TALKS IN AMERICA
From the False to the Truth 05
Fifth Discourse from the series of 34 discourses - From the False to the Truth by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
Osho,
Do you ever get sad?
Really a tough question! Yes and no. Yes, I get sad for you and for the world in which you are living. And you are not aware that you are living in the midst of a vast madhouse. You are so fast asleep, you don’t know what is being done to you, to others.
The politicians make me sad because they are the ugliest animals on the earth – continuously lying to people, exploiting people, humiliating people.
Before the last election in America, the governor of Oregon had a secret meeting of all the top officials of his government. The attorney general was there, Norma Paulus was there, and everybody who means anything in the government. They did not allow the journalists inside…. And still you go on calling this a democratic country?
They were deciding about my people, but they did not allow any of my people to be present there. And the governor came out and gave a press conference in which he lied completely. What happened inside and what he said outside are completely contradictory. In the press conference he said, “Things are normal. There is no need to be afraid, everything is in control. We are trying to calm down the Rajneeshees.”
I don’t know how he was trying to calm us down. He never came here, he never sent a message to us, but he was calming us down. Does he think he is a magician? And he said he was trying to keep the opposing people from getting too hot.
Inside, everything was different. Now the confidential record of the meeting has been found – he was thinking it had been burned. But in this world impossible things also happen. Now we know what happened inside the meeting; there was no question of calming anyone down, no question of creating peace. On the contrary, they were deciding how much time it would take their army to reach Rajneeshpuram to destroy it completely. They had decided to put the army on alert so any moment, within three hours, they could destroy my people.
Of course, in a way it is calming us down. If you are not here, there will be calm. It has been calm here in this place for many decades, but that calmness was death. There was only one house, and there was only one family to look after this big place. It is one hundred and twenty-six square miles – three times bigger than New York. Of course it was calm. There were no birds to sing, there were no trees to blossom. It was a dead place; we made it alive.
Now birds have started coming. Nature has a tremendous harmony when there are so many people loving, singing, dancing. Birds have started coming to this place, flowers have started blossoming.
But it is not noisy, it is not “hot” in the governor’s sense. You cannot find a cooler place in the whole world. Of course the sun is hot – that is not our fault. But the place is cool, calm, there is no disturbance. In these four years there has not been a single fight. But they want to destroy this calmness. They would love to have a dead place, the serenity of a cemetery.
There is serenity in a garden too. Do you think birds singing, flowers moving in the air, disturb anything? They make the silence deeper, meaningful. Silence in itself is meaningless unless it has the potential for a song, unless it has something in it to blossom, something to grow.
In the meeting they decided that the army should be put on alert, and the army was put on alert. And they were ready, in three hours, to destroy this place, these people. Of course we would have died singing and dancing. We would have made history.
But these people make me sad – and they are in power, and they go on lying. Now what do you call it – is it not a conspiracy, to tell the people that everything is normal? Then why is the army on alert? And what crime have we committed that we have to be destroyed?
Just the other day the information came to me that in California, whenever there is a boxing match…. The University of California has been researching it, and they have found that whenever there is a boxing match in California, for a few days the murder rate goes thirteen percent higher than normal. And this is the murder rate – it says nothing about smaller fights, people wounded, rapes. Still boxing continues to be legal.
This place, where nobody fights, is illegal. People come close only to hug each other. This small and beautiful life is not to be wasted in fighting. That’s why I say yes, sometimes it makes me sad.
When I look around the world…we are in exactly the same economic situation as the world was in before the second world war. The American dollar was going higher and higher, and all other countries’ economies were falling apart. This is the kind of atmosphere when war becomes absolutely necessary.
When I was in India the dollar was worth seven and a half rupees. Now it is worth twenty rupees – three times higher. The same is the situation in Germany, in England, in Holland – all over the world. The same was the situation before the second world war. You cannot live in an ocean of poverty, with economies failing, nations going bankrupt, people all over the world dying and starving. Sooner or later this euphoria of the American dollar will backfire; it will become an absolute necessity to start the third world war to divert people’s minds.
Seventy-five percent of every nation’s income goes for war preparations. People are starving and dying – and you are creating bombs. Bread is needed, not bombs. Can’t you see the insanity?
Isn’t there a single nation which can declare, “We are going to stop creating nuclear weapons at the risk of being defeated”? Anyway, a country like England, which has lived for three hundred years in great luxury, exploiting the whole world…. Now the empire has disappeared. England is dark, dismal; there is no hope – and still they are putting all their resources into creating nuclear weapons, knowing perfectly well that they can never again be a world power. They cannot compete with America or the Soviet Union, or even China.
When you are not going to be a world power – even with nuclear weapons you will be defeated and destroyed – then what is the point of creating those weapons? In fact it is such a beautiful situation that you can dissolve all defense measures, you can stop having a defense ministry. There is no need; you will be defeated anyway.
But what to say about England? Even India, which is dying, goes on and on creating more and more war material. They are also after nuclear weapons.
In the history of man there has never been such a beautiful moment, when some courageous nation can say, “There is no need for any defense. We are all human beings – who is going to attack us?”
And do you see the cunningness? All these defense departments are not really for defense, they are for attack. Adolf Hitler attacked the world, but he had no department for attack. It was the defense department that was attacking.
The world will be going more and more into darker spaces, ditches. But nobody is ready to listen; their minds are conditioned so deeply that they are almost deaf. They hear, but they don’t listen.
I just heard that one clergyman from Europe is here. He loves me, he has been coming to all the celebrations. But because I said something about Mother Teresa, he became very upset. This makes me sad. Why did he become so upset? Can’t he understand a simple thing? – that Mother Teresa is helping poverty to increase in the world, and poverty ultimately means war.
He said that his four girlfriends…. Strange, a clergyman having four girlfriends? Even I cannot afford that. And nobody is there to prevent me, I am my own master; I don’t accept orders from anybody. Four girlfriends of his had been to Mother Teresa, and they all said that she is a nice woman. So what? There are millions of nice women, far nicer than Mother Teresa. And I have not said that she’s not nice. Why do you get upset? Yes, she is a nice old witch. Now get upset. And pack your luggage and go back. Your love for me was of no worth.
This makes me sad. In these thirty years thousands of people have come along with me; they will go a few steps and then drop away. They had the potential, they had the courage; otherwise even to go a few steps with me toward the unknown is difficult. But after a few steps, why did they drop out? Something I said disturbed them. But they are not aware – it is not their consciousness which is disturbed, it is their conditioning which gets upset, disturbed.
Are you going to listen to awareness or to all kinds of rubbish that rabbis, bishops, popes, mothers and fathers have forced into your head when you were very small and vulnerable?
I sometimes feel puzzled: why do you call Mother Teresa “mother,” and why do you call the pope “father”? Popa in Italian means father. Instead of calling him pope start calling him popa – that sounds better. You call the pope, who has no children, “father.” You call Mother Teresa, who has no children, “mother.” Let these two get married. And put them on the pill, because we don’t want their progeny. Enough is enough!
