Phir Amrit Ki Boond Padi #1

It is not as big a problem as it appears. Population does not increase by itself; we increase it—and poverty is its natural consequence.

The first thing that must enter India’s consciousness is this: population does not grow on its own, we grow it. Poverty does not grow; it is our creation. For centuries we have learned to live under false ideas. We have been told that children are a gift of God. We have been told that children are written into each one’s fate. And for centuries religious leaders have been teaching that preventing children from being born is opposition to God. All of this amounts to saying that God has only one job—to make people as poor as possible. That is the opposite of the very word Ishwar. The original root of Ishwar is aishvarya—affluence, sovereignty. The word Ishwar comes from aishvarya. To claim that affluence produces poverty, that Ishwar produces poverty—these are tales fabricated by pundits, priests, religious leaders, politicians, all those who live off the exploitation of the poor.

Until we remove from the Indian mind this veil—that the Divine has anything to do with your poverty… And what kind of God would want to make you poor! Yet religious leaders—like Jesus, who keeps shouting, “Blessed are the poor”—give the poor a little consolation for a while, just as a man drowning in worries gets brief relief by taking opium; but poverty does not vanish, nor do anxieties. And if poverty is blessedness, then it ought to be embraced—where does the question of eradicating it arise? Those who are not poor should also be made poor; why should they be deprived of such beatitude?

Mahatma Gandhi calls the poor “Daridra Narayan,” says they are forms of God, God’s own children. Such words give the poor brief relief, but they solve nothing of their real problems. And those who hand out such relief become obstacles to real solutions.

I would like to strip the poor of all their consolations, their comforts, their delusions and deceits—and tell them plainly: if you are poor, you are responsible. If population increases, you are increasing it. And if it is your wish to remain poor and drag the country further and further into poverty… by the end of this century India’s population will be one billion. Half of India will be dying of hunger. If it is your wish that before your very eyes half of India should cry out in hunger on the streets and die, then fine—cling to your old ideas. But we will never agree that this could be God’s will. And if it is God’s will, then such a God must be denied.

Before we persuade the people of India to use contraceptive means, their mental, philosophical, and religious assumptions must be changed. Then there will be no difficulty in their voluntarily accepting family planning.

I was speaking with a Christian priest. He said that any means adopted for contraception is opposition to God. I said, let me ask you a small question: your definition of God is that he is omnipotent. A tiny pill defeats your omnipotent God. God wants to produce a child, and the pill prevents God from producing it. It would be better for you to stop worshiping God and begin worshiping the pill. It is more powerful.

It is foolish to say God is omnipotent and then warn us not to oppose his will. On the one hand we are told that not even a leaf moves without his will; on the other hand we are told not to oppose his will. These two assertions contradict each other. If not a leaf moves without his will, then no matter what measures we take, if he wants to give a child, he will give it; our measures will be of no use. And if our measures do work, it means God was not giving the child. We were producing the child and dumping the responsibility on God. And as long as we shift responsibility onto others, we can bring no revolution into life. We will have to take responsibility ourselves.

The Indian mind can be educated—and that is not difficult. Indians may be illiterate, but they are not unintelligent. They may be far from the modern world, yet they have the capacity to explain and understand the subtlest ideas about Brahman and Ishwar, heaven and hell, and moksha; I do not believe they cannot understand these smaller matters. I am a complete optimist. All that is needed is this: we make it a social necessity. We have colleges, universities, schools—their teachers, professors, students. Let it be required that unless a student spends two months in the villages explaining family regulation to people, he will not be eligible to receive his certificate. And unless every teacher goes to the villages for two months in the summer to explain these things to people, he will not be eligible for promotion. There are so many teachers and students in India—and many others who are neither teachers nor students but who wish to help or serve the country. They should be requested to go from village to village and explain that this is not opposition to God. This is one aspect.

The second aspect is that the government of India should definitely declare as criminals those who are misleading the public. Christian missionaries, Mother Teresa. The Pope is about to arrive. Before his arrival India should decide that those who preach that any use of contraception is a great sin, a grave evil—this is their politics, not religion. Because the more orphaned children Mother Teresa gets, the more the number of Catholics increases. And we are so foolish that we go on giving awards to women like Mother Teresa, without seeing that behind the name of service to the poor and the service of orphans there is nothing but the spread of Christianity.

