Genetic Engineering

Beloved master, in a recent discourse you gave your total support to genetic engineering. I am very much in trouble. For me such engineering is against nature. Who should be in charge of creating that superman? Often a so-called genius was later regarded as the devil. And people like hitler, stalin or reagan are only possible because of all the others supporting them. Genetic engineering also is against my freedom of self-development. Could you please explain to me this science which bothers me?

A very famous noble emperor, Akbar, was bringing swans from the Himalayas. It must be the highest point where a lake exists of the purest water, Mansarovar. And strangely, in Mansarovar live the biggest swans and the whitest swans. They come to India when it becomes too cold. For nine months it is frozen: you can drive on it without any fear; it is solid rock. For only three months it melts. So for three months those swans go back to Mansarovar. Akbar had seen those swans -- and they were so beautiful. He said, "Make a beautiful marble lake in my garden. Make every arrangement so that those swans don't have to go to Mansarovar again." The lake was made and it was the season when the swans would be coming soon. He said, "It is not an ordinary lake. It is a royal reception, so inform the whole…

A: No, nothing. All that we have to change is the way we have been producing children -- only that has to be changed, nothing else, because the father's cell and the mother's egg have the program for the whole life. The meeting of those two decides the whole life of the person: how long he will live, what kind of nose he will have, what color of hair, what color of skin, what kind of diseases he will have, when he will die. The whole program is in the first two genes. The only thing that bioengineering has to do is to change the program.

Osho, isn't the vision of the new man somehow similar to the idea of the superman?

Now he himself was not an athlete, he was not a soldier. I don't think he would have been able to hold a sword rightly, or know how to keep hold of it. He was a man who knew how to hold a fountain pen, not a sword. For his whole life he was simply writing; fighting he had never done. But he started projecting the idea of the superman. Nietzsche started condemning the old man without ever thinking that he belonged to the old. It happens... one can set oneself apart, and put the old man on this side and the superman on that side; and then you think you are not part of the old man. But because you are creating the idea of the superman, you start believing yourself that superman is your projection, your idea: you are giving birth to superman -- then of course you…

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. The barber was a very philosophical man. He said, "Don't be worried, hairs grow. They will grow again.