According to Osho, we shouldn't ignore heredity: about ninety percent of a child's mind is shaped by environment, while roughly ten percent (body and brain capacities) comes through heredity and remains fluid. Mind is a social product, yet the essential self lies beyond both heredity and conditioning; through meditation one steps behind body, brain and mind to pure being.
Don’t ignore genes, but remember most learning comes from surroundings—and your deepest self is beyond both.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, as you said just now that a newborn baby acquires knowledge by learning from the environment. Then should we ignore heredity?
No, it is not a matter of ignoring it. Much—ninety percent—is learned from the environment. Ten percent also comes through heredity. What comes through heredity—perhaps today or tomorrow—ways may be found to change that too. Not today, but maybe later. Yet what comes through heredity is very fluid; it can be molded into any shape. Ultimately, what a person becomes is created by the environment. And the mind we are speaking about is created by the environment. The body comes through heredity. Many of the body’s capacities come from heredity. Many capacities of the brain also come from heredity, but the mind is created by society. Mind comes entirely from the environment. Certainly, if brains differ, society also faces difficulties in producing the same mind through the environment. But the mind is a social product. What I am saying is: one must go behind the mind. Brains differ. One child…
Osho, while speaking about Transactional Analysis you said that if the discoverers of this method were to come upon Buddha’s sutra mātaram pitaram hantvā, the method would become extraordinarily useful. Kindly shed more light on this!
When a human being is born, he is born like a blank sheet of paper. When a human being is born, he is born as pure innocence. When a human being is born, he is born as total freedom—unconditional. There is no limit upon him, no boundary—unbounded, infinite. When a human being is born, he is born as soul. Then society, family, father, mother, teacher, school, college, university—all together erect a layer of mind around this soul. They build a wall of mind. Remember, mind is manufactured by society. The soul is yours, the body belongs to nature, and the mind belongs to society. Mind is entirely borrowed, stale. The body too is beautiful, for nature’s beauty lives in it—the babble of streams runs in your blood, the fragrance of earth dwells in your flesh, the energy of the stars lives in your life-breath; your body has come from nature;…
Osho, if parents meditate before conception and during pregnancy, what effect does it have on the child?
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…
Osho, you have called training a child’s intellect essential. But should training in meditation also be given simultaneously? Many sannyasins have families. What outlook should they have toward their children? Where should the emphasis be? Please shed light on this.
Jesus tells a very sweet parable—understand it. Jesus used to say, and because his whole emphasis was on love, the story is indicative. He said: A father had two sons. The father was very rich. One son was obedient; the other was rebellious. One increased the wealth; the other broke and wasted it. At last there was no way but to separate them. The father divided the wealth in halves. The elder stayed with the father, invested, bought fields, made orchards. The younger disappeared from the village as soon as he got his share. Soon news began to come that he had squandered everything in gambling, drank it away, lost it in the dances and songs of prostitutes—everything turned to dust. The father sent word: come back home. The younger, who had left, a gambler and drunkard, could not believe that after wasting everything his father could still call him…
Osho, does a child not have as much right to privacy and freedom from parental conditioning as the parents themselves expect?
Jimmy: 'Yes, Mum, there wasn't time to take them off.' The first-grade teacher was talking to her class about nature and she called it 'The World Around You'. She asked little Helen in the first row, 'Now, Helen, tell everyone in the class. Are you vegetable, animal or mineral?' 'I'm not any of those,' she replied promptly. 'I'm a real live girl!' A little fellow who was fishing off the end of a pier lost his balance while trying to land a fish and fell in the lake. Several men who also were fishing nearby rushed to his aid and pulled him out. 'How did you come to fall in?' one of the men asked him. 'I didn't come to fall in,' the kid said. 'I came to fish!' A large family was finally able to move into a more spacious home. Some time later an uncle asked his nephew,…