Before I say anything about birth control or family planning, I want to share two or three things with you.
First: man is an animal who learns nothing from history. He writes history, he makes history, but he learns nothing from it. I say this first because the greatest fact established by all historical inquiry is that many species on this earth destroyed themselves by multiplying beyond the earth’s capacity to hold them. This planet once housed very powerful animals, but they destroyed themselves by overbreeding.
Five hundred thousand years ago—and I say this on the basis of scientific research—there were lizards on earth larger than elephants. Today, the house lizard in your home is their only remaining descendant. Those were mighty creatures. We have their bones; they had spread across the entire earth. How did they disappear so suddenly? They reproduced so much, multiplied to such numbers, that the earth could no longer house or sustain them. No war killed them, no atom bomb fell on them. Their inner explosion of numbers became their death. Hundreds of such species have lived on this earth and perished by their own overgrowth.
Humanity is drawing close to that same point where it could destroy itself by sheer numbers.
In Buddha’s time, the population of this country was 20 million. If people were a little prosperous, it was not because of the mythical golden age; there was simply more land and fewer people. The happy memories we carry from the past are not memories of some great prosperity; they are memories of abundant land and fewer people. Food was plentiful, people were few—so there was a kind of prosperity.
If we go back two thousand years before Buddha—five thousand years from today—the entire population of the earth was about 20 million. Today it is over 3.5 billion. The earth is the same size; the number has crossed 3.5 billion. And every day we keep increasing it. We are growing so fast that roughly 150,000 people are added daily. Even during the one hour I speak here, humanity will not sit quietly; in that hour thousands more will be added. By the end of this century—if, unfortunately, man does not come to his senses—thirty years from now there will be no room left to move an elbow. There will be no need to call meetings; we will be in meetings twenty-four hours a day.
This cannot actually happen. Something—some “good fortune,” war, epidemic—some “good fortune,” I say—will not let it happen. But if the balance is restored through epidemics and wars, it will be a great blot on human intelligence. Those dinosaurs, those giant lizards bigger than elephants—now gone—had no intelligence, only huge bodies. They could do nothing, they could not think; they died.
We have always thought that man is a thinking being—although man gives little evidence of it. In fact, the more we have tried to understand man in the last fifty years, the weaker that old belief has become. The notion of man as a rational being has grown feeble. Man does not appear to be a truly thoughtful creature, because what he is doing is profoundly thoughtless. And the greatest thoughtlessness we can commit today is to increase our numbers. At this moment, a person who murders is not as bad—not as big a criminal. Who knows—he might even be doing something “good” for humanity’s future! I am not saying kill anyone. I am not asking any murderer to murder. But murder today is not as great a crime as bringing a new child into the world; because with murder one person dies, and if the process of adding new births goes on unchecked, the whole of humanity can die.
This possibility has arisen because of man’s own discoveries.
In Ethiopia people still die of diseases that have vanished elsewhere. The emperor, Haile Selassie, invited a small medical commission from America to investigate how to control disease there. They examined and reported that the water Ethiopians drink is full of infectious germs. Rainwater collects in roadside pits; animals bathe and drink there, and people drink it too. The commission said that if clean water were provided, many Ethiopian diseases would disappear.
The emperor thanked them for their findings and said, “But I will never implement this.” The commission protested, “What are you saying? People are dying!” The emperor replied, “First I save them, and tomorrow I must go about explaining to them not to have children? The trouble will double. On one side I save them from disease; on the other, births increase—and then I will have to write everywhere: ‘Fewer children are better.’ I won’t get into that panchayat. Let the numbers lessen by themselves.”
The emperor’s words sound harsh, but looking at us all, one feels perhaps he was right. We reduced mortality and upset the proportion. A hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, if ten children were born, the likelihood was that nine would die. Today, if ten are born, nine are likely to survive. And the one who still dies does so partly due to our own foolishness; even he need not die. Two hundred years ago, the one who survived among ten did so by God’s grace, not by our wisdom. By our wisdom nine died.
So each person would have twenty or twenty-five children, because out of that number, if two survived, that was enough. The habit is old. We would still like to have twenty or twenty-five children, but now all twenty or twenty-five survive.
Man has checked mortality, checked disease. The findings from bones in graves five thousand years old are astonishing: at that time twenty-five years was a typical maximum age. No bones older than that could be found. Twenty-five years!
Today, in many countries, life expectancy touches seventy, eighty, even eighty-five. In Russia there are thousands who are around one hundred and fifty or beyond. And as our scientific understanding increases, the possibility grows that, if we wish, we can make human life endlessly long.
These possibilities have increased. Science has pushed death back. But our habit of procreation is unscientific; it belongs to days when there was no science. Nature, to avoid missing the mark, experiments in great abundance, in excess. Where one bullet would suffice, nature fires a thousand—because it’s a blind game; if one in a thousand hits, good enough. Man has become a marksman; he can hit with a single shot. But his habit remains old.
It is essential to understand nature’s abundance. One seed you plant becomes thousands, hundreds of thousands. This ensures that at least one among them will become a plant. A healthy male, in an ordinary life, can have about four thousand acts of intercourse—easily. Four thousand. If each act resulted in a child, one man could father four thousand children. But that does not happen because the woman’s capacity is limited; she can bear only one child a year.
Hence, where more children were needed—as in Muslim lands whose men died in wars—Muhammad allowed four marriages. If men are fewer and women more, there is no danger to numbers, because one man can father children with fifty women. But if women are fewer and men many, it makes no difference; a woman’s capacity is limited—one child a year at most.
I said four thousand; if each act made a child, one man could sire four thousand. But in a single act, the semen carries enough sperm to create ten million children. If we take that into account, ten million times four thousand—forty billion—children could be fathered from one man’s life-force. In his normal life he produces so many sperm that the number is many hundreds of times greater than the number of people on earth. There are 3.5 billion people now—350 crores. One man could theoretically be father to 4,000 crores—forty billion—children. In practice he fathers three or four, six or seven, eight. Nature, so as not to miss, makes extreme arrangements.
We have checked mortality; if we maintain nature’s excess meanwhile, man can die under the pressure of his own numbers. And now new possibilities have opened that take us beyond our former limits. Today sperm can be preserved. In the old days a man had to be alive to become a father. Now his presence is unnecessary. You can become a father a thousand years later. Your sperm can be stored.
It is no longer necessary for the father to be present to father. Post-fatherhood is possible. The father may have died a thousand years ago, yet his sperm can be preserved at a certain temperature and used at any time. A woman’s ova can also be preserved; she can become a mother later. Even carrying the child in the womb is no longer an absolute condition for becoming a mother.
All these possibilities have increased our capacity to save life and push death away, but our habits and our ways toward life are pre-scientific. So we keep producing children. And we have no sense of the changed context. We still beat drums and bring out the band when a child is born. That band was for the days when ten children were born and nine died. Naturally, in those days there was reason to celebrate. Ten were born and one survived—so there were sweets, flowers, flags, a warm welcome.
Our habits remain the same. Now each additional child is dangerous, yet we still play the band and hoist flags. We have no idea the whole situation has changed. Each newborn stepping on earth accelerates the death of the whole of humanity, draws it closer at great speed. This unknown, unconscious shadow of death deepening in our minds has already begun to show results. In great cities, in Calcutta, for example, people think Naxalism is a matter of communism. On the surface it looks so. But those who probe deeply discover that to live in peace human beings need a definite space between them; otherwise they cannot remain peaceful. A certain assured spaciousness is needed.
Many experiments have been done on rats, on lions, and the results are astonishing. We have not yet had the courage to experiment on man—otherwise the results would be stark. A lion needs ten square miles to live. If five or ten lions are kept within those ten square miles, the likelihood of their going mad increases.