Existence does not make me sad. My own inner being for three decades has never felt a single moment of sadness for myself. I have completely forgotten the strategy, how to be sad. But what goes on happening around the world just brings tears to my eyes.
This world is not worth saving. Once in a while I think it will be better if the third world war happens and destroys this whole stupid humanity. Perhaps there is a time when a thing gets so rotten that it is better to burn it.
Consciousness is eternal. Even if this earth becomes without human beings, I don’t see any problem in it. There are at least fifty thousand planets around the earth where life exists. Your consciousnesses will move to other planets. Nothing will be destroyed – only this ugly earth, these ugly politicians, priests; they will be finished.
This makes me sad: man on the earth has the highest quality of consciousness, and yet his behavior is barbarous. And everything that you call civilization is just a word.
Once a man asked George Bernard Shaw, “What do you think about civilization?”
He said, “It is a good thing, but it has not happened yet.”
What the religions go on doing around the world makes me sad. They go on making you more and more idiotic. Their basis is faith. They force every child to be faithful, a believer, and if possible, to be a fanatic believer. You will find all kinds of fanatics around. Even if you don’t want to be delivered, you don’t want to be saved, they will force you to be saved.
There are Christian sects who are self-appointed saviors. Who gives you the authority to save another? And are you certain that you are saved? Your face, your eyes do not give any proof of it; you look angry. Even a nice man like Jesus was an angry man. Who gave him the authority to beat the money-changers in the temple of Jerusalem and throw them out? Self-appointed judges….
Jesus wanted to save the world – he could not even save himself. And he has left an ugly heritage which goes on growing like a cancerous growth, destroying everything that can raise you to beauty, to truth, to silence, to ecstasy.
I have never seen a Christian ecstatic. Even Jesus was not ecstatic; he was burdened, and continuously having hallucinations. Now thinking oneself the only begotten son of God – do you think the man was sane? Thinking that he is the only real messenger bringing truth to humanity – do you think this man is mentally healthy? He is utterly sick, and Christians are sick.
But it is not only the Christians; the Hindus are in the same boat, the Mohammedans are in the same boat. Their names and their theologies and their scriptures are different, but the basic madness is there. They are all hallucinating.
Your religions are nothing but opium. Drugs are prohibited – and the greatest drug is your religions. They should be abandoned, completely abandoned, if we want man to get rid of hallucinations. Otherwise, people are hallucinating that soon they will reach heaven and all the angels will be there dancing and singing, “Alleluia!”
There is no heaven, and there are no angels. Heaven is a state of consciousness. It is not a place. It is not part of geography; otherwise there would be very much confusion. In India, if you ask the Hindus where hell is, they say, “Just under us, deep down.” But if you make a hole from India deep down, you may enter Oregon – and their heaven is above. But the earth is round; everything is above, and everything from some angle, some place, is below. The Hindu’s hell is your heaven, your heaven is a Hindu’s hell.
You go on listening to these people, and you go on absorbing their nonsense in you. It is sheer poison. The politicians, the priests, make me sad. They are all programming your mind and changing it into a computer, a mechanism.
My work here is to deprogram you. Whether you get upset or not, I don’t care. You will get upset, because deprogramming is upsetting. You have believed a certain thing for fifty years, sixty years, and suddenly I say that it is nonsense. You cannot accept it, because that means you have been a stupid guy. But if you have guts and intelligence, there is still time to get out of the rut.
I am, and my religion is, nothing but the science of deprogramming. And remember, don’t get mixed up with the deprogrammers that exist in California. They are not deprogrammers, they are reprogrammers. If any Christian moves away from Christianity, his parents becomes paranoid; they force the person to go to those so-called deprogrammers. They don’t deprogram him, they reprogram him. He was escaping from Christianity, they bring him back to Christianity. You call it deprogramming….
Deprogramming means that you are simply left without any program. You are left without any religion, you are left without any theology. You are left alone to be yourself, an individual.
People go on asking me, “How many followers do you have?” I have not a single follower in the whole world, because my whole work is to destroy following, followers, and to create courage in people so they can stand on their own and be individuals.
It makes me sad that you are not individuals. Somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Buddhist. You are not individuals. You are blind followers, programmed by other blind followers.
But as far as I am concerned, there is no sadness in me. Day and night, I am in absolute bliss. That also makes me sad, that what is possible for me – an ordinary individual like me – why can’t it be possible for all? I do not claim any speciality. I do not claim that I am the only begotten son of God. I do not proclaim that I am the prophet bringing a fresh message from God.
All these prophets, messengers, avataras, are just holy shit! Of course, it has been clinging to you so long that when I start hitting you hard so that this holy shit drops, you get upset.
I can understand, but I cannot stand it!
Osho,
Please comment on this statement by J.P. Markham: “I fear the contented man. I fear him because there is no progress unless there is discontent.”
I do not care whose statement this is. One thing I know, that discontent certainly makes you speedy. You go on running your whole life. You become just a vehicle that goes on moving faster and faster. But for what? I do not call it progress.
You may have all the money of the world, still you will be running after money. You may have all the knowledge, and still you will be running after more knowledge. In every dimension there is infinite space to run.
I have heard…. A man and his wife were flying in a plane; the man was piloting. The plane was going full speed, and the wife asked, “Where are we going?”
The man said, “Don’t bother where – look at the speed! We are certainly going somewhere.”
Discontent is another name for inferiority complex. Discontent means: you look around, people have this, people have that, and you don’t have it – you are discontented. But just seeing that somebody has it, you becomes discontented, you start feeling inferior. You have to surpass it, you have to get ahead. This continuous getting ahead is called progress – it is not progress. And this kind of progress begins even before your birth.
When a man makes love to a woman, the living cells that he releases into the woman’s body start running. Progress begins there, because in a single lovemaking millions of living cells are released. They must have been feeling imprisoned in the man. Whenever they get the chance they go fast – you cannot understand how fast, because they are so small you cannot see them with your eyes.
The passage between them and the female egg, in proportion to their size, is almost two miles. And their life is very short, they are almost on their deathbed, because they can live for only two days, not more than that. In those two days those tiny cells have to run two miles, with millions of competitors, and only one will reach the female egg.
Sometimes it happens, two reach at the same time – that’s why twins are born. Once the female egg opens and receives a male cell, it closes, and all those millions – those progressive people – simply die. If your lovemaking is counted, you have been murdering millions of people your whole life.
And don’t think that the celibate monks are not murdering. Their cells die in imprisonment – at least you give them a little freedom, a little democracy, a little chance to progress. The celibate monk, Catholic or Hindu, does not allow those poor people to get out of his body. Yoga has methods to go on preventing them from getting out of you. They go on dying within you…. You are eating, you are getting nourishment, and it is a natural process. The body goes on; the body knows no religion.
