much energy that you can make the whole earth live in luxury. Or you can create Hiroshima and Nagasaki — thousands of people dead within seconds. But because atomic energy, after its invention, went into the hands of the politicians, it became a servant of death.
Now there are even more advanced nuclear weapons which can destroy the whole earth. The already existing weapons are enough to destroy this earth seven times. One simply wonders why nations are going to develop more and more nuclear power. Seven times destroying the earth is not enough? In fact, you can destroy the earth only once.
But scientific progress falls into the hands of the politicians because only they can provide enough finance to make these discoveries possible. The scientists of the whole world should think it over: their genius is being used by idiots! The scientists should disconnect themselves from any nation — whether it is the Soviet Union or America. They should create an international academy of sciences. And it is not difficult. If all the scientists of the world are together, finances can be made available, and these discoveries can help man tremendously...
Science should not be the monopoly of any nation, any country. The whole idea is stupid. How can science be monopolized? And every country is trying to monopolize the scientists, keep their inventions secret. This is against humanity, against nature, against existence. Whatever a genius discovers should be in the service of the whole.
You are asking whether discoveries like changing human hearts or human brains are progressive steps. They are of great importance to bring a new humanity on the earth. If Einstein's body is no longer capable of living, do you think it would not be good if his whole brain is transplanted into a young, healthy man? The new man will become an Einstein, because all the genius of Einstein is transplanted to a younger body.
This way bodies may go on changing, but we can keep the genius of Albert Einstein growing for centuries. And if a man in a seventy-year life can give so much, you can imagine if his brain continues for centuries how much benefit it will be for humanity, for the whole universe. This is really a wastage: the container gets rotten, and you throw the contents also. The body is only a container. If the container has become dirty, old, unusable, change the container, but don't throw away the contents. The genius mind can live for eternity in different bodies; that is nothing against nature. You heart, if it starts failing, and if you are of immense value to humanity... what is the fear of exchanging the heart? Somebody may be dying from cancer, but his heart is perfectly healthy; that heart can be planted in a man who is talented, a genius, and is healthy, but whose heart is not strong. This is simple; there is nothing in it against nature.
But with politicians and the power in their hands, of course every advance has gone against nature. Everything that human genius has discovered, invented, finally is in the service of death. So are the priests. Now science is no longer a child, that it has to depend on others.
Science is now grown-up enough, it is adult. Just a little courage... I give the invitation to all the scientists of the world; we have the place, we have intelligent people here to help you in every possible way. It will be a great revolution in the history of man. The whole power will be in the hands of the scientists, who have never done any harm to anybody. And once all the power is in the hands of the scientists, politicians will fade away of their own accord. They have been exploiting scientists for their own purposes, and to be exploited by anybody is not an act of dignity.
The scientists should recognize their dignity, they should recognize their individuality. They should recognize that they have been exploited down the ages by the priests and the politicians. Now it is time to declare that science is going to stand on its own feet. This will be a great freedom. Then all these experiments, such as laboratory babies, will be of a different caliber, because you can arrange what kind of genius you want. Up to now it has been just accidental, and because it has been accidental, ninety-nine percent of the people have nothing to contribute. They contribute only problems to the world. Now, what has Ethiopia contributed to the world? What have the poor countries contributed to the world — or even the rich countries? Except problems, wars, there is no contribution on their part.
But if you can give birth to a child in a scientific lab... It is possible, there is no problem in Sex, for the first time, will be simply fun! Children will be produced in the lab. They will belong to all. And because you are not going to produce children in the old way — it should be illegal and criminal to do so, you will be behind bars if you do it — then many problems of your life will be simply dissolved.
Why is the man so insistent? Throughout the ages the insistence has remained there: he wants to be certain that the child born out of his wife's womb is his. Why? Who are you anyway? It is a question of property, because your child will become the inheritor of all that you have accumulated. You want to be certain that it is your child, not your neighbour's child. Women have been kept almost imprisoned for the simple fear that if they start mixing with people it will be difficult to decide whose child it is. Only the mother will know, or even she may not know.
Once production of life goes into the hands of science sex will be transformed. Then you are not jealous, then you are not a monopolist, then monogamy is absurd. Then sex is just fun, the way you enjoy tennis. And you don't bother that the partners should remain monogamous — two bodies enjoying each other... And there will be no fear that the wife may get pregnant and there will be problems, financial and other. Sex will no longer be a problem for the world population; it will no longer be a problem for the priest. In fact, if children are produced in the scientific lab many of the troubles of the world will dissolve.
And we can create the best people: beautiful, healthy, capable of living as long as we want. Old age is not necessary — a man can remain young, healthy, without sickness. All these hospitals and so many people, so much money involved. Do you know — America spends more money on laxatives than on education. Great idea! Who cares about education? The question is laxatives!
But the basic thing should be remembered: scientists have to be courageous enough and declare that they don't belong to any nation, to any religion, that whatsoever they will be doing will be for the whole of humanity. And I don't see that there is anything impossible in it. I am absolutely for those progressive inventions which can make man happier, live longer, be younger, healthier, and which make his life more of a play, fun, and less of a tortuous journey from the cradle to the grave."
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