Question 1
Beloved osho,
Towards the end of the first millennium, humanity was afraid that god would put an end to the world, because of what he said in the apocalypse of st. john. nowadays, as we are coming close to the end of the second millennia, man is becoming more and more afraid that perhaps he himself is going to put an end to the world. has anything changed at all in human consciousness during the last one thousand years? what does man need to understand now that he knows that he and only he will be responsible and not some fictitious god?
There has been a great change in human consciousness during the past one thousand years. But the change is such that you can see it only when a real situation arises, and man responds in a totally different way than he has ever responded before. For example, there has never been so much awareness about peace, and there has never been so much antagonism towards war.
In fact, war was always respected in the past, and peace was never thought of as anything more than a gap between two wars -- nothing positive, just a preparation for a new war. You need some time. A war destroys so much that you cannot immediately start another war; hence a time of peace is needed. This is not authentic peace, it is simply cold war. The war and all its components continue underground, preparing for a more dangerous and a more destructive war in the future.
The whole past has been respectful of the warrior. It is only just now in these few past years that war has become a dirty four-letter word, and peace has become for the first time a desire and a longing of the very heart of humanity.
As far as I am concerned, war has become almost impossible.
The impossibility of war is based on two fundamentals. One is a human consciousness about the futility of war. Nobody can claim that it is something beautiful, something honorable, something which gives dignity to humanity.
Slowly, slowly it has penetrated into human consciousness that war takes away all dignity. It makes man fall below animals, because even animals don't kill their own species; lions don't kill other lions, deer don't kill other deer. It is only man who kills other human beings. It is a disqualification, not a great quality to be honored.
So the first thing is that war has fallen into disrespect, into utter futility, stupidity; it has lost all its past glory and significance.
Secondly, the war materials -- atomic energy and nuclear weapons -- have reached to such a point that they have made war impossible. Unless the whole of humanity suddenly goes mad, war is impossible, because the only purpose of war was to defeat the enemy, the only purpose was to be victorious. Victory was the end. But now, with nuclear weapons, there is no defeat, no victory; no one is defeated, no one becomes victorious, all are dead. The whole life on the planet simply disappears.
What Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Zarathustra and the great teachers of humanity have not been able to convince man about, has been done by nuclear weapons. Now war means only one thing: a global suicide. And no man is ready to commit suicide. In fact, the closer comes the possibility of a third world war, the deeper becomes the urge to live -- and to live more consciously, and to live more lovingly, and to live more intensely. A longing for life itself has never been so intense and so profound as it is today.
I predict the impossibility of any war in the future. And this is going to change a thousand and one things in life, because if war becomes impossible, sooner or later the piling up of nuclear weapons will become an exercise in stupidity.
In the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Gorbachev, they have stopped creating nuclear weapons one-sidedly. They have tried hard to negotiate with America that they should both stop together. They said, "We go on creating out of the fear that you are creating; you go on creating out of the fear that we are creating -- we can stop together." But Ronald Reagan is Adolf Hitler number one -- a very fascist mind.
Gorbachev has taken a step so revolutionary and so intelligent and so courageous and so risky that one cannot conceive of him just as a politician. He is a man of deep understanding. He stopped creating more nuclear weapons almost one year ago, and he has been cutting the budget every moment, because he can see the possibility of what I am saying: that there is not going to be any war, because you cannot convince five billion people to die for no purpose. Gorbachev has made history by taking the step single-handedly, but America is still piling up....
The American masses should rise up in a rebellious uproar against their own government, because now even Ronald Reagan cannot say, "We have to create because the Soviet Union is creating." The Soviet Union has opened its doors to world scientists to come and examine their plants and be satisfied, because Ronald Reagan was lying continuously saying "Gorbachev has not stopped creating nuclear weapons; he is simply deceiving us." Now the whole world is convinced that the Soviet Union is no longer interested in destroying human life.
All the intelligent people of the world should protest against this American fascist attitude, and force America to stop bringing death to this beautiful planet. And I think, as the century comes to its end, there is bound to be a great protest from all over the world. America has to be put right -- it is already late!
I am reminded of George Gurdjieff. He used to say laughingly that America has not been discovered for the first time, and that is true. It is a lie that is being taught in the schools and colleges and the universities that America was discovered by Columbus. In Turkey there is a seven hundred year old map in which America is completely drawn, both the Americas, North America and South America, an exact map of the whole world. When that map was discovered it was so shocking that not only was America known, it was so well known that maps of it existed. Then what had happened?
In Indian mythology, one of the great warriors of Mahabharat, the great Indian war of five thousand years before, had married a woman from Mexico. The word in Sanskrit literature for Mexico is Makshika.
Mexico is a distortion of a Sanskrit word Makshika, because the description is exactly of Mexico; and in Mexico, Hindu temples have been found, and Hindu gods and their statues have been found. The Mexican temple is a replica of the Hindu temple.
George Gurdjieff used to say that America has been discovered many many times, but it becomes such a nuisance that we have to hush it up and forget all about it -- then somebody else discovers it again!
If Ronald Reagan and his fascist colleagues are not going to listen to the protest of the whole intelligent world, then the only way will be an absolute boycott; forgive the fools -- and forget them, so they can be discovered again by some Columbus.
