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[A sannyasin, who is a mother, says: I feel this longing to have another child and I feel very split about it. I feel that it’s crazy and yet there’s this longing inside me to have a child.
Osho checks her energy.]
Osho – It is crazy in a way, and yet there is some rationale in it. A few things I would like to say to you – meditate over them…. The first is: you have not been able to love and you have not been able to be loved tremendously. Something is missing in your love, so you want to substitute it. You are not really fulfilled in your love. It is okay, but nothing like a crescendo, nothing like a peak. You have not been driven crazy by it – that’s why the hankering. You want to project your love onto the child.
The second thing: you feel empty so you want to make yourself full by anything…. And these are the two ways women try: either they start eating too much, stuffing their belly, or they start thinking of pregnancy. That gives a sort of fullness, one feels full… but both are dangerous! One should eat not because one wants to stuff the belly but because food is needed.
And you have a child, you are already a mother, so there is no point in creating many children. And this will not help – another child and again you will feel… because after nine months again you will be empty. And pregnancy cannot be a permanent thing. After nine months the child has to come out and again you will feel empty, and again you will want to fill the emptiness.
That has happened down the ages to millions of women: for their whole life they have been just getting pregnant and getting pregnant and getting pregnant. In india it happens too much: a woman is almost like a factory – she goes on producing; she is just like an assembly line. When she is pregnant she feels okay; when she is not pregnant she feels empty.
So you have a certain feeling of emptiness and this is no way to fill it. It can be filled; it can be filled in such a way that each moment of your life can become full, but pregnancy won’t do it.
It is enough that you have given birth to a child. Now, help the child to become a free man rather than bringing up many children whom you will not be able to take care of, whom you will not be able to help to grow.
[She answers: I already feel my child is leaving. She’s ten years old and she’s growing up.]
That’s very good! It is good, because now you have to do something bigger than giving birth to
a child, mm? And the third thing: your mind is very restless so it needs occupation – and a child
gives occupation, one is occupied continuously. It is a good occupation so that one can escape from oneself. One can focus on the child and forget oneself, but for how long? One day or other one has to encounter oneself, and the sooner the better.
It is good that you have come. Something can be done, and all these three things can disappear. Once they have disappeared you will find a totally new style of life. My feeling is that you have not really lived as you should have lived, you have not lived with intensity. Yes, everything has been comfortable, convenient, so-so, lukewarm. You have not come to the one hundred degree point where one evaporates.
But you have come in the right moment in a way – before you take some other step in which you again get involved for many years. A child is a long commitment. It is not a play. Mm? – again you will be getting involved for twenty years. By the time the child becomes mature, you will be involved… and! don’t think it is worth it. Something greater is needed.
You can become mother to yourself; that’s what is needed. You need a new birth yourself, you have to become a womb to yourself so you can become twice born. There are two types of people: once born and twice born. Those once born remain in misery, but those who are twice born become blissful. That’s what Jesus means when he says that unless you are born again nothing is going to happen. A rebirth is needed. You have the capacity and the energy is there, but blocked, fragmentary not one piece. It can come into one tremendous force.