Osho,
At various times I have heard you describe your work as “an experiment to provoke God” and “a model city for the future.” then there was the world tour.
In the present context of accelerating global crisis, how would you describe your work now, and what is happening to those who have gathered around you here?
There are many things you have asked. The most fundamental thing is to remember that whatever is happening here is not work. To call it work implies tension, worry, and a fear of failure. It is not work, but a playful relationship with existence.
As far as the world of man is concerned, I don’t think there is much chance of converting the masses against their own past. They are creations of the past, and their past will come to its crescendo in the coming crisis. The masses will be drowned in that crisis. I feel sad about it, but the truth has to be said.
Only a few people in the world will be able to survive after this global suicide, and those will be the people who are deeply rooted in consciousness: alert, aware, loving, and ready to disconnect themselves with the past completely and unconditionally, and ready to begin the New Man and the new humanity with the freshness of a child. I have been enjoying the fact that there are many people in the world who are capable of going deep into themselves. Their only hope is a self-realized being.
It is too late to do anything to prevent the immense destruction that is going to happen. If we can protect only a few genuine human beings, that will be enough, more than enough. The past of humanity has been absolutely accidental; they have been doing things without knowing their consequences. Now we are suffering the consequences and there is no way to change those consequences.
For example, the whole ecology around the earth has been destroyed. Life does not exist as separate islands; not a single man is an island. Everything is interwoven. You have heard these two words, dependence and independence. Both are unreal; the reality is interdependence. We are all so interdependent on each other – not only men on other men, not only nations on other nations, but trees and man, animals and trees, birds and the sun, the moon and the oceans…everything is interwoven. And the past humanity has never thought about it, that it is a cosmos. They went on thinking in terms of taking everything separately. It was impossible for people in the past to think that man and trees are connected, that they are interdependent.
You cannot live without trees, and neither can trees live without you. But it is too late. Hundred-year-old, two-hundred-year-old, even four-thousand-year-old trees have been destroyed and cut to create more newsprint for all kinds of stupid newspapers, without ever giving any consideration to what you are doing. You will not be able to replace them.

Just in Nepal…unfortunately it is the poorest country in the world. It has nothing except the eternal Himalayas and the deep forest, ancient and old. It has been selling its forest to different countries – that is the only commodity it can sell. In the last thirty years, half of the trees of Nepal have disappeared, and for the coming thirty years, Russia has purchased the rights to the remaining forest. And they are cutting trees not in the old way, with an ax, but by very modern techniques so that in a day thousands of trees simply disappear. Miles of land are becoming desert.
These trees were preventing the rivers of the Himalayas from coming down with too much force, because the rivers had to pass all these trees and every tree was lessening the force, slowing down the flow of water. By the time they reached Bangladesh, where they meet with the ocean, the quantity of water coming was exactly as much as the ocean could absorb. But now those trees have disappeared.
Rivers are coming with such great force, and with such a quantity of water, that the ocean cannot absorb it so quickly. It returns it, and Bangladesh is suffering continually, every year, from great floods, strange floods – rivers flowing backward because the ocean will not accept the water. They destroy all the crops of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is poor, and these floods are killing thousands of people, thousands of animals, destroying thousands of houses. And now Bangladesh cannot do anything. It is beyond its power to tell Nepal, “Please don’t cut the trees.”
In the first place, even if Nepal stops cutting the trees, the wrong has already been done. And in the second place, Nepal cannot stop cutting those trees; it has sold them even for the future thirty years. It has taken the money to survive.
A similar kind of situation exists in many areas of the world. There are many gases which are being produced by our factories which have made us aware of a strange phenomenon. Those gases move upward and make holes in a certain layer called ozone, a variety of oxygen, which covers the earth two hundred miles up, the whole area of air. Ozone is absolutely necessary for humanity, for animals, for trees, because not all sun rays are life-giving. There are a few sun rays which are life-destructive. Ozone turns those life-destructive rays back and allows only life-affirmative rays. Now great holes have been created by the gases that our factories and industries create, and from those holes, death rays from the sun are entering into our atmosphere.
This earth has never been so sick; it has never been so much in danger of new diseases. Now the vested interests are not ready to listen, to stop these factories or find alternatives. And scientists are engaged only in creating more war material. No government is ready to give them support so they can create more ozone and fill up the gaps which, unconsciously, we ourselves have created.
My emphasis is that our problems are international but our solutions are national. No nation is able to solve them. I take it as a great challenge and as a great opportunity: nations should be collapsed into one world government.
It was tried by the League of Nations before the second world war, but it could not succeed. It simply remained a debating club. The second world war destroyed the very credibility of the League of Nations. But the necessity was still there; therefore they had to create the United Nations organization, the UN But the UN is as much a failure as the League of Nations was. Again, it is still a debating club because it has no power. It cannot implement anything, it is just a formal club.
I would like a world government. All nations should surrender their armies, their arms to the world government. Certainly if there is a world government, neither armies are needed, nor arms. With whom are you going to have a war? To find the closest neighbor among the planets for some kind of war is almost impossible.
Nations have become out of date, but they go on existing – and they are the greatest problem. Looking at the world, just like a bird looks, a strange feeling arises: we have everything, just we need one humanity.
India has so much coal – and coal is not created in a day; it takes millions of years for wood to become coal. Then after millions of years more the same coal becomes diamonds. The elements that make up the coal and the diamond are the same. It is the coal under pressure for millions of years that creates the hardest thing in the world, the diamond.
