Bearing Children Consciously
Physically, bearing children is an instinct. However, emotionally and psychologically, bearing children is not an instinct; it is a trick that you play. It's a ploy that you are creating to extend yourself.
Do you see when people who take up some cause in their life, whatever cause ? they are fighting for the freedom of their country, they have a political cause 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?
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 sense, or a certain depth of involvement and inclusion with life. With nothing else they are so deeply involved. They are incapable of being deeply involved with this tree. They are incapable of being deeply involved with the air around them. Their only capability is to be involved with a child, because a child does not have so much personality, or does not have personality at all when it comes into your hands. Another thing is because your identification is so much 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 son denies it, still you know he is anyway yours. So it is a sure-fire extension of yourself.
Now you tell me some people bear a child out of love, not out of compulsion. See, when you say, "Love for their child," where did you get love for your unborn child? When you have no love for life around you, it is still a compulsion. When I say ?compulsion', the compulsion need not necessarily be just physical; the compulsions can be psychological and emotional. There is a need to extend yourself, something that is ?you'. Most people want to have children because they want an extension of themselves. They want something to leave behind when they go. Children are their greatest property.
Most people are seeking children only because of that; 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 just because of her involvement; otherwise, she is never really involved with anybody for that matter. Very few people can involve themselves to that extent in their love affairs also. 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 somebody 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.
Wouldn't it be very, 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 that person is born out of your compulsions, not out of your consciousness? Wouldn't it be so much more beautiful if they created this very consciously ? that this being is needed for human life to happen, and you produce it with that consciousness?
Enjoyed reading Khabar magazine? Subscribe to Khabar and get a full digital copy of this Indian-American community magazine.
