From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. I TEACH A RELIGIONLESS RELIGION
Now suddenly their interest is in non-violence: abortion is violence. And the same pope’s
predecessors blessed Benito Mussolini in the second world war. That was not violence? The
archbishop of Canterbury in England blessed the British forces – and that was not violence? – that
was perfectly good? One wonders at what point abortion becomes violence.
At what point...? A child is conceived this moment – is he alive or dead? He is alive, but from where
has the life come? He was alive in the semen cells before he became conceived in the mother’s
womb; the semen cells are all alive. They have a small life span, just two hours, so if within two
hours they can find a female egg, and can enter the egg, the child is conceived. The egg is alive:
half of your being, the feminine part, is in the egg, and half of your being is coming from your father’s
semen. And in a single intercourse millions of cells are rushing along....
You will be surprised to know that it is there that politics starts. Everybody is running fast towards
the egg, because whosoever reaches first becomes President Reagan. Those who are left behind,
just a little behind... finished! Only one sperm is going to enter, then the woman’s egg becomes hard
and no more can enter. That is the natural process; it is vulnerable only to one. Only once in a while
does it happen that two male cells reach exactly at the same time and enter. That’s why sometimes
you have twins, or three or four or five or six – even nine children have been known. But that is a
very rare event.
Millions of sperms... and they are really fast. It is almost like a car race. They are all racing, and they
have to be quick: within two hours if they don’t reach, they are finished. In a single intercourse you
are responsible for killing millions of beings. And what about an abortion? – just one. So whether
it’s one million or one million plus one, what difference does it make?
But the Catholic pope is ready, just as the Mohammedan chief imam is ready, and the Hindu
shankaracharya is ready to let the population grow, because numbers have a political significance.
It is the politics of numbers – how many Catholics are there. The pope is not interested in humanity,
in the future, in a global suicide, no. His whole interest is in how many Catholics there are: the more
Catholics, the more power he has. The shankaracharya is interested in more Hindus, so he has
more power.
Everybody is interested in power.
In the name of God they are simply trying to become more and more powerful.
God is just a useful instrument in the hands of the priest. Whatsoever the priest wants, he makes
God say: he writes the scriptures, he writes all kinds of nonsense in them.... And it is a strange fact
to be understood about human beings, that people become very impressed with nonsense, because
it seems mystical.
For example the Bible says: ”In the beginning was the word....” Now how can the word be in the
beginning? Do you make any distinction between sound and word, or not? A word is a meaningful
sound. Perhaps it can be said that in the beginning there was sound – but not word.
A word presupposes there was somebody who made the sound meaningful, who used a word. ”In
the beginning was the word....”1 am just saying hypothetically that sound would be better, more
From Ignorance to Innocence 118 Osho