You will be surprised to know that animals in the wild rarely go mad, and in zoos they commonly do. The only difference between zoo and jungle is that living space is reduced in the zoo. In fact, zoos offer more conveniences than the wild: better scientific diet, constant veterinary care—arrangements the jungle does not have—no doctor, no reliable food, sometimes hunger. But the wild animal does not go mad; the zoo animal does.
When I first studied zoos and learned that wild animals go mad in them, I wondered: have we turned human society into a zoo? For man is going mad at a rate no animal is. And this ratio rises in direct proportion to density of population.
Even today, the tribal person is less mad than we are. And we, even today, are less mad than Bombay. And Bombay is still less mad than New York. In America, half the hospital beds are for psychiatric patients. This proportion is astonishing. Fifty percent of beds for the mentally ill, and every day fifteen lakh—1.5 million—people are inquiring about mental treatment. In fact, the doctor of the body has become outdated there; the doctor of the mind is the cutting-edge physician.
This madness will go on increasing. It will manifest in many forms. In Calcutta or Bombay, when madness erupts and people burn buses and trams, the political leader tells you it is the influence of communism, or this -ism, that -ism—these are newspaper-level analyses, the conclusions of those who have never thought or searched beyond the daily news.
To be a political leader one needs no intelligence; in fact, if you have intelligence, becoming a leader becomes difficult—because to lead you must follow the followers. And where the followers are foolish, it is hard for the leader to be intelligent. He must be a consummate fool. The politician says it is communism, or this or that; this is babble on the surface. The real question is that living space is shrinking.
Sartre wrote a short story. He wrote: I had heard that in hell furnaces burn and sinners are roasted in them. That never frightened me much. In fact, it occurred to me that going to heaven might be rather dull—monotonous. Even our saints are monotonous; if you live with them, you soon get bored. That’s why people hurry through darshan. Perhaps darshan was invented so people wouldn’t have to stay long: salute and goodbye.
Saints become boring; the same note keeps sounding. The sinner is somewhat interesting. The truth is, you cannot write a story about a good man; the good man has no story. Only the bad man’s story can be told. The good man has no real biography; the bad man does.
So Sartre thought: heaven will have no juice; all the bores of the world gathered, sitting on their perfected seats—what will there be to do? Hell will be worth seeing—where all the sinners gather, life will be full of flavor, phenomenal events will happen there that people will discuss for centuries.
But one night he dreamt he went to hell. There were no furnaces, no fires, no melting or burning—only another kind of trouble one had never imagined: a small room with no exit, no door; and three people. There was space only enough for the three to stand. Move a little and you bump into the other. None understood the others’ language. The three had to live together; there was no privacy. Just that little room, those three people, none understanding the others. If you wake, you see those two; if you sleep, they watch you. Whatever you do, those three are there. Within fifteen minutes all three begin to go mad. No one does anything to anyone—but there is no living space. When space is missing, privacy disappears. Privacy needs space.
The greatest suffering of the poor is the absence of privacy—not lack of food or clothing. The poor man’s deepest misery is that he can have no private life. Even when he speaks to his wife, the neighbor hears. He cannot make love to his wife without his sons and daughters knowing. The poor man’s deepest pain is that he cannot be alone. He has nothing like privacy.
The sole luxury of affluence is that you can be alone and create space between yourself and the world, a large space. The more space there is between you and others, the more the mind becomes quiet. The mere presence of another brings tension. You may never have noticed: even if the other does nothing, merely appears, tension begins.
You are walking alone down a road; you are a different person. The road is silent, no one is there; you are a different person. You may be talking to yourself, humming a song, in a playful mood. A song you never dared hum in front of your son. But let two people appear on the road and you change immediately. The mere presence of two others makes you tense at once.
Rightly understood, “the other is the tension.” The other is the tension. And the presence of the other is increasing. On all sides someone is there. Everywhere, someone. Wherever you go, someone. There is no way to be alone. From this a deep tension is settling on the mind. This tension is the most dangerous outcome of rising numbers.
Politicians don’t see it, because it is not their question. Their question is whether there is enough food, enough clothing. If not, what then? My question is: if numbers keep growing, man will lose his soul—because the soul flowers in aloneness. It blooms in solitude.
But solitude is missing. Go to the mountains—there are cars before you and behind you. Go to the beach—cars ahead of you, cars behind. America’s beaches have become spectacles. People race thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred miles on holidays—to find solitude. But the cars are bumper to bumper. They run to be alone, but many are running to that same solitude. When you reach the beach there are hundreds of thousands standing there.
It is becoming difficult to be outside the crowd. Mahavira and Buddha came at the right time; if they came now, they would know! Those who must awaken now know what difficulty it is. There is no living space; you cannot stand alone. To be alone has become almost impossible. And one who cannot be alone cannot truly live. He keeps moving on the surface. Someone is always there, someone watching from somewhere.
This tension, this inner pressure, will explode. It will take new forms of destruction. The desire arises to eliminate the other. That desire will assume many forms—and it will seek rationalizations. The poor will say: eliminate the rich; because of the rich we cannot be at peace. The communist will say: eliminate the anti-communist; without removing him we cannot live. The Hindu will say: eliminate the Muslim. The Muslim will say: eliminate the Hindu.
Deep down we want to eliminate the other, to make room. The Gujarati says: remove the Maharashtrian. The Maharashtrian: remove the Gujarati. The Bengali: the Marwari must not be allowed in Calcutta. These are not quarrels of Marwari and Bengali, of Gujarati and Maharashtrian, of Hindu and Muslim—these are shapes we give to the quarrel. Deep down the quarrel is: we need space, we must push the other out. The African says: non-Africans out. The American: no more non-Americans in. The Australian: close the door—no one in. The Chinese: how will you close the door? We are so many we will break all doors and enter.
It is not China’s “fault” that it presses on India; it is the sheer pressure of numbers. Like a bag overstuffed until it bursts and things spill out on all sides—that is China’s condition. Seventy, seventy-five, eighty crores—beyond its capacity. The bag has become small, the people too many; they spill over, helplessly.
The whole world’s present suffering is this: man needs space between man and man. If space ends, it will be terrible. Rats have been studied extensively; the findings are astonishing. A rat needs space to live—not only to reside, but a specific distance between itself and other rats. Meet sometimes, separate, or it becomes difficult. By reducing the living space of rats, many experiments have been done. They found how many rats in a room make them go mad, and how many fewer make them healthy again.
What you like in the jungle is less the jungle itself and more the absence of people. On the mountain, what you like is less the mountain and more that the other is not there with eyes fixed on you, seeing through your clothes, eyes upon you from all sides. There you feel light; you can lie down; you can do what you want. That is becoming impossible.
Before mankind dies, its mind will go completely mad—if numbers keep rising and no remedy works. And the remedies we are attempting give little hope. They are very weak—like trying to empty the ocean with a glass. The problem is vast, and whatever governments are doing is very small. Nothing will be solved that way; it is too difficult. Before we can prevent five or ten lakh births, a crore have already been born. The question is of such magnitude.
Before the world ends from crowding, the crowd will go mad. It has begun. Today it is hard to certify anyone as truly mentally healthy. At most we can say: this person has not yet gone mad—we cannot say he is fine. The difference between the mad and the rest is of degree, not of kind. One is boiling at ninety-nine degrees, another at ninety-eight, another at ninety-five; one reaches a hundred and spills over into the asylum. You, at ninety-nine, say, “Poor fellow!”—not knowing that ninety-nine can become a hundred any moment.
William James visited a madhouse once and never went again. What occurred to that intelligent man was: all these people have gone mad. One of them was his acquaintance, perfectly fine the day before. He went home, took to bed, and told his wife he was very frightened. She asked, “What happened to you?”
He said, “The man who was fine yesterday is insane today; I am fine today—who knows about tomorrow? I cannot persuade myself that he, the poor fellow, is mad—yesterday he too persuaded himself some other poor fellow was mad. No, I am frightened, for I see in myself all that which, if it explodes, will make me mad.”