Throughout India I have not seen a single person who is cultured and well-to-do who has become a Christian. Those who have become Christians are beggars, orphans, tribals. And they have not become Christians because they understood Christianity to be a religion superior to theirs, but because Christianity gives them bread, clothes, hospitals, schools.

Anyone in India who teaches opposition to family regulation should be punished.

At this time the greatest crime is precisely that. For killing one person we give the severest punishment—we take the murderer’s life—and those who today are preaching “let the population grow” will be responsible for the killing of millions, yet we have no law to address their crime. On the contrary, we decorate them with new titles, doctorates, and Nobel Prizes. This double game must stop. Every Christian missionary should clearly understand that if they wish to live in this country, such foolish talk will not do. Otherwise, leave this country at once. Go and preach in your own lands.

It is a great joke that the population of France is stable—and they are all Christians! It is a joke that missionaries come to India from Switzerland and France, telling people here to let the population grow because it is God’s gift. And joining their chorus are the Shankaracharyas and the Muslim imams, because they all share the delusion that the birth of a child has some necessary connection with God. There is no necessary connection with God. Once we break this illusion in the Indian mind—that God has anything to do with procreation—there will be no obstacle to people’s voluntarily adopting contraception.

Alongside this I want to say that so far we have thought only from one shore—birth. We have not thought from the other shore—death. This is incomplete thinking; I want to complete it. Promote contraception. Explain to people that today there is no greater crime than bringing children into the world. And this crime you are committing against your own children: your children will starve, your children will writhe on the streets. Your children will suffer hell on this very earth—and you will be responsible. You could have prevented all this. This is one part.

The second part is that after the age of seventy-five, if any person wishes voluntarily to embrace death, we should legally accept it. Every hospital should have a designated, temple-like place. Anyone who has crossed seventy-five and feels he has lived fully—has known what there was to know, attained what there was to attain—and now is only a burden, and wants to make room for some new child, and is not committing suicide out of anger, defeat, or despair, but out of reflection and understanding—such a person should be given in the hospital every facility he was never given in life. He should be given the finest opportunity: to hear the most beautiful music, to meet his friends and loved ones; and we should administer medication so that, sinking gently into the depths of sleep, he passes into death. Along with this, a process like meditation can be added so that his dying is not only death but becomes samadhi.

So on one side we stop children from coming, and on the other side those who are now dragging themselves along by force—because by law to live is an obligation—must be granted the birthright to let go of life. If we begin cutting from both ends, it is possible that by the end of this century our numbers will be balanced. And once numbers are balanced, there will be no difficulty in eradicating poverty.

First, how many women in India have attained fulfillment? Every woman is not just a mother of one child, but of a dozen or even a dozen and a half—where is fulfillment? These children have consumed her entire life. There is no sign of fulfillment.

Second, that a woman attains motherhood only by becoming a mother is also not true. Almost all women give birth, they become mothers—but do we see the dignity, the radiance, the splendor of motherhood? Therefore my definition is different. In my view, becoming a mother is not necessary to attain motherhood.

Even animals make their females into mothers. Throughout nature, wherever there is a female, there is a mother. But where is motherhood? So do not take “motherhood” and “mother” as synonymous. It may be that someone is not a mother and yet is available to motherhood—and someone is a mother and yet is not available to motherhood.

Motherhood is something else entirely: it is the dignity of love.

I would like women to be available to motherhood, but for that attainment giving birth is absolutely unnecessary. Yes, to attain that motherhood it is certainly essential to see every child as your own child. For that motherhood, dropping jealousy, envy, spite—this is necessary. Not collecting dozens of children!

And then, in our country where so many children are without mothers, any woman who still wants to bear her own child will never be available to motherhood. Where so many orphaned children are crying, searching for a mother, and you are concerned only that the child should come from your own body—by clinging to such a petty idea one cannot attain so great an idea as motherhood.