The body goes on doing its function. It is programmed by nature, not by any priest – it will go on creating new blood cells, it will go on creating new semen cells, it will go on creating everything that the body needs. But when new living semen cells are created, the old have to die and vacate the place. The new ones have come – the new generation has come and the old generation has to go. There is not much space for all of them to coexist.
When you think of progress…it starts with your lovemaking – a mad race – and where do you end? You end with a woman. Great, just great!
And then your whole life it is the same, the same story. People are running after power, people are running after money, people are running after respectability. People are running after everything you can imagine, and where do they end up? Even if you reach the last rung of the ladder – there is no such thing, just for argument’s sake I am saying it – even if you reach the last rung of the ladder, what will you do then?
I remember I was driving and a dog started following my car, chasing – he was hot, really progressive, very discontented. But he was not acquainted with me. He must have chased other cars….
I stopped the car – the poor dog was huffing, his tongue was hanging out. I stopped the car and asked the dog, “What now? What do you want?”
And the way the dog looked at me…Ronald Reagan would also look the same way!
Even if you become the president of a country, or a prime minister of a country, so what? You call it progress? It is obsession with speed.
Discontent brings conflict because it brings competition. If you are running, others are also running. There is going to be competition, there is going to be cut-throat competition. Hence all these wars.
The Polack pope is reaching out to the Christians around the world with the message, “Drop your antagonism with the Jews.” The Christians cannot understand. For two thousand years they have been killing Jews. When Adolf Hitler killed almost one million Jews in Germany, the high priest of the Christians in Germany blessed him; he had done a great religious act by removing these Jews.
For two thousand years Christians have been killing Jews because Jews killed Jesus; and nobody bothers about the fact that Jesus was a Jew, he was not a Christian – it is none of your business! If Jews want to kill another Jew, it is their internal affair. Jesus never claimed that he was a Christian. If he had claimed that he was a Christian, he would not have been crucified – then, who bothers?
Jews were upset because he was saying he was their Lord, that he was coming from God just as Moses, Abraham, Ezekiel and other prophets have come. And in a way he is higher than all those prophets, because they were only postmen, nothing much. He is the only begotten son. Naturally this Jew was going to be killed by the Jews. But they killed a Jew, they never killed a Christian. Christians have been killing Jews. I don’t see the mathematics of it.
And how after two thousand years it happens in a Polack mind…and it is known all over the world that anything like mind does not exist in them, they are empty bottles of alcohol. If you are a cannibal and you eat a Polack, you will know what I mean. Just a little taste of a Polack and you will go unconscious!
This Polack popa is trying to create a bridge, a communication between the Christians and the Jews. Why? These things are not religious, these things are political. After the second world war they created a Jewish nation, Israel. Jews think the Americans, the British and other allies – who were all Christian – have done a great favor to them; it is not so. It was a very cunning strategy.
Israel is the holy land of the Jews, and also the holy land of the Christians. It was not in existence centuries ago – because the population was Mohammedan; there was no Israel before 1945. There used to be a nation, Palestine, which is no longer anywhere; it simply disappeared.
Christians could have taken possession of Israel, but they were aware that if they took possession of Israel, then Jews would be against them all over the world. And Israel is surrounded by Mohammedans, the whole of the Middle East is Mohammedan; Israel itself is full of Mohammedans. It would create a conflict, a war, a continuous war between Christians on the one side and Jews and Mohammedans on the other side. In fact, Mohammedanism is closer to Judaism than Christianity is; much of Mohammedanism is borrowed from Judaism.
To avoid this situation of having Jews against them…. The politicians could not do that, because if the Jews are against the Christians, then who is going to donate to their election funds? It would have been disastrous, particularly in America, because all these politicians in America are supported by Jewish money.
And it was in the hands of America, because American forces were there in Israel to hand over the country to anybody – either to Christians or to Mohammedans or to Jews. It was a Mohammedan country and it would have been right to give it back to them. But Christians are against Mohammedans for a very simple thing – that’s why I say this whole world needs to be finished – a very small problem.
Mohammedans accept Jesus as a prophet of God but not as a son of God. And they are very logical about it: where is the wife? There is nobody, other than the holy ghost. And nobody knows about the holy ghost, to what sex he belongs. Is he male? Certainly Christians cannot accept that he is female, because to raise woman so high that she becomes part of the trinity, the highest in existence…the holy ghost has to be male. But that makes God a homosexual, and homosexuals don’t produce children. Then Jesus’ whole position becomes very strange.
Hence Mohammedans say Jesus is a prophet, a messenger of God, but not a son of God; God has no relatives. This is the only difference. And Christians and Mohammedans have been killing each other for fourteen hundred years. These things should be laughed at, not fought for.
The Americans could not give it to Mohammedans, although the country was Mohammedan, and it had been under the Mohammedans for a long time. They could not keep it for themselves, because that would mean creating two enemies: Jews and Mohammedans. They found a very political and cunning way: they gave it to the Jews. In that way they created a bridge between Jews and Christians, a friendship; they avoided one enemy, the Jews, avoided the other enemy, the Mohammedans, and very cleverly put the Jews in such a bad situation that they will continually have to fight with the Mohammedans.
Nobody can see any end to it because the country is Mohammedan, it belongs to the Mohammedans. It was forcibly taken and given to the Jews. This gave a very good opportunity to American Christians to get more donations from Jews; and it was a very good situation: they need not kill Jews, Mohammedans will kill them. Can you see the strategy? – so beautiful, so sophisticated.
Mohammedans will kill them – they have been killing them – on the one hand; on the other hand, the Jews will remain dependent on Christian countries. Israel is not independent; if America stops giving support to them, they will be finished within minutes. They have to remain under American control. Israel is nothing but a slave country of the Christians. And it will have to remain a slave; otherwise Mohammedans will kill it.
American politicians have done a good job. Jews think they have been favored; that is nonsense. They have been put in such a fix that they will never be out of it. And Christians have made a great step toward absorbing them. That has been the desire of Christianity: to absorb the whole world.
This hand of friendship is a not a hand of friendship. It is a hand that wants to destroy you. Jews are in tremendous discontent, Mohammedans are in tremendous discontent, Christians are in tremendous discontent. Whoever has said that discontent is needed for progress? Humanity has been in discontent for as far back as you can imagine. What progress has happened?
Yes, you have better roads, you have better machines, you have high technology – but you don’t have a better man. And your high technology, your nuclear weapons, your so-called good roads, beautiful buildings – without a good man they are just dangerous; not only useless, very dangerous. It is giving a naked sword into the hands of a child. Man remains retarded and he is being given nuclear weapons.
I have heard…. When Ronald Reagan became the president of America, he was on a morning walk on a beach with his favorite friend, a chimpanzee. Great progress is happening: chimpanzees are friends of presidents! One man sitting there on the beach was very much puzzled. He said, “Mr. President, sir, am I hallucinating? What is this chimpanzee doing with you?”