It is in all of us. Go into a room, lock the door, sit alone, and write for ten minutes—honestly—whatever runs in your mind. Tell no one; otherwise you will not dare to be honest. The moment the other appears, you become dishonest. Even if that other is your wife or your son. To be honest in front of another is a fierce test. It is very hard to be honest even with oneself. Lock the door and write for ten minutes without editing. After ten minutes you will be unable to show that paper to anyone. If you do, anyone will ask, “Which lunatic wrote this? From whose mind did this spill?” You yourself will be amazed: “All this is moving inside me!”
Tension surrounds us. It has many consequences. First, there is conflict everywhere—strife, clash. In the name of class, religion, sect, caste, language. Deep down, there is mental conflict in us. It spreads and will grow. Numbers will grow and with them this conflict. Man needs space to live, and his space has been snatched. We have blocked death and are unwilling to block birth.
This strife will flare daily into wars. It is no accident that we made hydrogen and atom bombs. In this world, nothing is accidental; deep laws operate in what happens.
For example: it is a marvelous fact that the number of men and women in the world remains nearly equal. Who arranges this? The world is vast—why doesn’t it happen that one day men are far more, or women far more? One hundred and sixteen boys are born for every hundred girls. Those 116 boys are born as a careful adjustment because, before sexual maturity, sixteen boys will die and the numbers will balance.
In fact the boy is weaker than the girl. A woman’s resistance is greater. Women can endure more illness, more hardship, more trouble without breaking. Men have less capacity to resist. So nature produces 116 boys to 100 girls; girls survive, sixteen boys are lost before fourteen or fifteen, and numbers equalize.
It is astonishing: inner laws operate in life. Man has attacked those inner laws from many directions and upset the inner balance. We have attacked death—no plague, no epidemic, no malaria, no mosquitoes; we have arranged everything there. We have attacked the side of dying. But the flow on the side of birth continues as if malaria, plague, black fever still existed. Nature works by its own discipline. That discipline is functioning within. We changed one end of the balance. Therefore I am strongly in favor of birth regulation. We must alter the other end too. If we have touched death, we must touch birth. Birth can no longer be left in nature’s blind hands. But even here I want to say a few things.
For me this is less a question of food and clothing, and more a question of man’s inner growth. For me the question is: if we are to save humanity from madness, we must regulate birth; family planning must be accelerated. And not as we are doing it now, because that too can have dangerous consequences.
Before I speak to that, let me also say: as I said, nature has an inner arrangement, though blind. When we create such a situation, forces of inner balance begin to operate to erase it. We pushed death away on one side and, on the other, we are inviting mass death. The third world war stands before us. If numbers keep rising, it cannot be prevented. If the third world war is to be averted, the world’s population must be brought sharply down. Otherwise there will be a third war—and not like the earlier ones. The third world war will be the last.
Before he died, someone asked Einstein about the third world war. Einstein said, “Nothing can be said about the third. But if you ask about the fourth, I can tell you.”
The man asked, “You can’t say about the third, but about the fourth?”
Einstein replied, “One thing is certain about the fourth—it will never happen. Because after the third, there will be no one left to fight it.”
With the third, the possibility of total annihilation increases every day. Meanwhile man is going mad, tension is rising; he is searching for new theories to kill and be killed—sometimes fascism, sometimes communism, some -ism or other—how to hack the other to pieces. Under the cover of good theories, killing becomes easier. That is why the most extraordinary lunatics in the world have always been ideologists. Ordinary lunatics are locked in asylums. Extraordinary lunatics become Stalins, Hitlers, Maos—they sit on your chest from above, seize a doctrine; from behind the screen of doctrine they play the game of madness and it becomes hard to tally what they are doing.
Hitler alone murdered some sixty lakh Jews. Stalin alone murdered an estimated crore in Russia. Yet no one calls Stalin a murderer. Such is the charm of theory—such is its magic! Kill a crore under the banner of a theory and you are not a murderer; kill one man and you are. He kills “for their own good,” he says. With a solid theory, everything is justified.
The third world war will become inevitable if population does not stop within ten years. To cross beyond 1980 will be very difficult. The third war will become unavoidable; it will be the only remaining mechanism of inner balance. But that balance will be terribly costly. It may erase everything. And let me give you another indication: in my view, the feverish urge to go to the moon has no real reason—today. But if we look deep into man’s unconscious, inner balance comes to mind again. Within fifty years the earth may become uninhabitable. We will have to arrange for man to survive on another planet.
You have heard the old Christian story of Noah. A great deluge came and all died. God told Noah: preserve this ark and save a pair of every species—take them to where the flood is not, so that creation can begin again.
Whether Noah’s story is true or not is hard to say. It is hard to call it false, because versions of the flood are found in cultures across the world—when the world was not connected and people did not know one another. There are stories of a great flood in which all drowned and only specimens were saved: one man, one woman; a donkey and a she-donkey; a monkey and a she-monkey—specimens preserved to start again.
The possibility grows that if a third world war occurs, there will be no way to survive on earth; some people will have to be taken off the earth. But none of this is necessary; it can be prevented. The place to prevent it is where we produce children.
We are trying to stop it voluntarily. We are asking people to agree—to accept by their own will.
No. This is not a matter for voluntary choice; only if it is compulsory can it work. Mandatory. Not optional. Not “We request you to limit yourselves to two or three children…” Even that “or” is dangerous. No “or” at all. Two children means two children. The third means no. And if this “no” is left to your choice, nothing will be solved; man’s awareness is too low to grasp how great the danger is. It cannot be left to him. It must be made compulsory—given the urgency of a national emergency. There is no greater emergency. And this voluntary approach we have taken has deep harms.
The strange irony is: when we appeal to people, the intelligent class listens and the unintelligent does not. So the intelligent reduce their births and the unintelligent multiply. The balance of merit and intelligence will suffer horribly.
Generally the intelligent are not the ones responsible for increasing numbers. Those who are educated, thoughtful, with some intelligence—even if they do not care about the world—still want a radio at home, a radiogram, a TV, or a car; for these they must limit children. So even self-concerned thinking people do not increase births.
France is the one country where population is falling. I consider it a sign of great intelligence. It is the only country where the population is declining; the government posts placards: “Please increase the population a little,” fearing that if others grow while France shrinks, space will open and people will flood in from all sides, and France will be unable to stop them.
In intelligent countries population has stabilized—Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Belgium. Europe is near stabilization. Asia is going mad. Therefore the West faces the greatest danger. If they send you birth-control devices free, do not think it is pure philanthropy.
For the West, the greatest danger is that Asia will drown it like insects. The West has achieved prosperity, affluence, civilization. When mankind’s ancient dreams are close to fulfillment, Asia is producing so many children that they will press the whole world down.
These national barriers will not hold long, nor visas and passports. Once numbers spill beyond borders, no rules will work. People will enter other nations and wherever there is space they will dominate—because a dying man does what he must. If death is certain, no police or barrier can stop him.
Asia has become the greatest danger for the whole world. Hence the whole world is concerned and sends aid: “Take birth-control aids, take pills, we are ready to serve you—but please do not have children. You are a danger for yourselves and for the convenience of the whole world.”
But if we leave it to will, we will suffer. The intelligent generally have fewer children; if only the intelligent were reproducing, each generation would be smaller. The non-intelligent reproduce strongly. We must understand why. Why do the non-intelligent have so many children? Why does a laborer or a peasant produce so many?
Two reasons. First, the intelligent discovers pleasures other than sex that the non-intelligent does not find. Music, literature, religion, meditation—other doors of joy open. The non-intelligent has only one pleasure: sex. He has no other. He cannot spend a night lost in a novel, forgetting his wife; he cannot enter meditation for a day; the flute has no taste for him. His mind has not moved where man finds joys above sex.
As men discover joys above sex, their sexual hunger steadily decreases. If scientists remain unmarried, it is not because they practice celibacy; if saints remain unmarried, not because of celibacy—rather because new doors of joy have opened. They fly so high in greater joys that the sexual joy becomes meaningless.
