In a better society - and when I say in a better society, I mean a society which understands each person's integrity, respects even a small child's being, and does not impose on it. But that society seems to be far, far away, because all people have got their vested interests, and they cannot stop their trips; they have to use and exploit people.

 

Somebody becomes a president; you never think that he has become president at your cost, that something in you has been killed so that this man can become the president of the country.

 

If everybody was left unique, original, it would be impossible for the people who are presidents and prime ministers, who are ruling the whole world and who have been destroying the world for thousands of years and go on destroying it, to continue doing this.

 

With individuals there will be totally different kinds of societies: there will be communes, not societies. There will be no nations, because there is no need.

 

What is the need of nations?

 

The whole earth is one.

 

Only on the maps do you go on drawing lines, and over those lines you go on fighting and killing and murdering. It is such a stupid game that unless the whole of humanity is mad, it is impossible to think how it goes on continuing. What is the need of nations? What is the need of passports and visas and boundaries? This whole earth belongs to us: wherever one wants to be, one has the right to be.

 

The sun is nobody's property, the earth is nobody's property, the moon is nobody's property; the wind, the clouds, the rain - nothing is anybody's property. Why do you draw these lines?

 

You can understand it easily... soon you will see lines on the moon. Right now there are not but soon you will see a Soviet zone, an American zone, a Chinese zone. Nobody lives there, nobody will ever live there. There seems to be no possibility of life growing on the moon. The moon is a dead planet - not a single drop of water. Yes, you can be there for a few hours with all your gas masks and oxygen cylinders and everything, but this is not the way that people can live there. But already they have put their flags....

 

There is nobody to see the flag, there is nobody to salute the flag - not even a bird sometimes to shit on the flag! The first thing the Americans did was to place a pole, and put up the flag. How idiotic! And for whom? But soon other fools will follow. They will go to Mars, they will go to other planets, and they will do the same thing everywhere.

 

There is no need for nations - except that politicians need nations because without nations there will be no politics - except that generals need nations, because without nations there will be no wars - except that the factories that produce weapons will go out of production.

 

What will happen to your nuclear weapons plants and all the energy involved in them? - because if there are no nations there is no need to create nuclear weapons. For whom?

 

The simplest solution to save humanity is to remove from the map all the lines - and just from the map - on the earth there are no lines.

 

Just from the maps simply remove all the lines and you won't have the third world war, and you will not need so many armies all around the world.

 

Millions of people are doing nothing except turning left, turning right.... If somebody is watching from above, he will be surprised. Why do people go on turning right, then left, then about turn, then march, then come back, disperse - every day millions of people all around the earth? He will certainly think something is wrong - some nut, some bolt, needs to be put right.

 

These nations can exist only if your personality is false.

 

These churches and religions can exist only if you don't have your original face, because a man who has his own original face - what business has he to do that he needs to go to the pope? For what?

 

There is no reason why he should go to any religious teacher or to any temple or to any synagogue.

 

And why should he become a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Hindu?why?

 

With your original face you will feel so contented, so immensely fulfilled and at home that there will be no search left; you have found it.

 

But these people will not allow you to find it. They will distract you, for the simple reason that they have some trips, they have some ideas of their own, and you have to be sacrificed for their ideas.

 

Politicians will sacrifice you for their politics. Religions will sacrifice you for their kind of politics.

 

Nobody is interested in the child, and the reason is clear: the child has to be molded into a certain pattern which fits in a society, in a nation, in a particular ideology.

 

In Russia the child has to be taught communism from the very beginning. He has to know the names of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin; they are their gods.

 

In non-communist countries it is the same thing only the names differ. Everybody is sacrificed to some stupid ideology, theology, politics, religion. That's why people get distracted.

 

But the child allows it for the simple reason that he does not know who he is going to become.

 

Naturally he depends on his parents, elders - those who know better. And he is not aware that they don't know better; they are in the same boat, as ignorant as the child. The only difference is, the child is innocent also. They are cunning but ignorant, and just because of their cunningness, they go on hiding their ignorance in borrowed knowledge.

 

- Osho, "From Ignorance to Innocence, #14"