Reagan said, “You are not hallucinating, he is my friend.”
The man said, “I am not asking you, I am asking the president. Don’t interfere.”
In the first world war, for the first time psychoanalysts were employed by the governments to find out the intelligent quotient – I.Q. – of the soldiers. And it was a shock: the average man’s mental age is close to fourteen years. He may be seventy years old, but his mental age is not more than fourteen – it may be less.
What progress has happened? You have not been able even to keep a synchronicity between man’s physical age and his psychological age, and you call your world a civilized world – where everybody is retarded?
But these retarded people are needed by the politicians, by the priests, by all the vested interests, because if a man’s intelligence also grows along with his body, then he will not become just old; he will grow up. His old age will be a beautiful experience. He will be able to drop all the conditionings which have been forced upon him.
But a retarded person cannot do that. He cannot even understand anything higher. He cannot even understand Leonardo da Vinci, he cannot understand Kalidasa, he cannot understand Rabindranath Tagore, he cannot understand Lao Tzu. He can only understand third-rate newspapers – The Oregonian. Yes, that he can understand.
He can follows a man like Reverend Jim Jones. Only a retarded man can do that. It is not a surprise that Jim Jones’ followers were all black. Of course, they are more retarded than the white people; they have lived in slavery for so long, uneducated, humiliated – they are not first-class citizens. They have not been treated as human beings. Reverend Jim Jones had not a single white man as his follower. Those who died, committed suicide in Jonestown, were retarded people.
A man of intelligence would like to love, to live, to laugh. A great opportunity has been given by existence; he would like to drink out of it to the fullest. He would like to squeeze all that life contains.
But Jim Jones convinced those fools to commit suicide. Of course Christianity has the ultimate responsibility for it, because Reverend Jim Jones was an ordained Christian priest. Of course the cross is the symbol of suicide, and the whole teaching of Christianity is not for living joyously.
If Jesus can convince retarded people in Judea that when he reaches God, soon after they will all follow him…. He never defined how long this “soon” is. Two thousand years have passed; the “soon” is still there. Jim Jones carried the logic to its very end. He said, “Why should I wait there and and you wait here? You die with me, so we all go together.” He convinced those retarded people to commit suicide.
Retarded people can be convinced about anything. Retarded people are being convinced to go to Vietnam to kill innocent people who have done no wrong to them. They can be sent anywhere, can be convinced to do anything.
Japan had suicidal soldiers – a separate division. They would take an aeroplane full of bombs, and the pilot knew he was not going to come back, but he was dying for his country. Only retarded people can be convinced to die for a country. What is a country? Where is Palestine? And for Palestine people have been dying. Countries exist only on the map; the earth is one.
That’s why I say Rajneeshpuram is not in America, not in Oregon. This whole earth is ours. Rajneeshpuram is the capital of the whole world.
We don’t believe in nations. It is idiotic – what is the need of all these nations? Yes, a world government is needed, but not nations. Unless we create a world government, wars will continue because these nations will go on fighting – India with Pakistan, China with India – the war will continue somewhere or other.
The only way to stop war is not what the pacifists go on doing – carrying posters in processions. There are a few people who enjoy it; it is good exercise. And they are boiling because of discontent, so it is good in a way to shout slogans; it releases something in them. But these pacifists are not going to stop the war that is just on the horizon. Any moment, any chimpanzee can trigger it.
Tomorrow is more uncertain than it has ever been. The next moment is more uncertain than it has ever been.
Protest, protest marches, slogans – this is not going to help. These people are exactly the same retarded people, they are just on a lower rung of the ladder. I have been watching these pacifists and their processions, their shouting and their slogans. It does not give the sense of peace; these are warmongers. Perhaps they are ready to fight for peace.
There is only one way: nations should disappear, they are an unnecessary burden on us. The world can easily be one, there is no need of different colors on the map. If the world dissolves the nations, whom are you going to fight? And if the world becomes a little more intelligent and drops all religious nonsense, whom are you going to fight? And if you are not going to fight, there will be no Ethiopia, there will be no poor India – because all your energy, all your money, all your resources that are going into war efforts will be freed. The whole humanity can live richly.
People ask me, “What are you doing for Ethiopia?” Whatever I am doing, I am not sending Ethiopia some bread, some butter – that is not going to help. In the first place it is never going to reach Ethiopia, it will reach the Christian missionaries. In the last year they collected fifteen million dollars in America for Ethiopia. All has disappeared, it never reached Ethiopia. The same has happened before; Ethiopia has been in trouble for four years. In the name of humanity, service, these missionaries collect the money and swallow it.
Last year when the fifteen million dollars simply disappeared, it was enquired what had happened. The Christian missionaries said they did not want to send the money to the Ethiopian government, so they found a French agency to distribute the money, food, clothes, to the starving Ethiopians. When the French agency was asked, they could not believe it; they had never heard about these missionaries.
Ethiopia will be there, more Ethiopians will be there tomorrow. Small efforts won’t help. I don’t believe in throwing a spoonful of sugar into the ocean to make it sweet. I am not retarded.
This Ethiopia, this India, the poor countries in the East, in Africa – this is your doing! First you create the problem, and then you start talking about serving humanity. Why create the problem in the first place? Dissolve all the nations if you have any love for humanity. And dissolve all the religions if you have any respect for civilization.
A civilized man cannot be a Christian, a Jew, a Mohammedan. He cannot be an American, he cannot be an Indian. A civilized man is simply man. And if wars disappear, the world will not need priests to persuade you that “Blessed are the poor,” because there will be nobody who is poor. Then the priests will not be able to distract your mind toward heaven, because we can make heaven on this very earth.
If God has thrown out Adam and Eve, do tit for tat: throw him out. We will make the Garden of Eden here! Let God beg to come in.
Why should you pray and beg that you should be accepted, when we can create paradise here? But these politicians, these priests, go on diverting your energies. They are diverting science toward war. Science has now come to a point where it can make this earth so beautiful, so comfortable, so lovable that there will be no Jonestown. Nobody will want to commit suicide.
It is a discovery of scientific research that man’s body has an inner capacity to go on renewing itself – of course only for seventy, eighty years, and in rich countries for a hundred years. But in some countries even up to two hundred years the body remains young. We just have to put our scientific intelligence in the service of life – up to now it has been in the service of death. Man can live forever on this earth; there is no need to search for an eternal home beyond death – that is just a consolation for you.
But if you can be as blissful as they have been depicting people in paradise, naturally you won’t take any interest in their bibles, in their korans and gitas. You will not go to confess your sins, because there is no sin.
People just need more understanding. People need more life, more wisdom, more clarity. You don’t need to be forgiven. You have not done any wrong.