The poor, the illiterate, the rural, the laborer—have no other entertainment. Hence, the fewer the entertainments in a country, the faster the population will grow. They have only one entertainment—the one nature gave. Man-made entertainments are absent. But he will not listen; he is not in a condition to listen. He will keep producing children. The intelligent will listen and fall quiet—stop producing. Thus the countries with less talent will have even less; beauty will diminish, health will diminish, talent will diminish.
Therefore I am strongly against voluntary birth control. I am strongly for birth control—strongly for population regulation—but strongly against making it voluntary. Regulation must be mandatory; only then is it meaningful. Then the country’s talent can be fostered. And for that, we must use certain measures—I will suggest two or three.
First, in my view, population control has many implications, many interconnections. The poor are eager to produce more because more children do not bring him trouble—they bring him convenience. The rich are not eager because more children bring inconvenience. If I have a lakh of rupees and I produce ten children, each will have ten thousand; I will no longer be a lakhpati. But if I have nothing and produce ten children, each will at least bring eight annas in the evening.
Until we create such an arrangement for the vast lower classes that having more children becomes inconvenient for them, they will not listen. But our situation is strange. Our country is full of contradictions. On one side we explain to everyone: produce fewer children. On the other side we levy less tax on those with more children, and more tax on those with fewer. We say, “Have fewer children,” and we tax the unmarried more and the married less.
If a mad world exists anywhere, it is here. If we want fewer children, we must tax the married more and give facilities to the unmarried so they remain unmarried longer. More children must mean more tax. It sounds upside down because we think: poor fellow has more children, let us help. No. More children must mean more tax. If every new child brings more tax into a home, fear of having children will begin. But if every child reduces tax, then bringing children is good.
At present those with more children enjoy advantages; they form partnerships and reduce tax. On one hand we want fewer children; on the other, we act by rules fifty years old—when more was no danger.
So regulation must be compulsory. And we must consider every aspect of life: where and how to act to reduce births.
Second: from that old world which is now impossible, we carry many moralities and doctrines that will hinder the world to come; we must break them. They cannot be harmonized with the future.
For example, Gandhi was against birth control, and of all the mistakes he made, this was the greatest. He opposed it, saying birth control would increase immorality. He was not concerned that without birth control humanity would die; he was concerned that with birth control immorality might increase—some unmarried girl might relate with a boy and it would not be noticed.
Why does anyone need to notice? This peeping Tom tendency is dangerous. Why this need to know? The very desire to know is immoral. If a man snoops to find what relationship the neighbor’s daughter has with whom, that man is immoral—because he is trying to create tension in another’s life. What purpose does it serve?
But the old moralist was always curious about what others were doing, prowling around every house. The old mahatma tries to find out everything about everyone. Let humanity die—he does not care. His concern is that no immorality occur. Yet immorality did not stop because of mahatmas’ concern. In Gandhi’s ashram what happens elsewhere happened there and will happen—right under Gandhi’s eyes; nothing will change. Because what we call immorality, if it is against nature, then nature will survive and “immorality” will not.
And what is immorality? Have we ever thought that when a woman bears ten children, her whole life is destroyed? We did not call that immoral. We said a woman’s job is to be a mother. By “mother” we meant a factory of motherhood. A factory life: every year a product, then preparations for the next. What we do with hens we have done with women. But that we did not call immoral. If a man fathers twenty children through his wife, no scripture or saint calls him immoral.
Such a man is immoral. He has murdered a woman; nothing remains of her personality—only a factory. Yet this is not immoral! We have made “immorality” out of God knows what—and Gandhi and Vinoba say: practice celibacy!
For five thousand years this lesson has been given. They still go on. They say: no birth control; practice brahmacharya. Even if a few practice, it will make no difference. The question is too big to be solved by celibacy. Five thousand years of teaching—how many celibates have you produced? Gandhi labored forty or fifty years—how many celibates did he produce? The truth is, he never fully trusted his own celibacy—not until the end. He said: “While awake I am in control; but in sleep it returns.”
It will return. The one who controls in waking will be haunted in sleep. No fault there—except the fault of repression. Hold it all day and at night the grip loosens; what was not allowed by day will seek expression in sleep. Better to allow it by day than ruin sleep.
They hope celibacy will stop numbers. It will not. Saints also teach: you are not entitled; God sends children; you have no right to stop them. The same saints run hospitals! If God sends disease, why stop it? If God sends death, why run to the hospital?
Today I passed an Ayurvedic hospital—some swami’s name was on it: “So-and-so Swami Ayurvedic Hospital.” Why does a swami open a hospital? To teach people to die in Ayurvedic fashion?
There are styles of dying too. Some fancy allopathy, some Ayurveda, some homeopathy! Is that why the hospital was opened?
Surely it was opened to save. If God sends children, who sends death? Why fight death scientifically while blessing births religiously?
Those who talk this way are criminals. If restraining birth is an offense against God, then close all hospitals; do not restrain death. Then balance will restore itself. Then there will be no trouble.
But it is astonishing—our country lives in contradictions.
No. What we have done with death we must do with birth; and if we won’t do it with birth, then do it with neither. Let mosquitoes breed, let malaria spread, let plague return... then everything will balance and no birth control will be needed. It is needed because nature had its own arrangements; man blocked one corner. Now when we try to block the other corner, saints say God obstructs us.
God does not obstruct at all—but in God’s name mahatmas have always obstructed life’s necessities. Their force is strong—naturally so among the blind; and when that blind force supports the blind man’s own tendencies, he feels gratified: “Exactly right—who are we to stop children?”
A small story comes to mind; let me share it and finish.
There is a Bengali novel. A family sets out for Badrinath-Kedarnath. A Bengali housewife, her family; a sannyasin joins them on the way. The Bengali housewife is devout; when she cooks, she serves the sannyasin first, then the husband. Naturally—he is a guest, and a holy man. Whatever is good she first gives to the sannyasin. The sannyasin eats so much that little remains for the rest. The husband is very upset.
In truth, if a sannyasin stands between husband and wife, the husband is always troubled. He cannot even comprehend what is happening, and out of fear of his wife he cannot speak. All temples are run via wives; all sadhus are fed via wives. If the wife goes, everything thrives.
The sannyasin devours everything. A traveler arrives from behind with sweets—Bengali sandesh. The husband is frightened—he loves sandesh. “Nothing will be left; the sannyasin will polish it off,” he thinks. Next day, trembling, he sees it happen: the sandesh are set out; the sannyasin cleans the plate. He says, “Leave the chapatis today.” He eats all the sweets. The husband is so troubled that not a single sandesh remains. He says to the sannyasin, “If you won’t consider us, at least consider yourself.” The sannyasin replies, “You are a nonbeliever. He who gave the belly will provide for it; we do not come between God and his duty.”
The sandesh the sannyasin will provide; he will not come between God and the belly—he will leave it all to God. Man’s dishonesty is ancient. In the matter of population it will be very costly. Understand clearly: we will have to stop births if we want to save humanity. Otherwise, with your multiplying children, the end of humanity may come.
I have said only a little. The question is vast, with many facets. Think on it. There is no need to accept my words. I am neither a guru nor a mahatma, nor have I brought any certificate from God that what I say is true. I speak as an ordinary man speaks. A layman who can only place a request, not an insistence. I cannot say, “This is the truth.” I can only say, “This is how it appears to me.”
Consider these things. If some point seems right to you, it becomes yours. Then it is no longer mine; I am not responsible for it. It is yours, and you are responsible. If something seems wrong, do not keep it even for a moment—throw it away. We have been too attached; wrong ideas have piled up on our heads—throw that junk away at once. If what I say seems wrong, do not keep it inside for even a minute. But think before you throw. If, by thinking, something appears right, it becomes yours.
I am grateful for the peace and love with which you have listened. In the end, I bow to the God seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
Before I say anything about birth control or family planning, I want to share two or three things with you.
