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Part VIII : Osho advises AIDS precautions
In March 1984 Osho is the first person to recommend AIDS precautions:
celibacy, monogamy, or use condoms, rubber gloves, wash after
sex, no oral or anal sex. He advises testing, and treatment for
people HIV positive, and warns about the spread of AIDS worldwide.
In March of 1984, you said that two-thirds of the world's population
would eventually die of the disease AIDS. I'm curious where that
number came from, and why you believe this is true.
I am not an astrologer or a prophet. It is just simple arithmetic,
the way AIDS is spreading and no adequate efforts are being made
to prevent it. On the contrary, governments are repressing the
information, patients are repressing the information. Governments
are making homosexuality illegal—that means they are making
it go underground. In Texas alone, one million homosexuals have
suddenly become criminals….
And the disease is no ordinary disease. It cannot be cured;
there seems to be no possibility to cure it. Secondly, its way
of spreading is very strange. Sexual intercourse, of course, is
one of the ways, but even if that is prevented, kissing can be
enough to spread it. Somebody's tears are enough to spread it—perhaps
any liquid coming out of the body carries the virus. This is for
the first time a disease is being spread in so many ways. last215
Did you make the decision to implement AIDS precautions? Because
they certainly affect the quality of life here…
This is the decision of the medical people in the commune. And
we have the best medical experts, surgeons, who are capable—they
take the decisions. Only in the beginning will it look a little
odd that your hands have to be sprayed with alcohol*, but finally
you will find it more hygienic in every way. Even if AIDS disappears,
these arrangements are not going to disappear, because they will
prevent other infections too.
So when they are new these measurements will seem to affect
life, but the effect will be for the better. And not a single
sannyasin has complained that he is not feeling good with these
things. In fact, every sannyasin is excited that his commune is
taking every care. Outside there is nobody to take care of you.
This simply shows the carefulness, lovingness.
And the commune is an organic unity.
So in every possible way—people making love should use gloves,
should use condoms. In the beginning it looks as if this is an
unnecessary complication. When you are making love to a woman,
in that moment to think of condoms and gloves—it destroys
the whole joy, it seems. But it is not true. In fact it is better:
the slower you are, the better is the possibility of having an
orgasm. It is good that the man is slower—he has to put
the condom, he has to put the gloves. It is good. And it will
increase people's sensitivity. last222
*Note: hands are sprayed with alcohol before serving food in the
cafeteria, etc.
How has the AIDS epidemic caused You to reevaluate Your attitude
towards sex between Your followers.
There is no problem, just people have to be a little more cautious.
They have to take precautions.
Six thousand sannyasins have been tested. They are free of AIDS.
These people have been given all the instructions to use condoms
and gloves, stop kissing, start new ways of loving: for example,
rubbing each other's noses, pressing each other's earlobes. But
kissing is absolutely prohibited. last304
The commune members should be respectful, loving, compassionate,
to anybody who is found to be suffering from AIDS. That has to
be their basic attitude, because that is what the problem will
be in the outside world: once a person is known to have AIDS he
will be a condemned person—by his own family, children,
parents, wife, friends—everywhere he will be an outcast.
So people are keeping the information repressed. Many more people
are suffering from AIDS than are known. But it is human, because
the moment people come to know you are condemned in everybody's
eyes. So this is the first thing that I am teaching to my people:
that he is simply a victim—the victim of neurotic religious
ideologies, the victim of unnatural social institutions like marriage,
prostitution. So he is a sufferer and close to death; now don't
make him suffer more.
Help him, respect him; don't let him die in indignity—and
teach him meditation. And I am telling my people that he is fortunate
in a way: if he is going to live for two years, now for two years
he is going to be one of the richest people in the world. Even
the richest man cannot afford so much time for meditation. And
we will arrange his food, his clothes, the best we can, and he
should meditate, listen to the best music, see films, read novels—whatever
he always wanted to do, let him do it. And let him feel that he
is loved and respected and there is no discrimination.
There are two persons from the commune, and four more have arrived
from outside, because in the outside there is no place for them.
Even hospitals avoid them, even doctors are afraid; families don't
want them anymore, their jobs are finished. But we have accepted
them—that's perfectly good. We can take care of them, there
is no problem. They can help in their own way. They can edit,
they can paint, they can sculpt, or do whatsoever they are capable
of. We have arranged the most scenic place for them to live.
