According to Osho, consciously, scientifically creating and adopting children ends accidental, animalistic mass production and inaugurates a leap in evolution: healthier, longer-lived, disease-free, highly intelligent and creative humans, each a deliberately invited ‘visitor’ to earth. Such selection prevents physical and psychological defects, fulfills humanity’s highest dreams—poets, scientists, lovers beyond precedent—and raises us beyond mediocrity and fear into a freer, superior quality of life.
If we design and adopt children wisely instead of reproducing by accident, people will be healthier, smarter, more creative, and much needless suffering will disappear.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, yesterday you spoke of science and how we could produce a new man -- more intelligent, creative, healthier and freer. It sounds fascinating and at the same time it is scary because of the feeling of some sort of mass product. Can you say something about the fear I am feeling?
What speciality has it got that it is your semen? What is the point of creating a crippled person, just because it is your semen? Science can manage to raise you above animality -- and it is not mass production, it will be just the opposite. There is not going to be an assembly line the way cars are produced. It is going to be very individual because every couple has the choice and the freedom to decide what kind of child they want. How has the idea of mass production come into your mind? Do you think everybody would like the same kind of child? You are wrong. Do you think science labs will go on producing children according to their own desire, and you have to adopt them? Then it will be mass production. I am not for it. You are absolutely free to choose. Right now you…
Osho, you discussed how science could organize the creation of superior human bodies. But what will be achieved by superior bodies alone? How can science choose superior souls? And how will it ensure that only superior souls enter excellent bodies? This task would have to be done by a pure, enlightened soul like you. Science may be able to produce a scientist or a Hitler, but how could one arrange to bring forth a Krishna, a Mahavira, or a Buddha? Please shed light on this.
And souls are eager; infinite souls are always wandering, ready to enter wombs. And you will be surprised to know: ordinary souls enter immediately, because ordinary wombs are always available—thousands of fools are engaged in intercourse, twenty-four hours somewhere or other... somewhere it is night. And now the modern man doesn’t even count day and night; he is at sex day or night—who cares! Everywhere there are wombs available for ordinary people to be born. But extraordinary beings have to wait for many years to take birth, because such an extraordinary womb is not available. If we can provide extraordinary wombs, we can fill the earth with Buddhas, with Mahaviras. And certainly, if people are healthy, prosperous, intelligent, then what you say, Anand Veetrag—that this work will have to be done by a pure, enlightened soul like you—my work will become simple. The work of awakening the soul will become…
Maitreya has asked: But won’t this bring in authoritarianism!
We cling to words. If we want to stay alive, we will have to act with some intelligence; and if we want to make life beautiful, we will have to act with a great deal of intelligence. There is no need to get trapped in a web of words. Decisions should now be in the hands of experts—who can have children, and with whom they can have children. And now we have the means. There is no need that you father a child only with your own wife, or that your wife conceive only from you. Drop these old, foolish notions. Your child should be beautiful. Your child should be intelligent. Your child should be such that a lotus blossoms. Care about that. You don’t care about that at all; your only concern is that the child be from “my woman,” from “my husband.” And now there is so much…
Another friend is afraid of what might happen to our progeny, to our whole race, if we drop sex like this. "If everyone attains celibacy through samadhi," he asks, "what about the future generation?" One can definitely state that the kind of children now being produced won't exist. The present manner of procreation is fine for producing cats, dogs and other animals, but it is not good enough for man. What kind of attitude to procreation is this? What kind of thoughtless production of children is this? This sort of mass, accidental procreation is aimless; it is useless. And how vast our crowd has become! Our population has exploded to such incredible proportions that if it is not checked in time, scientists say there will not even be room to move your toes in a hundred years!
Question: BELOVED OSHO, I HEARD YOU SPEAK OF SCIENTISTS CHOOSING FUTURE PEOPLE FROM THEIR GENETIC ANALYSIS OF SPERMS. I HAVE NO TRUST IN SCIENTISTS, OR DOCTORS OR ANYBODY WHOSE KNOWLEDGE EXTENDS NO FURTHER THAN THEIR HEAD. I INTUITIVELY FEEL THAT GENETICS PLAYS ONLY A SMALL ROLE IN DETERMINING WHAT A PERSON BECOMES. A GARDENER MAY WELL HAVE BECOME A MUSICIAN; A SOLDIER MAY HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO BE A SCIENTIST. SURELY WHAT A MAN IS, IS NO MEASURE OF WHAT HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN IN DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES. BELOVED MASTER, WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN A OSHO IN THE SPERM AND EGG OF YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER? PLEASE SPEAK MORE ON THE UNDERLYING SANITY BEHIND YOUR SUGGESTION -- WHICH I CANNOT SEE BECAUSE OF MY FEAR OF TOTALITARIAN REGIMES. Change the man, don't stop progressive science. For example, what I have told you was the latest findings of genetic scientists.