First: man is an animal who learns nothing from history. He writes history, he makes history, but he learns nothing from it. I say this first because the greatest fact established by all historical inquiry is that many species on this earth destroyed themselves by multiplying beyond the earth’s capacity to hold them. This planet once housed very powerful animals, but they destroyed themselves by overbreeding.
Five hundred thousand years ago—and I say this on the basis of scientific research—there were lizards on earth larger than elephants. Today, the house lizard in your home is their only remaining descendant. Those were mighty creatures. We have their bones; they had spread across the entire earth. How did they disappear so suddenly? They reproduced so much, multiplied to such numbers, that the earth could no longer house or sustain them. No war killed them, no atom bomb fell on them. Their inner explosion of numbers became their death. Hundreds of such species have lived on this earth and perished by their own overgrowth.
Humanity is drawing close to that same point where it could destroy itself by sheer numbers.
In Buddha’s time, the population of this country was 20 million. If people were a little prosperous, it was not because of the mythical golden age; there was simply more land and fewer people. The happy memories we carry from the past are not memories of some great prosperity; they are memories of abundant land and fewer people. Food was plentiful, people were few—so there was a kind of prosperity.
If we go back two thousand years before Buddha—five thousand years from today—the entire population of the earth was about 20 million. Today it is over 3.5 billion. The earth is the same size; the number has crossed 3.5 billion. And every day we keep increasing it. We are growing so fast that roughly 150,000 people are added daily. Even during the one hour I speak here, humanity will not sit quietly; in that hour thousands more will be added. By the end of this century—if, unfortunately, man does not come to his senses—thirty years from now there will be no room left to move an elbow. There will be no need to call meetings; we will be in meetings twenty-four hours a day.
This cannot actually happen. Something—some “good fortune,” war, epidemic—some “good fortune,” I say—will not let it happen. But if the balance is restored through epidemics and wars, it will be a great blot on human intelligence. Those dinosaurs, those giant lizards bigger than elephants—now gone—had no intelligence, only huge bodies. They could do nothing, they could not think; they died.
We have always thought that man is a thinking being—although man gives little evidence of it. In fact, the more we have tried to understand man in the last fifty years, the weaker that old belief has become. The notion of man as a rational being has grown feeble. Man does not appear to be a truly thoughtful creature, because what he is doing is profoundly thoughtless. And the greatest thoughtlessness we can commit today is to increase our numbers. At this moment, a person who murders is not as bad—not as big a criminal. Who knows—he might even be doing something “good” for humanity’s future! I am not saying kill anyone. I am not asking any murderer to murder. But murder today is not as great a crime as bringing a new child into the world; because with murder one person dies, and if the process of adding new births goes on unchecked, the whole of humanity can die.
This possibility has arisen because of man’s own discoveries.
In Ethiopia people still die of diseases that have vanished elsewhere. The emperor, Haile Selassie, invited a small medical commission from America to investigate how to control disease there. They examined and reported that the water Ethiopians drink is full of infectious germs. Rainwater collects in roadside pits; animals bathe and drink there, and people drink it too. The commission said that if clean water were provided, many Ethiopian diseases would disappear.
The emperor thanked them for their findings and said, “But I will never implement this.” The commission protested, “What are you saying? People are dying!” The emperor replied, “First I save them, and tomorrow I must go about explaining to them not to have children? The trouble will double. On one side I save them from disease; on the other, births increase—and then I will have to write everywhere: ‘Fewer children are better.’ I won’t get into that panchayat. Let the numbers lessen by themselves.”
The emperor’s words sound harsh, but looking at us all, one feels perhaps he was right. We reduced mortality and upset the proportion. A hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, if ten children were born, the likelihood was that nine would die. Today, if ten are born, nine are likely to survive. And the one who still dies does so partly due to our own foolishness; even he need not die. Two hundred years ago, the one who survived among ten did so by God’s grace, not by our wisdom. By our wisdom nine died.
So each person would have twenty or twenty-five children, because out of that number, if two survived, that was enough. The habit is old. We would still like to have twenty or twenty-five children, but now all twenty or twenty-five survive.
Man has checked mortality, checked disease. The findings from bones in graves five thousand years old are astonishing: at that time twenty-five years was a typical maximum age. No bones older than that could be found. Twenty-five years!
Today, in many countries, life expectancy touches seventy, eighty, even eighty-five. In Russia there are thousands who are around one hundred and fifty or beyond. And as our scientific understanding increases, the possibility grows that, if we wish, we can make human life endlessly long.
These possibilities have increased. Science has pushed death back. But our habit of procreation is unscientific; it belongs to days when there was no science. Nature, to avoid missing the mark, experiments in great abundance, in excess. Where one bullet would suffice, nature fires a thousand—because it’s a blind game; if one in a thousand hits, good enough. Man has become a marksman; he can hit with a single shot. But his habit remains old.
It is essential to understand nature’s abundance. One seed you plant becomes thousands, hundreds of thousands. This ensures that at least one among them will become a plant. A healthy male, in an ordinary life, can have about four thousand acts of intercourse—easily. Four thousand. If each act resulted in a child, one man could father four thousand children. But that does not happen because the woman’s capacity is limited; she can bear only one child a year.
Hence, where more children were needed—as in Muslim lands whose men died in wars—Muhammad allowed four marriages. If men are fewer and women more, there is no danger to numbers, because one man can father children with fifty women. But if women are fewer and men many, it makes no difference; a woman’s capacity is limited—one child a year at most.
I said four thousand; if each act made a child, one man could sire four thousand. But in a single act, the semen carries enough sperm to create ten million children. If we take that into account, ten million times four thousand—forty billion—children could be fathered from one man’s life-force. In his normal life he produces so many sperm that the number is many hundreds of times greater than the number of people on earth. There are 3.5 billion people now—350 crores. One man could theoretically be father to 4,000 crores—forty billion—children. In practice he fathers three or four, six or seven, eight. Nature, so as not to miss, makes extreme arrangements.
We have checked mortality; if we maintain nature’s excess meanwhile, man can die under the pressure of his own numbers. And now new possibilities have opened that take us beyond our former limits. Today sperm can be preserved. In the old days a man had to be alive to become a father. Now his presence is unnecessary. You can become a father a thousand years later. Your sperm can be stored.
It is no longer necessary for the father to be present to father. Post-fatherhood is possible. The father may have died a thousand years ago, yet his sperm can be preserved at a certain temperature and used at any time. A woman’s ova can also be preserved; she can become a mother later. Even carrying the child in the womb is no longer an absolute condition for becoming a mother.
All these possibilities have increased our capacity to save life and push death away, but our habits and our ways toward life are pre-scientific. So we keep producing children. And we have no sense of the changed context. We still beat drums and bring out the band when a child is born. That band was for the days when ten children were born and nine died. Naturally, in those days there was reason to celebrate. Ten were born and one survived—so there were sweets, flowers, flags, a warm welcome.
Our habits remain the same. Now each additional child is dangerous, yet we still play the band and hoist flags. We have no idea the whole situation has changed. Each newborn stepping on earth accelerates the death of the whole of humanity, draws it closer at great speed. This unknown, unconscious shadow of death deepening in our minds has already begun to show results. In great cities, in Calcutta, for example, people think Naxalism is a matter of communism. On the surface it looks so. But those who probe deeply discover that to live in peace human beings need a definite space between them; otherwise they cannot remain peaceful. A certain assured spaciousness is needed.
Many experiments have been done on rats, on lions, and the results are astonishing. We have not yet had the courage to experiment on man—otherwise the results would be stark. A lion needs ten square miles to live. If five or ten lions are kept within those ten square miles, the likelihood of their going mad increases.