You have been doing only one thing wrong: you have been following idiots. God, who does not exist, may forgive you. I cannot forgive you for that.
Do you ever get sad?
Really a tough question! Yes and no. Yes, I get sad for you and for the world in which you are living. And you are not aware that you are living in the midst of a vast madhouse. You are so fast asleep, you don’t know what is being done to you, to others.
The politicians make me sad because they are the ugliest animals on the earth – continuously lying to people, exploiting people, humiliating people.
Before the last election in America, the governor of Oregon had a secret meeting of all the top officials of his government. The attorney general was there, Norma Paulus was there, and everybody who means anything in the government. They did not allow the journalists inside…. And still you go on calling this a democratic country?
They were deciding about my people, but they did not allow any of my people to be present there. And the governor came out and gave a press conference in which he lied completely. What happened inside and what he said outside are completely contradictory. In the press conference he said, “Things are normal. There is no need to be afraid, everything is in control. We are trying to calm down the Rajneeshees.”
I don’t know how he was trying to calm us down. He never came here, he never sent a message to us, but he was calming us down. Does he think he is a magician? And he said he was trying to keep the opposing people from getting too hot.
Inside, everything was different. Now the confidential record of the meeting has been found – he was thinking it had been burned. But in this world impossible things also happen. Now we know what happened inside the meeting; there was no question of calming anyone down, no question of creating peace. On the contrary, they were deciding how much time it would take their army to reach Rajneeshpuram to destroy it completely. They had decided to put the army on alert so any moment, within three hours, they could destroy my people.
Of course, in a way it is calming us down. If you are not here, there will be calm. It has been calm here in this place for many decades, but that calmness was death. There was only one house, and there was only one family to look after this big place. It is one hundred and twenty-six square miles – three times bigger than New York. Of course it was calm. There were no birds to sing, there were no trees to blossom. It was a dead place; we made it alive.
Now birds have started coming. Nature has a tremendous harmony when there are so many people loving, singing, dancing. Birds have started coming to this place, flowers have started blossoming.
But it is not noisy, it is not “hot” in the governor’s sense. You cannot find a cooler place in the whole world. Of course the sun is hot – that is not our fault. But the place is cool, calm, there is no disturbance. In these four years there has not been a single fight. But they want to destroy this calmness. They would love to have a dead place, the serenity of a cemetery.
There is serenity in a garden too. Do you think birds singing, flowers moving in the air, disturb anything? They make the silence deeper, meaningful. Silence in itself is meaningless unless it has the potential for a song, unless it has something in it to blossom, something to grow.
In the meeting they decided that the army should be put on alert, and the army was put on alert. And they were ready, in three hours, to destroy this place, these people. Of course we would have died singing and dancing. We would have made history.
But these people make me sad – and they are in power, and they go on lying. Now what do you call it – is it not a conspiracy, to tell the people that everything is normal? Then why is the army on alert? And what crime have we committed that we have to be destroyed?
Just the other day the information came to me that in California, whenever there is a boxing match…. The University of California has been researching it, and they have found that whenever there is a boxing match in California, for a few days the murder rate goes thirteen percent higher than normal. And this is the murder rate – it says nothing about smaller fights, people wounded, rapes. Still boxing continues to be legal.
This place, where nobody fights, is illegal. People come close only to hug each other. This small and beautiful life is not to be wasted in fighting. That’s why I say yes, sometimes it makes me sad.
When I look around the world…we are in exactly the same economic situation as the world was in before the second world war. The American dollar was going higher and higher, and all other countries’ economies were falling apart. This is the kind of atmosphere when war becomes absolutely necessary.
When I was in India the dollar was worth seven and a half rupees. Now it is worth twenty rupees – three times higher. The same is the situation in Germany, in England, in Holland – all over the world. The same was the situation before the second world war. You cannot live in an ocean of poverty, with economies failing, nations going bankrupt, people all over the world dying and starving. Sooner or later this euphoria of the American dollar will backfire; it will become an absolute necessity to start the third world war to divert people’s minds.
Seventy-five percent of every nation’s income goes for war preparations. People are starving and dying – and you are creating bombs. Bread is needed, not bombs. Can’t you see the insanity?
Isn’t there a single nation which can declare, “We are going to stop creating nuclear weapons at the risk of being defeated”? Anyway, a country like England, which has lived for three hundred years in great luxury, exploiting the whole world…. Now the empire has disappeared. England is dark, dismal; there is no hope – and still they are putting all their resources into creating nuclear weapons, knowing perfectly well that they can never again be a world power. They cannot compete with America or the Soviet Union, or even China.
When you are not going to be a world power – even with nuclear weapons you will be defeated and destroyed – then what is the point of creating those weapons? In fact it is such a beautiful situation that you can dissolve all defense measures, you can stop having a defense ministry. There is no need; you will be defeated anyway.
But what to say about England? Even India, which is dying, goes on and on creating more and more war material. They are also after nuclear weapons.
In the history of man there has never been such a beautiful moment, when some courageous nation can say, “There is no need for any defense. We are all human beings – who is going to attack us?”
And do you see the cunningness? All these defense departments are not really for defense, they are for attack. Adolf Hitler attacked the world, but he had no department for attack. It was the defense department that was attacking.
The world will be going more and more into darker spaces, ditches. But nobody is ready to listen; their minds are conditioned so deeply that they are almost deaf. They hear, but they don’t listen.
I just heard that one clergyman from Europe is here. He loves me, he has been coming to all the celebrations. But because I said something about Mother Teresa, he became very upset. This makes me sad. Why did he become so upset? Can’t he understand a simple thing? – that Mother Teresa is helping poverty to increase in the world, and poverty ultimately means war.
He said that his four girlfriends…. Strange, a clergyman having four girlfriends? Even I cannot afford that. And nobody is there to prevent me, I am my own master; I don’t accept orders from anybody. Four girlfriends of his had been to Mother Teresa, and they all said that she is a nice woman. So what? There are millions of nice women, far nicer than Mother Teresa. And I have not said that she’s not nice. Why do you get upset? Yes, she is a nice old witch. Now get upset. And pack your luggage and go back. Your love for me was of no worth.
This makes me sad. In these thirty years thousands of people have come along with me; they will go a few steps and then drop away. They had the potential, they had the courage; otherwise even to go a few steps with me toward the unknown is difficult. But after a few steps, why did they drop out? Something I said disturbed them. But they are not aware – it is not their consciousness which is disturbed, it is their conditioning which gets upset, disturbed.
Are you going to listen to awareness or to all kinds of rubbish that rabbis, bishops, popes, mothers and fathers have forced into your head when you were very small and vulnerable?
I sometimes feel puzzled: why do you call Mother Teresa “mother,” and why do you call the pope “father”? Popa in Italian means father. Instead of calling him pope start calling him popa – that sounds better. You call the pope, who has no children, “father.” You call Mother Teresa, who has no children, “mother.” Let these two get married. And put them on the pill, because we don’t want their progeny. Enough is enough!
