The child conundrum

WHAT ARE THE RIGHT REASONS FOR BRINGING A PERSON INTO THE WORLD?

TODAY, casually having a child is quite irrespon­sible because though people think there are many problems in the world, essentially, the fundamental problem is too many human beings on the planet.

Seven point three billion people is the highest number of human beings ever on this little planet. Just 30 years ago, it was about four billion. The UN is predicting by 2050, we will be 9.2 or 9.4 billion.

There are too many human beings and not enough other life – plant and animal. There is no need to produce one more child just like that. You can always adopt one. It is no longer about your individual choices. The individual choices we are making are killing the planet, and it makes a big dif­ference in the way the rest of humanity lives.

One need not have children for social reasons or for some other compulsions. A child is not a play­thing for you to produce just to play around with for a few years. It is another life just like you and me.

Fundamentally, bearing a child has become such a big experience in people’s lives because only by bearing a child can most people know a certain depth of involvement and inclusion with life. With nothing else are they so deeply involved. They are incapable of being deeply involved with the life around them.

Their only capability is to be involved with a child, because a child does not have so much of a personality when it comes into your hands. Another thing is because you have so much of an identifica­tion with the physical body, something that comes out of your body is definitely yours.

You may say: “My house is mine,” but you know you can lose it. You may say: “This property is mine,” but you may lose it. But this comes out of your biological body and you cannot deny it. Even if your child denies it, you still know they are anyway yours. So it is a sure-fire extension of yourself.

Emotionally and psychologically, bearing chil­dren is not an instinct, it is a trick that you play. Physically it is an instinct, but emotionally and psychologically it is a trick, a ploy that you are creat­ing to extend yourself.

Do you see, when people take up some cause in their life – whether they are fighting for the freedom of their country, a political or some other cause – when they get intensely involved in that, they have no need to produce children. They are extending themselves in some other way where their involve­ment is much more.

People say they bear a child out of love, not out of compulsion. When they say: “Love for their child,” where did they get love for their unborn child when they have no love for life around them? So it is a compulsion. When I say “compulsion,” the compul­sions need not necessarily be just physical. They can be psychological and emotional. There is a need to extend yourself.

Most people want to have children because they want an extension of themselves. They want to leave something behind when they go. Children are their greatest property. That is the only way they know involvement. Otherwise, they are incapable of being involved. Why, especially for a woman, bearing a child has become such a big experience is because of her involvement.

Very few people can involve themselves to that ex­tent even in their love affairs. Even there, the involve­ment is because bodies touch. Because their identi­fication is with the physical body, the only way they know to involve themselves is by opening their body.

Only when a person rises to another level of ex­perience, his involvement with something else or someone else goes to great depths without physical involvement, because his identification with the body is receding. Identification with the other di­mension of yourself is building momentum.

So a child is a deep involvement. People are han­kering for children because they are seeking in­volvement; otherwise what is life? If you have never tasted life, by bearing a child you are getting in­volved with life. But if you know how to involve yourself with everything around you, you will see a child is not a compulsion anymore.

It would be very wonderful if people chose to have children, rather than bringing them through physical, psychological or emotional compulsions within themselves.

Would it not be very beautiful if human beings conceived consciously, because it is needed for the human race rather than out of their own physical compulsions? Is it not in many ways an indignity to the person who is born that he is born out of your compulsions, not out of your consciousness?

Would it not be so much more beautiful if they created this very consciously, that this being is needed for human life to happen and they produce it with that consciousness.

• Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and best­selling author. Sadhguru has been conferred the Pad­ma Vibhushan by the government of India in 2017, one of the highest annual civilian awards, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service.