You will be surprised to know that animals in the wild rarely go mad, and in zoos they commonly do. The only difference between zoo and jungle is that living space is reduced in the zoo. In fact, zoos offer more conveniences than the wild: better scientific diet, constant veterinary care—arrangements the jungle does not have—no doctor, no reliable food, sometimes hunger. But the wild animal does not go mad; the zoo animal does.
When I first studied zoos and learned that wild animals go mad in them, I wondered: have we turned human society into a zoo? For man is going mad at a rate no animal is. And this ratio rises in direct proportion to density of population.
Even today, the tribal person is less mad than we are. And we, even today, are less mad than Bombay. And Bombay is still less mad than New York. In America, half the hospital beds are for psychiatric patients. This proportion is astonishing. Fifty percent of beds for the mentally ill, and every day fifteen lakh—1.5 million—people are inquiring about mental treatment. In fact, the doctor of the body has become outdated there; the doctor of the mind is the cutting-edge physician.
This madness will go on increasing. It will manifest in many forms. In Calcutta or Bombay, when madness erupts and people burn buses and trams, the political leader tells you it is the influence of communism, or this -ism, that -ism—these are newspaper-level analyses, the conclusions of those who have never thought or searched beyond the daily news.
To be a political leader one needs no intelligence; in fact, if you have intelligence, becoming a leader becomes difficult—because to lead you must follow the followers. And where the followers are foolish, it is hard for the leader to be intelligent. He must be a consummate fool. The politician says it is communism, or this or that; this is babble on the surface. The real question is that living space is shrinking.
Sartre wrote a short story. He wrote: I had heard that in hell furnaces burn and sinners are roasted in them. That never frightened me much. In fact, it occurred to me that going to heaven might be rather dull—monotonous. Even our saints are monotonous; if you live with them, you soon get bored. That’s why people hurry through darshan. Perhaps darshan was invented so people wouldn’t have to stay long: salute and goodbye.
Saints become boring; the same note keeps sounding. The sinner is somewhat interesting. The truth is, you cannot write a story about a good man; the good man has no story. Only the bad man’s story can be told. The good man has no real biography; the bad man does.
So Sartre thought: heaven will have no juice; all the bores of the world gathered, sitting on their perfected seats—what will there be to do? Hell will be worth seeing—where all the sinners gather, life will be full of flavor, phenomenal events will happen there that people will discuss for centuries.
But one night he dreamt he went to hell. There were no furnaces, no fires, no melting or burning—only another kind of trouble one had never imagined: a small room with no exit, no door; and three people. There was space only enough for the three to stand. Move a little and you bump into the other. None understood the others’ language. The three had to live together; there was no privacy. Just that little room, those three people, none understanding the others. If you wake, you see those two; if you sleep, they watch you. Whatever you do, those three are there. Within fifteen minutes all three begin to go mad. No one does anything to anyone—but there is no living space. When space is missing, privacy disappears. Privacy needs space.
The greatest suffering of the poor is the absence of privacy—not lack of food or clothing. The poor man’s deepest misery is that he can have no private life. Even when he speaks to his wife, the neighbor hears. He cannot make love to his wife without his sons and daughters knowing. The poor man’s deepest pain is that he cannot be alone. He has nothing like privacy.
The sole luxury of affluence is that you can be alone and create space between yourself and the world, a large space. The more space there is between you and others, the more the mind becomes quiet. The mere presence of another brings tension. You may never have noticed: even if the other does nothing, merely appears, tension begins.
You are walking alone down a road; you are a different person. The road is silent, no one is there; you are a different person. You may be talking to yourself, humming a song, in a playful mood. A song you never dared hum in front of your son. But let two people appear on the road and you change immediately. The mere presence of two others makes you tense at once.
Rightly understood, “the other is the tension.” The other is the tension. And the presence of the other is increasing. On all sides someone is there. Everywhere, someone. Wherever you go, someone. There is no way to be alone. From this a deep tension is settling on the mind. This tension is the most dangerous outcome of rising numbers.
Politicians don’t see it, because it is not their question. Their question is whether there is enough food, enough clothing. If not, what then? My question is: if numbers keep growing, man will lose his soul—because the soul flowers in aloneness. It blooms in solitude.
But solitude is missing. Go to the mountains—there are cars before you and behind you. Go to the beach—cars ahead of you, cars behind. America’s beaches have become spectacles. People race thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred miles on holidays—to find solitude. But the cars are bumper to bumper. They run to be alone, but many are running to that same solitude. When you reach the beach there are hundreds of thousands standing there.
It is becoming difficult to be outside the crowd. Mahavira and Buddha came at the right time; if they came now, they would know! Those who must awaken now know what difficulty it is. There is no living space; you cannot stand alone. To be alone has become almost impossible. And one who cannot be alone cannot truly live. He keeps moving on the surface. Someone is always there, someone watching from somewhere.
This tension, this inner pressure, will explode. It will take new forms of destruction. The desire arises to eliminate the other. That desire will assume many forms—and it will seek rationalizations. The poor will say: eliminate the rich; because of the rich we cannot be at peace. The communist will say: eliminate the anti-communist; without removing him we cannot live. The Hindu will say: eliminate the Muslim. The Muslim will say: eliminate the Hindu.
Deep down we want to eliminate the other, to make room. The Gujarati says: remove the Maharashtrian. The Maharashtrian: remove the Gujarati. The Bengali: the Marwari must not be allowed in Calcutta. These are not quarrels of Marwari and Bengali, of Gujarati and Maharashtrian, of Hindu and Muslim—these are shapes we give to the quarrel. Deep down the quarrel is: we need space, we must push the other out. The African says: non-Africans out. The American: no more non-Americans in. The Australian: close the door—no one in. The Chinese: how will you close the door? We are so many we will break all doors and enter.
It is not China’s “fault” that it presses on India; it is the sheer pressure of numbers. Like a bag overstuffed until it bursts and things spill out on all sides—that is China’s condition. Seventy, seventy-five, eighty crores—beyond its capacity. The bag has become small, the people too many; they spill over, helplessly.
The whole world’s present suffering is this: man needs space between man and man. If space ends, it will be terrible. Rats have been studied extensively; the findings are astonishing. A rat needs space to live—not only to reside, but a specific distance between itself and other rats. Meet sometimes, separate, or it becomes difficult. By reducing the living space of rats, many experiments have been done. They found how many rats in a room make them go mad, and how many fewer make them healthy again.
What you like in the jungle is less the jungle itself and more the absence of people. On the mountain, what you like is less the mountain and more that the other is not there with eyes fixed on you, seeing through your clothes, eyes upon you from all sides. There you feel light; you can lie down; you can do what you want. That is becoming impossible.
Before mankind dies, its mind will go completely mad—if numbers keep rising and no remedy works. And the remedies we are attempting give little hope. They are very weak—like trying to empty the ocean with a glass. The problem is vast, and whatever governments are doing is very small. Nothing will be solved that way; it is too difficult. Before we can prevent five or ten lakh births, a crore have already been born. The question is of such magnitude.
Before the world ends from crowding, the crowd will go mad. It has begun. Today it is hard to certify anyone as truly mentally healthy. At most we can say: this person has not yet gone mad—we cannot say he is fine. The difference between the mad and the rest is of degree, not of kind. One is boiling at ninety-nine degrees, another at ninety-eight, another at ninety-five; one reaches a hundred and spills over into the asylum. You, at ninety-nine, say, “Poor fellow!”—not knowing that ninety-nine can become a hundred any moment.
William James visited a madhouse once and never went again. What occurred to that intelligent man was: all these people have gone mad. One of them was his acquaintance, perfectly fine the day before. He went home, took to bed, and told his wife he was very frightened. She asked, “What happened to you?”
He said, “The man who was fine yesterday is insane today; I am fine today—who knows about tomorrow? I cannot persuade myself that he, the poor fellow, is mad—yesterday he too persuaded himself some other poor fellow was mad. No, I am frightened, for I see in myself all that which, if it explodes, will make me mad.”