The steps that Gorbachev is taking are immensely valuable, and are very convincing to the whole world that his intentions are for a beautiful co-existence.
There is no need of any war. You can have your democracy, you can have your communism, you can have your own ideology -- what is the problem? There is no need to impose your ideology on somebody else. At least man's spirit should be left in freedom to choose its own ideology -- religious, political, social. No government has the right over the rights of the individual; all governments are only servants. But strangely, because of the power in their hands, servants become masters; they start behaving as if the masters are servants. But this cannot go forever.
Yes, all the predictions of the ancient seers, like Nostradamus, that the world is going to end by the end of this century, are true in a very different sense than has been understood. The old world is going to end, and a new world is going to begin. That is my interpretation of Nostradamus.
The old man has to disappear to give place to a new man with fresh values, with one earth undivided into nations, with one humanity undivided by religions, because religions don't need to be organized. Religion is a love affair, a love affair with existence. There is no question of any organization like Christianity, or Hinduism, or Mohammedanism.
Religion is as much purely individual as love, because religion is nothing but the purest and the highest quality of love. You don't organize love! You don't say that this is Christian love, this is Hindu love, this is Mohammedan love. Love is simply love, meditation is simply meditation, peace is simply peace, enlightenment is simply enlightenment. It cannot have any adjective with it.
Changes have been happening. They will come to a peak by the end of this century when the moment of ultimate decision will have to be faced by humanity, either to transform yourself totally; drop all that is old.... Don't look backwards; start creating new values, look forward -- because the past is the past and to visit the graveyard too much is dangerous. The graveyard is a place one should visit only once, and that too is a one-way affair... you simply go there and never come back.
It is the future that should be your concern. It is the future and the faraway stars that will become your challenges. You have heard always about the golden past. We have to forget all about it; we have to create a golden future.
The decisive moment is coming close-by; either we have to decide to commit suicide.... If we cling with the past, then that is the only possibility. If we drop the past and the dead and start afresh from ABC, from the very scratch, writing the destiny of man, the days of the last part of this century will be of a tremendous revolution. The revolution is going to be so great that Nostradamus can be said to be right, that the world will end -- the world as we have known it -- and a world that we have never even dreamt of has to begin.
Chidananda, you are right that we cannot throw away the responsibility on some fictitious God, that he will end the world. We are perfectly aware that if a third world war happens, we will be the only responsible people to have destroyed ourselves. I think changes happen only in such dangerous and critical moments. If life goes on smoothly and comfortably great changes don't happen, but if life comes to a place where you have to choose between death or a new style of life, I am absolutely certain you will choose the new style of life rather than the old well-acquainted death.
Yes Chidananda, there is no god, and man is going to be responsible for whatever he chooses. And I trust in the deepest longing of everybody: it is for life, it is for love, it is for joy, it is for song, it is for flowers, it is for dances. It is for love.
Man cannot choose a global death.
It is an impossibility.
Yes, the old world will come to an end; Nostradamus is not going to be wrong. But his interpreters are all wrong. My interpretation is: The death of the old is the birth of the new.
A man down on his luck goes home to his wife and tells her, "Look dear, we are running out of money and we are gonna have to cut down on all the luxuries." He then adds scornfully, "If you would just learn to cook we could fire the chef." "In that case," replies the woman,"if you would learn to make love we could fire the chauffeur."
In critical moments one has to be truthful, and if things are going to change, then you have to change also. Your ways of love have to change. You have to drop old kinds of jealousies, competitions; you have to drop old values of honor, respectability, royal blood... all nonsense. You have to learn that the whole humanity is one brotherhood. The black and the white and the in-between, all are the same.
I am reminded... Rabindranath was in Geneva. He had just been awarded the Nobel prize, and he was being received by the government of Switzerland in a vast welcome party. Everybody was white. Somebody asked, Rabindranath, "What is your explanation? Why has God created such discriminations -- because you insist on one brotherhood of the whole humanity."
Rabindranath said, "God first created a man out of mud and baked him, but being inexperienced, baked him too much. He's the negro. He created a second man. Being afraid that he may again make another negro, he pulled him out quite early, unbaked... he's the white man."
That's why in the white man the desire for having a tan continues... a little more baking. And baking powders are available, baking lotions are available; put on those lotions and powders and lie down naked under the hot burning sun. This desire is because they were pulled out of the bakery a little too soon. God said, "My God, I have committed another mistake."
That's why the Indian is in-between. That is the third person he baked, just right, neither a little more, nor a little less. But more than that, there is not any difference... just a little more sun, a little less sun.
There is no need for any color discrimination. There is no need to have boundaries of nations, because the earth has no boundaries. There is no need to have flocks of people gathered separately -- the Catholics, the Protestants, the Hindus, the Mohammedans; each one should be free to have his own immediate and personal contact with existence, his own prayer.
The new man is on the horizon.
All the preparations to destroy the world will only destroy the old man and the old world. They will create the basic necessity for the birth of a new man. I can see him on the horizon already. He has arrived; it will just take some time for people to recognize him.
-Osho, “The Golden Future, #28, Q1”