According to Osho, he refuses to offer a dogmatic 'right way' and, with playful satire, points seekers to the Vatican while joking: 'Sow your wild oats on Saturday night, then on Sunday pray for crop failure.' The underlying message: prayer and authority won’t fix practical problems—grown-up awareness, responsibility, and intelligent choices are needed instead.
He jokes that praying after sex won’t stop babies; be responsible and use your own good sense.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the right catholic christian way to prevent population explosion in the world?
Pragyan, YOU SHOULD GO TO THE VATICAN and ask the Polack. I'm not a Catholic, I'm not a Pope. You create trouble for me. But I can suggest.... This is only a piece of advice: Sow your wild oats on Saturday night, then on Sunday pray for crop failure! And the last question
Osho, there is a population explosion all over the world. I’ve heard some people say that when the burden of humans on the earth becomes too great, nature cannot tolerate it. What truth is there in this?
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…
Osho, from Morarji Desai’s government to Rajiv Gandhi’s, you have remained only a critic. But do you have any particular approach or answer for solving this country’s problems?
This country’s population is the enemy of this country—a problem that can be solved very simply, with a little intelligence. In the commune I created in America there were five thousand sannyasins, twenty-five hundred couples. In five years not a single child was born. No guns were used, no police stood guard—only understanding. Second: India has been enslaved for two thousand years—by Mughals, Turks, Huns, Muslims, the British. Two thousand years is a long time. Slavery has sunk so deep into the mind that it doesn’t leave even when you try to remove it. We must remove this inner slavery. It is not only slavery; it has filled your mind with rubbish that will go only when slavery falls. Outwardly you look free—only outwardly. Within, no difference. Slavery is a chain that stifles human genius. In three hundred years the British built schools, colleges, universities here—not so you would become…
Osho, in ignorance I went on having children. I have ten children—what should I do now?
Now just see: the husband was blind, and the wife had her eyes bound—and still they found each other and managed to have a hundred children! They must have been groping around for where the other was. And in the jostling of a hundred children, searching must have been quite a task. You, with eyes, have given up so soon! This is not the Indian tradition. Will you destroy the tradition? Your forefathers didn’t do this; will you? “The Raghu lineage’s rule has always continued!” It just goes on. Look into the Puranas—how many sons people had! They were heroic men. And your name is Virchand, and you are stopping at just ten! Drop despair! Abandon dejection! Raise the flag high again. Keep our flag flying high! Is this any way to lower the flag! And if you don’t produce more children, think also of the harm you’ll do. If…
Why teach people not to use the pill? The pill is the greatest revolution that has happened in the whole history of man because the pill brings woman equal to man, and the pill makes sex free from all kinds of ugly connotations; it becomes simple fun. It loses all seriousness -- children. And then bringing up children and the whole nonsense. And the woman's whole life is wasted in the kitchen and the children; and the husband's whole life is wasted in earning money the whole day. And then the woman is collecting anger the whole day because all her life she cannot do anything else. So she simply becomes a nagging wife. Every wife is a nagging wife, and every husband is henpecked -- without exception. And the reason is simple, because you have created the situation.