It is in all of us. Go into a room, lock the door, sit alone, and write for ten minutes—honestly—whatever runs in your mind. Tell no one; otherwise you will not dare to be honest. The moment the other appears, you become dishonest. Even if that other is your wife or your son. To be honest in front of another is a fierce test. It is very hard to be honest even with oneself. Lock the door and write for ten minutes without editing. After ten minutes you will be unable to show that paper to anyone. If you do, anyone will ask, “Which lunatic wrote this? From whose mind did this spill?” You yourself will be amazed: “All this is moving inside me!”
Tension surrounds us. It has many consequences. First, there is conflict everywhere—strife, clash. In the name of class, religion, sect, caste, language. Deep down, there is mental conflict in us. It spreads and will grow. Numbers will grow and with them this conflict. Man needs space to live, and his space has been snatched. We have blocked death and are unwilling to block birth.
This strife will flare daily into wars. It is no accident that we made hydrogen and atom bombs. In this world, nothing is accidental; deep laws operate in what happens.
For example: it is a marvelous fact that the number of men and women in the world remains nearly equal. Who arranges this? The world is vast—why doesn’t it happen that one day men are far more, or women far more? One hundred and sixteen boys are born for every hundred girls. Those 116 boys are born as a careful adjustment because, before sexual maturity, sixteen boys will die and the numbers will balance.
In fact the boy is weaker than the girl. A woman’s resistance is greater. Women can endure more illness, more hardship, more trouble without breaking. Men have less capacity to resist. So nature produces 116 boys to 100 girls; girls survive, sixteen boys are lost before fourteen or fifteen, and numbers equalize.
It is astonishing: inner laws operate in life. Man has attacked those inner laws from many directions and upset the inner balance. We have attacked death—no plague, no epidemic, no malaria, no mosquitoes; we have arranged everything there. We have attacked the side of dying. But the flow on the side of birth continues as if malaria, plague, black fever still existed. Nature works by its own discipline. That discipline is functioning within. We changed one end of the balance. Therefore I am strongly in favor of birth regulation. We must alter the other end too. If we have touched death, we must touch birth. Birth can no longer be left in nature’s blind hands. But even here I want to say a few things.
For me this is less a question of food and clothing, and more a question of man’s inner growth. For me the question is: if we are to save humanity from madness, we must regulate birth; family planning must be accelerated. And not as we are doing it now, because that too can have dangerous consequences.
Before I speak to that, let me also say: as I said, nature has an inner arrangement, though blind. When we create such a situation, forces of inner balance begin to operate to erase it. We pushed death away on one side and, on the other, we are inviting mass death. The third world war stands before us. If numbers keep rising, it cannot be prevented. If the third world war is to be averted, the world’s population must be brought sharply down. Otherwise there will be a third war—and not like the earlier ones. The third world war will be the last.
Before he died, someone asked Einstein about the third world war. Einstein said, “Nothing can be said about the third. But if you ask about the fourth, I can tell you.”
The man asked, “You can’t say about the third, but about the fourth?”
Einstein replied, “One thing is certain about the fourth—it will never happen. Because after the third, there will be no one left to fight it.”
With the third, the possibility of total annihilation increases every day. Meanwhile man is going mad, tension is rising; he is searching for new theories to kill and be killed—sometimes fascism, sometimes communism, some -ism or other—how to hack the other to pieces. Under the cover of good theories, killing becomes easier. That is why the most extraordinary lunatics in the world have always been ideologists. Ordinary lunatics are locked in asylums. Extraordinary lunatics become Stalins, Hitlers, Maos—they sit on your chest from above, seize a doctrine; from behind the screen of doctrine they play the game of madness and it becomes hard to tally what they are doing.
Hitler alone murdered some sixty lakh Jews. Stalin alone murdered an estimated crore in Russia. Yet no one calls Stalin a murderer. Such is the charm of theory—such is its magic! Kill a crore under the banner of a theory and you are not a murderer; kill one man and you are. He kills “for their own good,” he says. With a solid theory, everything is justified.
The third world war will become inevitable if population does not stop within ten years. To cross beyond 1980 will be very difficult. The third war will become unavoidable; it will be the only remaining mechanism of inner balance. But that balance will be terribly costly. It may erase everything. And let me give you another indication: in my view, the feverish urge to go to the moon has no real reason—today. But if we look deep into man’s unconscious, inner balance comes to mind again. Within fifty years the earth may become uninhabitable. We will have to arrange for man to survive on another planet.
You have heard the old Christian story of Noah. A great deluge came and all died. God told Noah: preserve this ark and save a pair of every species—take them to where the flood is not, so that creation can begin again.
Whether Noah’s story is true or not is hard to say. It is hard to call it false, because versions of the flood are found in cultures across the world—when the world was not connected and people did not know one another. There are stories of a great flood in which all drowned and only specimens were saved: one man, one woman; a donkey and a she-donkey; a monkey and a she-monkey—specimens preserved to start again.
The possibility grows that if a third world war occurs, there will be no way to survive on earth; some people will have to be taken off the earth. But none of this is necessary; it can be prevented. The place to prevent it is where we produce children.
We are trying to stop it voluntarily. We are asking people to agree—to accept by their own will.
No. This is not a matter for voluntary choice; only if it is compulsory can it work. Mandatory. Not optional. Not “We request you to limit yourselves to two or three children…” Even that “or” is dangerous. No “or” at all. Two children means two children. The third means no. And if this “no” is left to your choice, nothing will be solved; man’s awareness is too low to grasp how great the danger is. It cannot be left to him. It must be made compulsory—given the urgency of a national emergency. There is no greater emergency. And this voluntary approach we have taken has deep harms.
The strange irony is: when we appeal to people, the intelligent class listens and the unintelligent does not. So the intelligent reduce their births and the unintelligent multiply. The balance of merit and intelligence will suffer horribly.
Generally the intelligent are not the ones responsible for increasing numbers. Those who are educated, thoughtful, with some intelligence—even if they do not care about the world—still want a radio at home, a radiogram, a TV, or a car; for these they must limit children. So even self-concerned thinking people do not increase births.
France is the one country where population is falling. I consider it a sign of great intelligence. It is the only country where the population is declining; the government posts placards: “Please increase the population a little,” fearing that if others grow while France shrinks, space will open and people will flood in from all sides, and France will be unable to stop them.
In intelligent countries population has stabilized—Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Belgium. Europe is near stabilization. Asia is going mad. Therefore the West faces the greatest danger. If they send you birth-control devices free, do not think it is pure philanthropy.
For the West, the greatest danger is that Asia will drown it like insects. The West has achieved prosperity, affluence, civilization. When mankind’s ancient dreams are close to fulfillment, Asia is producing so many children that they will press the whole world down.
These national barriers will not hold long, nor visas and passports. Once numbers spill beyond borders, no rules will work. People will enter other nations and wherever there is space they will dominate—because a dying man does what he must. If death is certain, no police or barrier can stop him.
Asia has become the greatest danger for the whole world. Hence the whole world is concerned and sends aid: “Take birth-control aids, take pills, we are ready to serve you—but please do not have children. You are a danger for yourselves and for the convenience of the whole world.”
But if we leave it to will, we will suffer. The intelligent generally have fewer children; if only the intelligent were reproducing, each generation would be smaller. The non-intelligent reproduce strongly. We must understand why. Why do the non-intelligent have so many children? Why does a laborer or a peasant produce so many?
Two reasons. First, the intelligent discovers pleasures other than sex that the non-intelligent does not find. Music, literature, religion, meditation—other doors of joy open. The non-intelligent has only one pleasure: sex. He has no other. He cannot spend a night lost in a novel, forgetting his wife; he cannot enter meditation for a day; the flute has no taste for him. His mind has not moved where man finds joys above sex.
As men discover joys above sex, their sexual hunger steadily decreases. If scientists remain unmarried, it is not because they practice celibacy; if saints remain unmarried, not because of celibacy—rather because new doors of joy have opened. They fly so high in greater joys that the sexual joy becomes meaningless.