Existence does not make me sad. My own inner being for three decades has never felt a single moment of sadness for myself. I have completely forgotten the strategy, how to be sad. But what goes on happening around the world just brings tears to my eyes.
This world is not worth saving. Once in a while I think it will be better if the third world war happens and destroys this whole stupid humanity. Perhaps there is a time when a thing gets so rotten that it is better to burn it.
Consciousness is eternal. Even if this earth becomes without human beings, I don’t see any problem in it. There are at least fifty thousand planets around the earth where life exists. Your consciousnesses will move to other planets. Nothing will be destroyed – only this ugly earth, these ugly politicians, priests; they will be finished.
This makes me sad: man on the earth has the highest quality of consciousness, and yet his behavior is barbarous. And everything that you call civilization is just a word.
Once a man asked George Bernard Shaw, “What do you think about civilization?”
He said, “It is a good thing, but it has not happened yet.”
What the religions go on doing around the world makes me sad. They go on making you more and more idiotic. Their basis is faith. They force every child to be faithful, a believer, and if possible, to be a fanatic believer. You will find all kinds of fanatics around. Even if you don’t want to be delivered, you don’t want to be saved, they will force you to be saved.
There are Christian sects who are self-appointed saviors. Who gives you the authority to save another? And are you certain that you are saved? Your face, your eyes do not give any proof of it; you look angry. Even a nice man like Jesus was an angry man. Who gave him the authority to beat the money-changers in the temple of Jerusalem and throw them out? Self-appointed judges….
Jesus wanted to save the world – he could not even save himself. And he has left an ugly heritage which goes on growing like a cancerous growth, destroying everything that can raise you to beauty, to truth, to silence, to ecstasy.
I have never seen a Christian ecstatic. Even Jesus was not ecstatic; he was burdened, and continuously having hallucinations. Now thinking oneself the only begotten son of God – do you think the man was sane? Thinking that he is the only real messenger bringing truth to humanity – do you think this man is mentally healthy? He is utterly sick, and Christians are sick.
But it is not only the Christians; the Hindus are in the same boat, the Mohammedans are in the same boat. Their names and their theologies and their scriptures are different, but the basic madness is there. They are all hallucinating.
Your religions are nothing but opium. Drugs are prohibited – and the greatest drug is your religions. They should be abandoned, completely abandoned, if we want man to get rid of hallucinations. Otherwise, people are hallucinating that soon they will reach heaven and all the angels will be there dancing and singing, “Alleluia!”
There is no heaven, and there are no angels. Heaven is a state of consciousness. It is not a place. It is not part of geography; otherwise there would be very much confusion. In India, if you ask the Hindus where hell is, they say, “Just under us, deep down.” But if you make a hole from India deep down, you may enter Oregon – and their heaven is above. But the earth is round; everything is above, and everything from some angle, some place, is below. The Hindu’s hell is your heaven, your heaven is a Hindu’s hell.
You go on listening to these people, and you go on absorbing their nonsense in you. It is sheer poison. The politicians, the priests, make me sad. They are all programming your mind and changing it into a computer, a mechanism.
My work here is to deprogram you. Whether you get upset or not, I don’t care. You will get upset, because deprogramming is upsetting. You have believed a certain thing for fifty years, sixty years, and suddenly I say that it is nonsense. You cannot accept it, because that means you have been a stupid guy. But if you have guts and intelligence, there is still time to get out of the rut.
I am, and my religion is, nothing but the science of deprogramming. And remember, don’t get mixed up with the deprogrammers that exist in California. They are not deprogrammers, they are reprogrammers. If any Christian moves away from Christianity, his parents becomes paranoid; they force the person to go to those so-called deprogrammers. They don’t deprogram him, they reprogram him. He was escaping from Christianity, they bring him back to Christianity. You call it deprogramming….
Deprogramming means that you are simply left without any program. You are left without any religion, you are left without any theology. You are left alone to be yourself, an individual.
People go on asking me, “How many followers do you have?” I have not a single follower in the whole world, because my whole work is to destroy following, followers, and to create courage in people so they can stand on their own and be individuals.
It makes me sad that you are not individuals. Somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Buddhist. You are not individuals. You are blind followers, programmed by other blind followers.
But as far as I am concerned, there is no sadness in me. Day and night, I am in absolute bliss. That also makes me sad, that what is possible for me – an ordinary individual like me – why can’t it be possible for all? I do not claim any speciality. I do not claim that I am the only begotten son of God. I do not proclaim that I am the prophet bringing a fresh message from God.
All these prophets, messengers, avataras, are just holy shit! Of course, it has been clinging to you so long that when I start hitting you hard so that this holy shit drops, you get upset.
I can understand, but I cannot stand it!
Osho,
Please comment on this statement by J.P. Markham: “I fear the contented man. I fear him because there is no progress unless there is discontent.”
I do not care whose statement this is. One thing I know, that discontent certainly makes you speedy. You go on running your whole life. You become just a vehicle that goes on moving faster and faster. But for what? I do not call it progress.
You may have all the money of the world, still you will be running after money. You may have all the knowledge, and still you will be running after more knowledge. In every dimension there is infinite space to run.
I have heard…. A man and his wife were flying in a plane; the man was piloting. The plane was going full speed, and the wife asked, “Where are we going?”
The man said, “Don’t bother where – look at the speed! We are certainly going somewhere.”
Discontent is another name for inferiority complex. Discontent means: you look around, people have this, people have that, and you don’t have it – you are discontented. But just seeing that somebody has it, you becomes discontented, you start feeling inferior. You have to surpass it, you have to get ahead. This continuous getting ahead is called progress – it is not progress. And this kind of progress begins even before your birth.
When a man makes love to a woman, the living cells that he releases into the woman’s body start running. Progress begins there, because in a single lovemaking millions of living cells are released. They must have been feeling imprisoned in the man. Whenever they get the chance they go fast – you cannot understand how fast, because they are so small you cannot see them with your eyes.
The passage between them and the female egg, in proportion to their size, is almost two miles. And their life is very short, they are almost on their deathbed, because they can live for only two days, not more than that. In those two days those tiny cells have to run two miles, with millions of competitors, and only one will reach the female egg.
Sometimes it happens, two reach at the same time – that’s why twins are born. Once the female egg opens and receives a male cell, it closes, and all those millions – those progressive people – simply die. If your lovemaking is counted, you have been murdering millions of people your whole life.
And don’t think that the celibate monks are not murdering. Their cells die in imprisonment – at least you give them a little freedom, a little democracy, a little chance to progress. The celibate monk, Catholic or Hindu, does not allow those poor people to get out of his body. Yoga has methods to go on preventing them from getting out of you. They go on dying within you…. You are eating, you are getting nourishment, and it is a natural process. The body goes on; the body knows no religion.
