Question
Osho,
You have said that if there are only two hundred enlightened people in the world a third world war is not possible. can you explain what you mean, how these two hundred people would make a difference among the billions of unconscious people?
Certainly. They will make tremendous difference. When the whole room is dark, just a small candle makes so much difference. In such a big room a small candle, lighted... the whole darkness disappears.
An enlightened person is a tremendous light -- very subtle but for miles around him many people's lives will be touched. And if two hundred people are enlightened, which has never happened in history.... At the most, ten people have been enlightened at the same time, in Gautam Buddha's days. That is the only moment, and India remembers that moment as the Golden Age because the country felt something strange for which there were no words. It was mysterious, but the country felt unburdened, and an immense sense of joy, centering, nonviolence, understanding.
But that was only ten people, and they were not all living their whole lives simultaneously. Just at one point Mahavira was old, Buddha was young. Goshalak was just between the age of the two. Ajit Keshkambal, Sanjay Vilethiputta and the remaining ones all were of different ages. But there was a time when all the ten were alive. It did not last long, because few were very old and they started dying. By the time Buddha died, he was alone. All others had died before him.
So only at a certain point, perhaps for a few years, ten people have been at the same time enlightened, and they raised the consciousness of the whole country. Now, two hundred people around the world can create an aura of energy which will be a very subtle force, like x-rays. You don't see them.
Both Soviet Russia and America are trying to find death rays -- just like x-rays -- which will be far better than nuclear bombs, because nuclear bombs can be seen. America has made arrangements. Many billions of dollars have been spent by Ronald Reagan. Thirty million Americans are hungry and on the streets, and many billions have been spent on a secret plan. They are keeping certain of the latest developed instruments on submarines, so that if from the Soviet Union any missile carrying a nuclear weapon comes towards America, it will be able only to move seven miles. This much time those submarines and the machines will take. And they have arrangements to hit the missile directly to change its direction back towards Soviet Union itself.
So before the missile leaves the Soviet Union it will be directed back. All around America they now have submarines waiting. If any attack is made, then they can redirect the nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union. In fact, they will never allow them to leave Soviet territory. We don't know what arrangements the Soviet Union has, but they must be having some other arrangement.
Both countries are searching for death rays, and perhaps the Soviet Union has found them, that's why they are not worried about this arrangement. Perhaps they will not use nuclear weapons, which will be visible; they will use death rays, which will be invisible, and cannot be redirected.
And with the death rays one thing is very strange: it will kill only the living beings. Houses will remain intact. Everything -- furniture, cars, roads -- everything will remain intact. The death rays will go on showering on living people, passing from one living person to another. Wherever life is, they will be moving towards that point. So trees will die, animals will die, man will die.
Early in this century, there were a few painters who painted pictures with houses, furniture, roads -- everything is in the pictures -- but not a single living thing.
They could not explain why this idea was so much in their minds. Even seeing their pictures, you feel a great sadness arising in you.
It has been happening many times that poets, painters, get glimpses of things which may be going to happen someday. Now those pictures are predictive. If death rays come, they will simply hit living beings and go on killing them. There will be no bloodshed. The person dying will not know when he was alive, the death will be so quick. You never know when you stand before an x-ray machine that the x-ray has taken the photograph. You don't feel it. The same way with the death ray; you will not feel it, you will be simply gone. And the death ray will not end with you. It will go on jumping, it will have its range.
Two hundred enlightened people can create just the opposite situation. If they are together in a certain arrangement, they can create life rays which will protect people from death rays, which even may help somebody who has died through a death ray to come alive again. But those two hundred enlightened people have to be in a certain communication. Then they can create a circle around the world.
My own idea is that we can create two hundred enlightened people amongst our sannyasins. They are already connected and they are not alone, they are supported by the commune. Their energy can be enhanced, multiplied, by other sannyasins who may not be enlightened but are in search of it, on the way.
I mean what I have said. And if we can make a net of life rays around the earth, it can prevent even nuclear weapons from being destructive. But that is a totally different science and never experimented upon. But a few glimpses have happened in the past, and there is no harm in experimenting with it. Anyway, there is no other hope.
Our communes have to be ready for it. And they should not think of trivia, of small fights, egos. They should understand their responsibility is so great as it has never been of any human being before. And I hope that we will be able to do something. There is still time, and my people are working hard. Now it is a question whether we can manage within the time or not.
But I have a certainty that we have almost created a Noah's Ark of consciousness for the coming flood of death to the whole of humanity.
-Osho, “The Last Testament, Vol 2, #23”