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Why is having biological children not pursued?

Real love transcends bloodlines; it is found in the care for all children, embracing a conscious community rather than clinging to possessive impulses.

— Osho
According to Osho, creating biological children is unnecessary and even harmful today: the planet is overpopulated, and the desire for 'my own blood' is an egoic, possessive impulse. Real love is non-proprietary: care for the many children already here, adopt the hungry, and expand family beyond genetics to a conscious community, enjoying children without ownership.

There are already plenty of kids who need love, so care for them instead of making new ones just to have your own.

In His Own Words

From the Discourses

Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.

Why don't you have children of your own blood?

The world is already too populated. To have children is a crime -- and the very idea of your own blood is possessive, monopolistic, capitalistic. Why my own blood? What speciality has my blood got? The blood of a beggar and the blood of an emperor are not different; it is not that the blood of the poor is water and the blood of the emperor is pure gold. I love children; it does not matter to whom they belong. In fact, it is easier to love the children of other people than your own children; they are such a pain in the neck. To love somebody else's children is perfectly good: they are always nice, beautiful, angels. But if you are thinking of your own blood, those same angels will turn into devils. I love children -- and there are so many children in the world, what is the…

A friend has asked: Osho, if sex departs in this way, what will happen to progeny in the world? If, in this way, everyone experiences samadhi and becomes established in brahmacharya, what will happen to children?

Through brahmacharya, too, children will come—but they will not be by-products of sex. For those children, sex will be a vehicle, a mere medium. Sex itself will have no other role. As when a man travels somewhere in a bullock cart—does he have any real concern with the cart? Or he flies by airplane—do you have any bond with the plane? You board here and land in Delhi. Do you have any relationship to the airplane? None. Your relationship is with going to Delhi. The airplane is only a vehicle, only a means. When people attain to brahmacharya and the journey of intercourse reaches samadhi, they can still desire children. But the birth of those children will be true creation; they will be the product, the srijan, the creative act. Sex will be only the medium. And in the same way that until now we have tried—listen carefully—to avoid children…
Phir Amrit Ki Boond Padi · Discourse 1Question 2 1985-12-08 Manali Hindi 1985-12-08

Osho, when I went to Rajneeshpuram in July, in your discourses you said that in India no children should be born for many years. I repeated this to many people when I came back to Hindustan. Different people had different reactions, but most women said, “The maternal feeling in a woman—how is she to satisfy it?” Some said, “A woman does not attain fulfillment until she becomes a mother.” Please say something about this, Osho.

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…
From Bondage To Freedom · Discourse 16Question 3 1985-09-30 Rajneeshmandir English

Beloved master, I have read your words about the possibility of creating a new way to conceive babies, and they opened my heart. Why then, have you never had a son in this way? Please excuse me for asking such a personal question.

You may have this idea in your head, that celibacy is spiritual, but it will never reach to your blood cells, to your bones, to your stomach. There is no communication. There is no line of communication between you and your physiology. It functions on its own, it is autonomous. So because all the religions insisted on celibacy, they created homosexuality, masturbation, sodomy, lesbianism. For all sexual repressions and for all sexual perversions they are responsible. And humanity has suffered under their idiotic idea. In your monasteries the monks are all homosexuals. If they are not homosexuals, then they will be masturbating. Religions don't allow the monks and nuns to meet and have a little love affair, at least once in a while -- every weekend. One day in a week can be given as a holiday from your saintliness. But there is no holiday. So these people created homosexuality,…
From The False To The Truth · Discourse 34Question 2 1985-08-01 Rajneeshmandir English

Beloved Osho, the other day you said that women create children, and men create arts and other material things. Is it unnatural or neurotic for a woman not to desire a child, and to prefer to be an artist? I never wanted to have a child. Dance, music, poetry, theater and painting were my passion and expression. Could you comment?

Children should be born only if a couple gets permission from the medical board. Still, that is not the best way to do it, because while he is making love a man releases millions of living beings, millions of living cells; and it is just chance in that race who will reach the female egg first. You cannot decide it, you cannot even know it. So this is not the best way. The medical board may feel that the woman is healthy, the man is healthy; they can look at your heritage -- three, four generations back -- and they can allow you. But this is not the best way. The best way will be for intelligent people to donate their semen to the hospital, to donate the female eggs to the hospital, so the hospitals have banks -- just like they have blood banks. And they can figure out…
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