The body goes on doing its function. It is programmed by nature, not by any priest – it will go on creating new blood cells, it will go on creating new semen cells, it will go on creating everything that the body needs. But when new living semen cells are created, the old have to die and vacate the place. The new ones have come – the new generation has come and the old generation has to go. There is not much space for all of them to coexist.
When you think of progress…it starts with your lovemaking – a mad race – and where do you end? You end with a woman. Great, just great!
And then your whole life it is the same, the same story. People are running after power, people are running after money, people are running after respectability. People are running after everything you can imagine, and where do they end up? Even if you reach the last rung of the ladder – there is no such thing, just for argument’s sake I am saying it – even if you reach the last rung of the ladder, what will you do then?
I remember I was driving and a dog started following my car, chasing – he was hot, really progressive, very discontented. But he was not acquainted with me. He must have chased other cars….
I stopped the car – the poor dog was huffing, his tongue was hanging out. I stopped the car and asked the dog, “What now? What do you want?”
And the way the dog looked at me…Ronald Reagan would also look the same way!
Even if you become the president of a country, or a prime minister of a country, so what? You call it progress? It is obsession with speed.
Discontent brings conflict because it brings competition. If you are running, others are also running. There is going to be competition, there is going to be cut-throat competition. Hence all these wars.
The Polack pope is reaching out to the Christians around the world with the message, “Drop your antagonism with the Jews.” The Christians cannot understand. For two thousand years they have been killing Jews. When Adolf Hitler killed almost one million Jews in Germany, the high priest of the Christians in Germany blessed him; he had done a great religious act by removing these Jews.
For two thousand years Christians have been killing Jews because Jews killed Jesus; and nobody bothers about the fact that Jesus was a Jew, he was not a Christian – it is none of your business! If Jews want to kill another Jew, it is their internal affair. Jesus never claimed that he was a Christian. If he had claimed that he was a Christian, he would not have been crucified – then, who bothers?
Jews were upset because he was saying he was their Lord, that he was coming from God just as Moses, Abraham, Ezekiel and other prophets have come. And in a way he is higher than all those prophets, because they were only postmen, nothing much. He is the only begotten son. Naturally this Jew was going to be killed by the Jews. But they killed a Jew, they never killed a Christian. Christians have been killing Jews. I don’t see the mathematics of it.
And how after two thousand years it happens in a Polack mind…and it is known all over the world that anything like mind does not exist in them, they are empty bottles of alcohol. If you are a cannibal and you eat a Polack, you will know what I mean. Just a little taste of a Polack and you will go unconscious!
This Polack popa is trying to create a bridge, a communication between the Christians and the Jews. Why? These things are not religious, these things are political. After the second world war they created a Jewish nation, Israel. Jews think the Americans, the British and other allies – who were all Christian – have done a great favor to them; it is not so. It was a very cunning strategy.
Israel is the holy land of the Jews, and also the holy land of the Christians. It was not in existence centuries ago – because the population was Mohammedan; there was no Israel before 1945. There used to be a nation, Palestine, which is no longer anywhere; it simply disappeared.
Christians could have taken possession of Israel, but they were aware that if they took possession of Israel, then Jews would be against them all over the world. And Israel is surrounded by Mohammedans, the whole of the Middle East is Mohammedan; Israel itself is full of Mohammedans. It would create a conflict, a war, a continuous war between Christians on the one side and Jews and Mohammedans on the other side. In fact, Mohammedanism is closer to Judaism than Christianity is; much of Mohammedanism is borrowed from Judaism.
To avoid this situation of having Jews against them…. The politicians could not do that, because if the Jews are against the Christians, then who is going to donate to their election funds? It would have been disastrous, particularly in America, because all these politicians in America are supported by Jewish money.
And it was in the hands of America, because American forces were there in Israel to hand over the country to anybody – either to Christians or to Mohammedans or to Jews. It was a Mohammedan country and it would have been right to give it back to them. But Christians are against Mohammedans for a very simple thing – that’s why I say this whole world needs to be finished – a very small problem.
Mohammedans accept Jesus as a prophet of God but not as a son of God. And they are very logical about it: where is the wife? There is nobody, other than the holy ghost. And nobody knows about the holy ghost, to what sex he belongs. Is he male? Certainly Christians cannot accept that he is female, because to raise woman so high that she becomes part of the trinity, the highest in existence…the holy ghost has to be male. But that makes God a homosexual, and homosexuals don’t produce children. Then Jesus’ whole position becomes very strange.
Hence Mohammedans say Jesus is a prophet, a messenger of God, but not a son of God; God has no relatives. This is the only difference. And Christians and Mohammedans have been killing each other for fourteen hundred years. These things should be laughed at, not fought for.
The Americans could not give it to Mohammedans, although the country was Mohammedan, and it had been under the Mohammedans for a long time. They could not keep it for themselves, because that would mean creating two enemies: Jews and Mohammedans. They found a very political and cunning way: they gave it to the Jews. In that way they created a bridge between Jews and Christians, a friendship; they avoided one enemy, the Jews, avoided the other enemy, the Mohammedans, and very cleverly put the Jews in such a bad situation that they will continually have to fight with the Mohammedans.
Nobody can see any end to it because the country is Mohammedan, it belongs to the Mohammedans. It was forcibly taken and given to the Jews. This gave a very good opportunity to American Christians to get more donations from Jews; and it was a very good situation: they need not kill Jews, Mohammedans will kill them. Can you see the strategy? – so beautiful, so sophisticated.
Mohammedans will kill them – they have been killing them – on the one hand; on the other hand, the Jews will remain dependent on Christian countries. Israel is not independent; if America stops giving support to them, they will be finished within minutes. They have to remain under American control. Israel is nothing but a slave country of the Christians. And it will have to remain a slave; otherwise Mohammedans will kill it.
American politicians have done a good job. Jews think they have been favored; that is nonsense. They have been put in such a fix that they will never be out of it. And Christians have made a great step toward absorbing them. That has been the desire of Christianity: to absorb the whole world.
This hand of friendship is a not a hand of friendship. It is a hand that wants to destroy you. Jews are in tremendous discontent, Mohammedans are in tremendous discontent, Christians are in tremendous discontent. Whoever has said that discontent is needed for progress? Humanity has been in discontent for as far back as you can imagine. What progress has happened?
Yes, you have better roads, you have better machines, you have high technology – but you don’t have a better man. And your high technology, your nuclear weapons, your so-called good roads, beautiful buildings – without a good man they are just dangerous; not only useless, very dangerous. It is giving a naked sword into the hands of a child. Man remains retarded and he is being given nuclear weapons.
I have heard…. When Ronald Reagan became the president of America, he was on a morning walk on a beach with his favorite friend, a chimpanzee. Great progress is happening: chimpanzees are friends of presidents! One man sitting there on the beach was very much puzzled. He said, “Mr. President, sir, am I hallucinating? What is this chimpanzee doing with you?”