The poor, the illiterate, the rural, the laborer—have no other entertainment. Hence, the fewer the entertainments in a country, the faster the population will grow. They have only one entertainment—the one nature gave. Man-made entertainments are absent. But he will not listen; he is not in a condition to listen. He will keep producing children. The intelligent will listen and fall quiet—stop producing. Thus the countries with less talent will have even less; beauty will diminish, health will diminish, talent will diminish.
Therefore I am strongly against voluntary birth control. I am strongly for birth control—strongly for population regulation—but strongly against making it voluntary. Regulation must be mandatory; only then is it meaningful. Then the country’s talent can be fostered. And for that, we must use certain measures—I will suggest two or three.
First, in my view, population control has many implications, many interconnections. The poor are eager to produce more because more children do not bring him trouble—they bring him convenience. The rich are not eager because more children bring inconvenience. If I have a lakh of rupees and I produce ten children, each will have ten thousand; I will no longer be a lakhpati. But if I have nothing and produce ten children, each will at least bring eight annas in the evening.
Until we create such an arrangement for the vast lower classes that having more children becomes inconvenient for them, they will not listen. But our situation is strange. Our country is full of contradictions. On one side we explain to everyone: produce fewer children. On the other side we levy less tax on those with more children, and more tax on those with fewer. We say, “Have fewer children,” and we tax the unmarried more and the married less.
If a mad world exists anywhere, it is here. If we want fewer children, we must tax the married more and give facilities to the unmarried so they remain unmarried longer. More children must mean more tax. It sounds upside down because we think: poor fellow has more children, let us help. No. More children must mean more tax. If every new child brings more tax into a home, fear of having children will begin. But if every child reduces tax, then bringing children is good.
At present those with more children enjoy advantages; they form partnerships and reduce tax. On one hand we want fewer children; on the other, we act by rules fifty years old—when more was no danger.
So regulation must be compulsory. And we must consider every aspect of life: where and how to act to reduce births.
Second: from that old world which is now impossible, we carry many moralities and doctrines that will hinder the world to come; we must break them. They cannot be harmonized with the future.
For example, Gandhi was against birth control, and of all the mistakes he made, this was the greatest. He opposed it, saying birth control would increase immorality. He was not concerned that without birth control humanity would die; he was concerned that with birth control immorality might increase—some unmarried girl might relate with a boy and it would not be noticed.
Why does anyone need to notice? This peeping Tom tendency is dangerous. Why this need to know? The very desire to know is immoral. If a man snoops to find what relationship the neighbor’s daughter has with whom, that man is immoral—because he is trying to create tension in another’s life. What purpose does it serve?
But the old moralist was always curious about what others were doing, prowling around every house. The old mahatma tries to find out everything about everyone. Let humanity die—he does not care. His concern is that no immorality occur. Yet immorality did not stop because of mahatmas’ concern. In Gandhi’s ashram what happens elsewhere happened there and will happen—right under Gandhi’s eyes; nothing will change. Because what we call immorality, if it is against nature, then nature will survive and “immorality” will not.
And what is immorality? Have we ever thought that when a woman bears ten children, her whole life is destroyed? We did not call that immoral. We said a woman’s job is to be a mother. By “mother” we meant a factory of motherhood. A factory life: every year a product, then preparations for the next. What we do with hens we have done with women. But that we did not call immoral. If a man fathers twenty children through his wife, no scripture or saint calls him immoral.
Such a man is immoral. He has murdered a woman; nothing remains of her personality—only a factory. Yet this is not immoral! We have made “immorality” out of God knows what—and Gandhi and Vinoba say: practice celibacy!
For five thousand years this lesson has been given. They still go on. They say: no birth control; practice brahmacharya. Even if a few practice, it will make no difference. The question is too big to be solved by celibacy. Five thousand years of teaching—how many celibates have you produced? Gandhi labored forty or fifty years—how many celibates did he produce? The truth is, he never fully trusted his own celibacy—not until the end. He said: “While awake I am in control; but in sleep it returns.”
It will return. The one who controls in waking will be haunted in sleep. No fault there—except the fault of repression. Hold it all day and at night the grip loosens; what was not allowed by day will seek expression in sleep. Better to allow it by day than ruin sleep.
They hope celibacy will stop numbers. It will not. Saints also teach: you are not entitled; God sends children; you have no right to stop them. The same saints run hospitals! If God sends disease, why stop it? If God sends death, why run to the hospital?
Today I passed an Ayurvedic hospital—some swami’s name was on it: “So-and-so Swami Ayurvedic Hospital.” Why does a swami open a hospital? To teach people to die in Ayurvedic fashion?
There are styles of dying too. Some fancy allopathy, some Ayurveda, some homeopathy! Is that why the hospital was opened?
Surely it was opened to save. If God sends children, who sends death? Why fight death scientifically while blessing births religiously?
Those who talk this way are criminals. If restraining birth is an offense against God, then close all hospitals; do not restrain death. Then balance will restore itself. Then there will be no trouble.
But it is astonishing—our country lives in contradictions.
No. What we have done with death we must do with birth; and if we won’t do it with birth, then do it with neither. Let mosquitoes breed, let malaria spread, let plague return... then everything will balance and no birth control will be needed. It is needed because nature had its own arrangements; man blocked one corner. Now when we try to block the other corner, saints say God obstructs us.
God does not obstruct at all—but in God’s name mahatmas have always obstructed life’s necessities. Their force is strong—naturally so among the blind; and when that blind force supports the blind man’s own tendencies, he feels gratified: “Exactly right—who are we to stop children?”
A small story comes to mind; let me share it and finish.
There is a Bengali novel. A family sets out for Badrinath-Kedarnath. A Bengali housewife, her family; a sannyasin joins them on the way. The Bengali housewife is devout; when she cooks, she serves the sannyasin first, then the husband. Naturally—he is a guest, and a holy man. Whatever is good she first gives to the sannyasin. The sannyasin eats so much that little remains for the rest. The husband is very upset.
In truth, if a sannyasin stands between husband and wife, the husband is always troubled. He cannot even comprehend what is happening, and out of fear of his wife he cannot speak. All temples are run via wives; all sadhus are fed via wives. If the wife goes, everything thrives.
The sannyasin devours everything. A traveler arrives from behind with sweets—Bengali sandesh. The husband is frightened—he loves sandesh. “Nothing will be left; the sannyasin will polish it off,” he thinks. Next day, trembling, he sees it happen: the sandesh are set out; the sannyasin cleans the plate. He says, “Leave the chapatis today.” He eats all the sweets. The husband is so troubled that not a single sandesh remains. He says to the sannyasin, “If you won’t consider us, at least consider yourself.” The sannyasin replies, “You are a nonbeliever. He who gave the belly will provide for it; we do not come between God and his duty.”
The sandesh the sannyasin will provide; he will not come between God and the belly—he will leave it all to God. Man’s dishonesty is ancient. In the matter of population it will be very costly. Understand clearly: we will have to stop births if we want to save humanity. Otherwise, with your multiplying children, the end of humanity may come.
I have said only a little. The question is vast, with many facets. Think on it. There is no need to accept my words. I am neither a guru nor a mahatma, nor have I brought any certificate from God that what I say is true. I speak as an ordinary man speaks. A layman who can only place a request, not an insistence. I cannot say, “This is the truth.” I can only say, “This is how it appears to me.”
Consider these things. If some point seems right to you, it becomes yours. Then it is no longer mine; I am not responsible for it. It is yours, and you are responsible. If something seems wrong, do not keep it even for a moment—throw it away. We have been too attached; wrong ideas have piled up on our heads—throw that junk away at once. If what I say seems wrong, do not keep it inside for even a minute. But think before you throw. If, by thinking, something appears right, it becomes yours.
I am grateful for the peace and love with which you have listened. In the end, I bow to the God seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.