Where there are so many crying orphans, there is no need to produce more children. Take these orphaned children as your own. In adopting them, in making them yours, the distance between “mine” and “others” will fall. In making them yours, those petty feelings of jealousy, envy, and ill will will drop. And in raising them, in watching them sprout and blossom, the joy that becomes available cannot be had by watching your own children turn into thieves, become dishonest, beg, and rot in prisons.

Motherhood has no connection with biology. Therefore, apart from human beings, no animal can be available to motherhood. Any female can become a mother, but the possibility of motherhood is available only to a woman. And that attainment is spread all around.

So first, motherhood has no relation to physical, biological procreation; it is of a spiritual love, a quality of the heart. The moment you take another as your very own, as if you yourself had given birth—what difference is there? Who gave birth makes no difference whatsoever.

So there is great possibility for motherhood. If these orphan children could find mothers, there would be no need for people like Mother Teresa, who are exploiting these orphans. These orphan children are being adopted by Catholic families, while the women of India feel they experience motherhood only by producing their own children.

Second, it is true that a woman’s fulfillment is in her becoming a mother. That is why, when I began giving sannyas, the traditional name for a male renunciate was “Swami.” There was no name for a woman—because in India, for thousands of years, woman has been suppressed and erased so badly that she was never given the chance to be initiated into sannyas. There wasn’t even a name. After much search I accepted “Ma” as that name, because in “Ma” lies her fulfillment. But this fulfillment as mother is proof that your love has risen so high that the whole world becomes, for you, as if they are your children—even your husband. This is the blessing of the rishis of the Upanishads. Whenever a couple came to a rishi for a blessing, there was a very unique blessing, found in no other scripture in the world. The rishi would bless: “O young woman, may you be the mother of ten children, and in the end may your husband be your eleventh son.” Until this happens, know that the journey of life is not complete. And the day a woman can regard her husband also as her son—know him so, live with him so—then for her, who remains in the whole world except sons?

Certainly, the completeness of motherhood is a woman’s ultimate glory! But not by lining up children—rather, by raising your love so high that from there every person appears as your own child. These understandings must reach people, because under wrong assumptions they go on producing children. And they do not even look back to see that there is no evidence for their assumptions. There are millions of women, lines of children—where is motherhood? There are millions of women—where is fulfillment?

People ask me, “Why do you call your women sannyasins ‘Ma’?” It is very surprising, because they have neither children nor marriage. You even give sannyas to a small girl and still you call her “Ma”! I can understand their astonishment. In my vision, even a little girl carries the seed—ultimately, of becoming the mother of the whole world. To address her as “Ma” is to call to that seed, to summon her potential, to challenge it. And the day a mother’s love becomes equal for all and spiritual for all—in which there is not the slightest odor of the body, not even the faintest scent of sex—that day a woman attains fulfillment.

Certainly, a child’s life does not begin after birth; it begins at the very moment of conception. In the mother’s womb not only the body is formed; the mind is formed, the heart is formed. If the mother is unhappy, disturbed, anxious, those wounds will be imprinted on the child—and they will be so deep that even a whole lifetime may not wash them away. If the mother is angry, quarrelsome, making a mountain out of every molehill, all this will have consequences for the child. The father’s influence on the child is very little—almost negligible. Ninety-nine percent of the child is shaped by the mother; therefore her responsibility is greater. The father is a social institution.

There was a time when the father did not exist, and there will be a time again when the father will not exist. But the mother was there before, and the mother will be there later. The mother is natural; the father is social. The father is an institution. His function is very simple—something that could be done by an injection. And in the future it will be done by injection, because it can be done better that way.

In one act of intercourse a man releases about ten million sperm toward the woman’s womb. One of them reaches the egg in this race. The one who reaches first enters; the egg closes. The remaining ten million die within two hours; their lifespan is two hours. It is a fierce race, a long race. If we look proportionally—if we take a man’s height as six feet—the sperm are so small that the path to the mother’s womb becomes two miles long. Along this two‑mile path there is ferocious competition. I call this the beginning of politics. Those who reach are not necessarily the best. It may be that among the ten million left behind there was an Albert Einstein, a Rabindranath Tagore, a Gautam Buddha. No one knows who was left behind. And the one who is born is accidental. Perhaps he arrived because he happened to be ahead; perhaps he was stronger. But being stronger does not make one a Rabindranath. Rabindranath himself was his parents’ thirteenth child. It is a matter of chance that in this long race Rabindranath could arrive. Often it happens that people like Rabindranath, or Gautam Buddha, or Albert Einstein are neither eager to run nor eager to compete. Perhaps we are needlessly losing the finest part of humanity—though it could easily be chosen. This is a task for science. If out of ten million sperm we can select the finest, why give place to number two and number three?