Reagan said, “You are not hallucinating, he is my friend.”
The man said, “I am not asking you, I am asking the president. Don’t interfere.”
In the first world war, for the first time psychoanalysts were employed by the governments to find out the intelligent quotient – I.Q. – of the soldiers. And it was a shock: the average man’s mental age is close to fourteen years. He may be seventy years old, but his mental age is not more than fourteen – it may be less.
What progress has happened? You have not been able even to keep a synchronicity between man’s physical age and his psychological age, and you call your world a civilized world – where everybody is retarded?
But these retarded people are needed by the politicians, by the priests, by all the vested interests, because if a man’s intelligence also grows along with his body, then he will not become just old; he will grow up. His old age will be a beautiful experience. He will be able to drop all the conditionings which have been forced upon him.
But a retarded person cannot do that. He cannot even understand anything higher. He cannot even understand Leonardo da Vinci, he cannot understand Kalidasa, he cannot understand Rabindranath Tagore, he cannot understand Lao Tzu. He can only understand third-rate newspapers – The Oregonian. Yes, that he can understand.
He can follows a man like Reverend Jim Jones. Only a retarded man can do that. It is not a surprise that Jim Jones’ followers were all black. Of course, they are more retarded than the white people; they have lived in slavery for so long, uneducated, humiliated – they are not first-class citizens. They have not been treated as human beings. Reverend Jim Jones had not a single white man as his follower. Those who died, committed suicide in Jonestown, were retarded people.
A man of intelligence would like to love, to live, to laugh. A great opportunity has been given by existence; he would like to drink out of it to the fullest. He would like to squeeze all that life contains.
But Jim Jones convinced those fools to commit suicide. Of course Christianity has the ultimate responsibility for it, because Reverend Jim Jones was an ordained Christian priest. Of course the cross is the symbol of suicide, and the whole teaching of Christianity is not for living joyously.
If Jesus can convince retarded people in Judea that when he reaches God, soon after they will all follow him…. He never defined how long this “soon” is. Two thousand years have passed; the “soon” is still there. Jim Jones carried the logic to its very end. He said, “Why should I wait there and and you wait here? You die with me, so we all go together.” He convinced those retarded people to commit suicide.
Retarded people can be convinced about anything. Retarded people are being convinced to go to Vietnam to kill innocent people who have done no wrong to them. They can be sent anywhere, can be convinced to do anything.
Japan had suicidal soldiers – a separate division. They would take an aeroplane full of bombs, and the pilot knew he was not going to come back, but he was dying for his country. Only retarded people can be convinced to die for a country. What is a country? Where is Palestine? And for Palestine people have been dying. Countries exist only on the map; the earth is one.
That’s why I say Rajneeshpuram is not in America, not in Oregon. This whole earth is ours. Rajneeshpuram is the capital of the whole world.
We don’t believe in nations. It is idiotic – what is the need of all these nations? Yes, a world government is needed, but not nations. Unless we create a world government, wars will continue because these nations will go on fighting – India with Pakistan, China with India – the war will continue somewhere or other.
The only way to stop war is not what the pacifists go on doing – carrying posters in processions. There are a few people who enjoy it; it is good exercise. And they are boiling because of discontent, so it is good in a way to shout slogans; it releases something in them. But these pacifists are not going to stop the war that is just on the horizon. Any moment, any chimpanzee can trigger it.
Tomorrow is more uncertain than it has ever been. The next moment is more uncertain than it has ever been.
Protest, protest marches, slogans – this is not going to help. These people are exactly the same retarded people, they are just on a lower rung of the ladder. I have been watching these pacifists and their processions, their shouting and their slogans. It does not give the sense of peace; these are warmongers. Perhaps they are ready to fight for peace.
There is only one way: nations should disappear, they are an unnecessary burden on us. The world can easily be one, there is no need of different colors on the map. If the world dissolves the nations, whom are you going to fight? And if the world becomes a little more intelligent and drops all religious nonsense, whom are you going to fight? And if you are not going to fight, there will be no Ethiopia, there will be no poor India – because all your energy, all your money, all your resources that are going into war efforts will be freed. The whole humanity can live richly.
People ask me, “What are you doing for Ethiopia?” Whatever I am doing, I am not sending Ethiopia some bread, some butter – that is not going to help. In the first place it is never going to reach Ethiopia, it will reach the Christian missionaries. In the last year they collected fifteen million dollars in America for Ethiopia. All has disappeared, it never reached Ethiopia. The same has happened before; Ethiopia has been in trouble for four years. In the name of humanity, service, these missionaries collect the money and swallow it.
Last year when the fifteen million dollars simply disappeared, it was enquired what had happened. The Christian missionaries said they did not want to send the money to the Ethiopian government, so they found a French agency to distribute the money, food, clothes, to the starving Ethiopians. When the French agency was asked, they could not believe it; they had never heard about these missionaries.
Ethiopia will be there, more Ethiopians will be there tomorrow. Small efforts won’t help. I don’t believe in throwing a spoonful of sugar into the ocean to make it sweet. I am not retarded.
This Ethiopia, this India, the poor countries in the East, in Africa – this is your doing! First you create the problem, and then you start talking about serving humanity. Why create the problem in the first place? Dissolve all the nations if you have any love for humanity. And dissolve all the religions if you have any respect for civilization.
A civilized man cannot be a Christian, a Jew, a Mohammedan. He cannot be an American, he cannot be an Indian. A civilized man is simply man. And if wars disappear, the world will not need priests to persuade you that “Blessed are the poor,” because there will be nobody who is poor. Then the priests will not be able to distract your mind toward heaven, because we can make heaven on this very earth.
If God has thrown out Adam and Eve, do tit for tat: throw him out. We will make the Garden of Eden here! Let God beg to come in.
Why should you pray and beg that you should be accepted, when we can create paradise here? But these politicians, these priests, go on diverting your energies. They are diverting science toward war. Science has now come to a point where it can make this earth so beautiful, so comfortable, so lovable that there will be no Jonestown. Nobody will want to commit suicide.
It is a discovery of scientific research that man’s body has an inner capacity to go on renewing itself – of course only for seventy, eighty years, and in rich countries for a hundred years. But in some countries even up to two hundred years the body remains young. We just have to put our scientific intelligence in the service of life – up to now it has been in the service of death. Man can live forever on this earth; there is no need to search for an eternal home beyond death – that is just a consolation for you.
But if you can be as blissful as they have been depicting people in paradise, naturally you won’t take any interest in their bibles, in their korans and gitas. You will not go to confess your sins, because there is no sin.
People just need more understanding. People need more life, more wisdom, more clarity. You don’t need to be forgiven. You have not done any wrong.
You have been doing only one thing wrong: you have been following idiots. God, who does not exist, may forgive you. I cannot forgive you for that.