And as far as sex is concerned, those who have AIDS can have
sex amongst themselves. It is their responsibility towards the
commune, which is taking care of them, giving them all respect
and love, that they should not in any way affect anybody's life
in the commune. And certainly, with such respect and love it is
impossible for them to interfere in anybody's life here. They
come to the discourses; they are allowed to move in the commune.
They have been told just not to have any physical contact. And
the commune has to take every care, because accidentally anything
may provoke the thing. Tears can infect you, saliva can infect
you; perhaps any liquid coming out of the body of an AIDS victim
carries the virus—so just keep clean, make everything sterile.
So even in small things—in the restaurant, everybody who
comes to eat there first has to clean his hands with alcohol,
and anything that has been used for eating is sterilized after
eating. Even a person making a phone call, by chance his saliva
may fall on the phone—so after every phone call the phone
is sprayed with alcohol. In this way we are taking every precaution
that no infection spreads. last222
In my commune there are a few people who are suffering from AIDS,
but they are getting more respect than they have ever got, and
more love than they have ever got. And we are making every facility
for them: better houses, a more scenic place for them to live—because
they are going to live only for a few months, or at the most two
years. This is rarely possible; six months may be the most possible
for them. For six months we can make their life as pleasant as
possible. We can teach them meditations, we can help them to be
silent—to prepare for death.
In fact, I am telling these sannyasins to take it as an opportunity:
"Perhaps in your whole life you may not have had an opportunity
to remain in silence for two years. And death comes unknown to
others; to you it is coming with a notice. It is perfectly useful,
because you can prepare. Nobody else is ready for death, everybody
is caught unprepared; you can prepare. And the preparation is
to go deeper into meditation. Reach the point where death can
never reach, and then let death come. You don't die, you simply
go on moving into new forms. last215
Two years later Osho was able to comment:
Just now I saw a clipping. In America, the churches were going
to have conferences and meetings in churches all over America
to find out ways and means to prevent the disease AIDS. They had
declared their program; experts could explain, and how it can
be avoided would be made more available to the public. But the
archbishop of America has condemned this kind of thing, because
in those programs of preventing AIDS, birth control is mentioned.
Rubber condoms are mentioned. And he has taken it very seriously:
"In a publication by the church, condoms are mentioned—not
only mentioned, but pictures are shown to explain how they have
to be used." He has declared, "No such conferences can
be allowed to take place in my churches."
The church is absolutely against the condom. Strange…the
condom is just a piece of rubber. Why should the church be against
the condom? And just because of the condom, the whole program
against AIDS is in jeopardy.
AIDS can be prevented, but either the condom will have to be used…and
the condom freaks out all the religious people of the world. Strange.
Just a small piece of rubber, it is not harming anybody.
The condom is not doing any harm to anybody. It has nothing to
do with Christianity—it is a question of the whole of humanity's
survival. But those idiots are not concerned about humanity and
its survival, their strange interests are a rubber condom. But
if you don't in some way stop the meeting of the sperm and the
female egg, it is impossible to prevent AIDS. Even if you stopped
that, then too, it is going to be very difficult to get rid of
this disease, because you can kiss somebody and you can transfer
it.
There are a few scientists who think it is possible that the disease
and the virus may be infectious just by talking with a person
who has AIDS; just the breathing can bring the virus to you.
In the commune, I was the first man in the whole world who proposed
all the preventive methods. And in the commune, we managed perfect
control. And I was criticized by Christians, I was criticized
by all kinds of journalists, I was criticized and laughed at by
the politicians, who said that I was unnecessarily creating fear.
And now they are all thinking on the same lines. exactly the same
program is being given to all the countries all over the world.
And the dishonesty is such that not a single country has said
that I was the first to tell the world that at least two-thirds
of the world's population can die if immediate steps are not taken
to prevent AIDS.
The steps that we have taken are now being accepted by every
government in the world, and nobody is laughing and nobody is
criticizing. And nobody is mentioning who the person was who first
brought this whole program. We not only brought the program, we
practiced it for three years, and the whole commune was perfectly
capable of rising above the ordinary masses. sermon23
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