Therefore the father’s role is nearing its end. But the mother’s role is indispensable. At the moment of conception…

And this has, in fact, been my whole teaching, which has been presented after distorting it in every possible way. My whole teaching has been that sex is the beginning of human life; it is the very foundation of human life. Instead of repressing sex, we should inquire how to make it beautiful, noble, and move it toward the divine—how its transformation can take place. Repression produces only sick, neurotic people. And meditation is the process for the transformation of sexual energy.

If, in moments of lovemaking, both woman and man are calm, silent, so absorbed in each other that it is as if no wall exists—time seems to stop, the world is forgotten; there is no thought, no concept, only joy, a luminosity in which both are immersed—if a child is conceived out of such a luminous moment, then from the very first step we have taught him the greatest lesson. We have taught him how to move from darkness to light. We have given him the first taste of meditation—how everything can be suffused with silence, peace, and bliss.

And if, for the full nine months, the mother carries the child in meditation—does nothing contrary to meditation, and does everything that supports meditation—then certainly, in these nine months, a Buddha can be born. These nine months are the formative moments of the child. And in these nine months let him have only the experience of love, of peace, of light. If in these nine months he has only one experience—the experience of his own inner power—then at birth he will not be an ordinary child; he will be extraordinary. We will have laid the foundation of his life, and the temple that rises on that foundation cannot be different from it.

Therefore whenever parents come to me with complaints about their children, I have told them: you may feel hurt, but you are responsible. You must have laid the wrong foundation. Today your child is a bandit; today your child has committed murder—then tell me, during the nine months when the child was in the womb, what did you do to give him a foundation in which murder is impossible, in which banditry is impossible? Perhaps you never even thought of it.

Certainly, meditation is useful in every experience of life. And birth is the greatest event of life. And in moments of love, meditation is the simplest, most effortless thing. Because in moments of love, thoughts naturally fall away, absorption descends, a stillness surrounds you, and there is a sense that we are not separate from existence—that we are one. This idea was born only in India.

If India has given the world anything that it can call uniquely its own, it is Tantra. And the entire basis of Tantra is how to unite sex‑energy and meditation‑energy. I have been repeating this my whole life. But people are strange: they have eyes and yet no eyes, ears and yet no ears. And in between are the middlemen who explain things to them. Every single word of mine has been misinterpreted—even while I am present and can be asked. But no one cared to know the truth. People care only that their beliefs not be hurt. Even if their beliefs lead them into poverty, into crime, even if their beliefs degrade them from human to animal—that is all right; only do not touch their beliefs. Their beliefs are very touch‑me‑not. And my only crime throughout life has been to free them, in any way possible, from every belief that drags them down.

It would be most important that every couple take a vow: until they become capable in meditation, they will not bring a child into the world. For what is the point of producing a Genghis Khan, a Nadir Shah, an Adolf Hitler, a Mussolini? If you are to bring someone forth, bring someone worthy—some Buddha, some Mahavira, some Nagarjuna—someone who will refine your genius and carry it forward. But for that, first the parents must be prepared. And until one becomes mature in meditation, one has no right to procreate.

And my own experience, from working with thousands of people, is this: if both man and woman have learned to be rapt in meditation, then at the moment of intercourse, among those millions of sperm, only that sperm will be able to reach the mother’s egg which is resonating in harmony with their meditation. Their meditation—their combined energy—will empower it. It will leave all the others behind; their meditation will become its speed.

To conceive children without meditation is to squander life‑energy in vain.

Man’s greatest foolishness is his constant urge to shift the blame for his actions onto someone else. Take this saying that when the number of people becomes too large... it sounds as if the numbers increase by themselves, as if we have no hand in it— as if we are standing aside, watching the numbers rise. Then we say nature takes revenge. Even there we put the revenge on nature. The truth is: we increase the numbers. And that very increase becomes the revenge.

Neither God increases the numbers, nor nature increases them, and nature takes no revenge. We are responsible.

Our sayings are very clever—except that there is nothing in them but stupidity. They allow us to keep ourselves at a distance. There are many such sayings. “When sins increase, God takes birth.” As if sins increase on their own. And even then nothing is done by us; even then God has to take birth.

And how many times has God already taken birth? Yet sins do not decrease. It seems even God has no power to reduce them. No power in the world can reduce them, because the one who increases them is present—and the one who does it is us.

The greatest religious act, in my understanding, is that a person accepts his responsibility totally. Acknowledges that whatever we are doing, we are doing; and whatever results come, we are bringing them. This should pierce each heart like an arrow. Then change is certainly possible. Because if we are the ones doing it, we can stop it. If we are the ones bringing wrong results, harmful consequences, why not cut the matter at the seed itself?

But these sayings prop us up so we can sit and keep watching. The population will go on increasing; no need to panic. “Nature will take revenge by itself.” What revenge will nature take? Nature is being crushed under our weight. Everything has a limit. In Buddha’s time the total population of India was around twenty million. The country was prosperous, contented, joyful, and spoke of the highest heights of life—striving to soar ever higher. The whole world knew one thing: India was a golden bird.

Our decline begins after Buddha. And I cannot forgive Buddha and Mahavira. I respect them, I honor them, but I cannot forgive them. Even if unintentionally, they helped India’s poverty to grow—because both taught that religion lies in renouncing the world. And if people start renouncing the world—if the farmer leaves his fields, the shopkeeper his shop, the sculptor his statues—naturally the world will become poor. Because the world is made by us; the world depends on our creativity.

Both taught: drop everything and become sannyasins. Millions dropped everything and became renunciates. The production and creativity of those millions ceased. Their wives and children became orphaned and hungry. And those millions became a burden on the rest of the populace—because who will give alms? Who will provide clothing? Behind a very lofty-sounding idea lies India’s entire slavery, poverty, and wretchedness. Renouncing the world became a virtue; sannyas became the ideal.

That is why, when I began giving sannyas, I changed its definition entirely. Not the renunciation of the world, but living in the midst of the world as if you are not there. My definition of sannyas is the exact opposite of the old one. Do not abandon anything, and do not grasp anything. Live as one acts in a play. He may play Rama, yet he knows he is not Rama.

To live in the world and yet not be of the world is the greatest art. Running away is weakness and cowardice. One who can live in the world as if acting lives untouched; no stains stick to him. And because he need not leave anything, he gives something to life—he creates; life is enriched by him. And since he has no attachment, no clinging, no infatuation, no bondage with the world—rather, it is his play of bliss—there is no need for poverty, and no need for slavery.

My sannyasins have become a problem for the religions, because their whole concept of sannyas is life-denying, while my understanding is to become totally overflowing with life.

All these sayings are meaningless. Let me repeat: this must remain lodged in our hearts like an arrow—that for every act we are responsible, and for every consequence we are responsible. We cannot thrust our actions and their results onto any God or any nature. Once this becomes clear, all the rubbish of this country can be cleared away. We can give this country a new life, a renaissance. And it is necessary that it be given; otherwise this country will die. The beliefs it has lived with till now will not carry it further. If it continues to live by these notions till the end of this century, it will die badly. It has suffered much, has borne much slavery; but the final suffering is yet to come. That can be averted.

And the matter is simple: whatever means we have—newspapers, radio, television—whatever means exist for conveying right ideas to the people, let those ideas reach them. And do not worry. As with my ideas: hundreds of questions will come; I am willing to answer them. I am saying I will not leave even a single question unanswered. All these should become instruments of education—not only of society and news distribution, but also of social revolution. So when you broadcast all these things, thousands of questions will come. I am always ready. Whatever questions you consider right and necessary, you can always bring to me.