India has so much coal; Russia has no coal at all, but they have an overproduction of wheat. Half the population of India goes on starving; it needs wheat, it certainly cannot eat coal. But in Russia in the time of Stalin they were burning wheat in their railway trains instead of coal. They don’t have coal but now they have a super-technological production of crops, fruits. It was easy for them to burn the wheat, but they didn’t know that they were burning millions of people, who were dying because they didn’t have anything to eat.
Problems are worldwide.
Solutions have also to be worldwide.
And my understanding is absolutely clear, that there are things…somewhere they are not needed and somewhere the very life depends on them. A world government means looking at the whole situation of this globe and shifting things where they are needed. It is one humanity.
In Ethiopia one thousand people per day were dying and in Europe they were drowning billions of dollars worth of food in the ocean, because they have better technology for production. Anybody looking from the outside will think that humanity is insane. Thousands of people are dying and mountains of butter and other foodstuff is being drowned in the ocean. One recent year when America drowned its foodstuff, just the expense of drowning it was two billion dollars. It was not the cost of the product, it was just the cost of carrying it to the ocean and drowning it.
America itself has thirty million people who cannot afford enough food. It is not a question of giving to somebody else, it is a question of giving to its own people. But the problem becomes complicated, because if you start giving free food to thirty million people, then others will start asking, “Why should we pay for our food?” Then the prices of things will go down. With the prices going down, the farmers will not be interested anymore in producing – what is the point? Afraid of disturbing the economy, they let thirty million people die on the streets and go on drowning the superfluous foodstuff in the ocean.
Not only that, exactly thirty million people are dying in American hospitals, nursing homes, from diseases caused by overeating. They cannot be allowed in the home, because in the home it is very difficult to protect the fridge from those people! They are dying because they eat too much, and on the street there are people dying because they have nothing to eat. An exact number: thirty million dying of overeating, and thirty million dying with not enough food. Sixty million people can be immediately saved with a small understanding.
But a bird’s eye view is needed to look at the world, all over, as one unit. Our problems have brought us to a situation where either we will have to commit suicide or we will have to transform man, his old traditions, his conditionings. Those conditionings and those educational systems, those religions that man has followed up to now, have contributed to this crisis. This global suicide is the ultimate outcome of all our cultures, all our philosophies, all our religions. They all have contributed to it – in strange ways, because nobody ever thought of the whole; everybody was looking at a small piece, not bothering about the whole.
For example in India, Jainas only do business. They don’t cultivate, but they need food. They can’t cultivate because Mahavira, their teacher, has told them that if you cultivate you will have to cut plants and plants have life, and nonviolence is his teaching. So they cannot be warriors, they cannot be cultivators, and of course, nobody wants to become sweepers, to become cleaners – because in India, these people are condemned as almost inhuman.
So the only alternative left for Jainas was just to do business, sell things, accumulate money. All their violence became their greed. That is the reason why they are the only people in India who don’t have beggars; they are the richest people in India. But this is a kind of sucking the blood of the society. Everything else is being done by somebody else, and the money somehow goes on moving into hands which don’t do anything.
Mahavira simply thought about his philosophy, but he never thought that this philosophy could not become universal. And that which cannot become universal cannot be true. People will have to cultivate, and certainly plants will have to be cut, crops will have to be cut. This violence cannot be avoided just by not doing it yourself; somebody else is doing it for you.
The situation is the same around the world. Everybody has taken a certain portion of life, ignoring the remaining parts which are essentially joined with it. There are people…for example, the man who created the Nobel Prize committee was the greatest arms producer in the first world war. He earned so much money out of the production of war materials that he created a Nobel Prize for peace.
There is so much money that every year dozens of Nobel Prizes are given – with each Nobel Prize two hundred and fifty thousand dollars also are given – and this all comes only from the interest on the money. The basic money remains in the banks of Switzerland. It will continue forever to give twelve Nobel Prizes per year for creating arts, for creating peace, for creating great poetry, painting, science. And the man who created the money created it by producing war materials. The whole first world war was fought with his weapons – both sides were purchasing from him. He was the greatest arms producer. All the people that died in the first world war, he was responsible for.
The same is happening today. Nobody is interested in the coming crisis, which is not far away. This century is going to end just in twelve years. Twelve years is not a long time; almost everybody present here will be able to see the end of this century. You will be fortunate if you don’t see the very end of life on this earth. Preparations are on the way to destroy the whole earth. And the people who are doing it are doing it behind great names: nations, religions, political ideologies, communism.
It seems man exists for all these kinds of things – communism, democracy, socialism, fascism. The reality should be that everything should exist for man, and if it goes against man it should not exist at all. The whole past of humanity is full of stupid ideologies for which people have been crusading, killing, murdering, burning living people. We have to drop all this insanity.
If nations disappear, the second great disease is religions, because they have been fighting, they have been killing, and for reasons in which nobody is really interested. I have never come across a man who is really interested in God. If you give him five rupees in one hand and God in another, he will take the five rupees and he will say, “God is eternal, we will see later on. For the moment five rupees will be helpful.”
Who is interested in God except the priests? – because that is their business, and they want their business to spread.

When I was being harassed in America, taken from one jail to another jail, my airplane passed over a beautiful city, Salt Lake City. In the night it looked tremendously beautiful, very planned. It is very intelligently managed by a certain Christian sect, the Mormons. Their leader was killed in America, shot dead because Mormons were teaching something against the old orthodox Christianity. They were saying that their president, their leader, had direct contact with God. That cannot be allowed. Only the pope has direct contact with God.
Now, all kinds of idiots become leaders, and because he was shot and killed – it always happens – the followers became very fanatical. They created this Salt Lake City. Ninety-eight percent of the people in Salt Lake City are Mormons and all around the world there are millions of other Mormons. It is the duty of every Mormon to send at least one dollar every day to Salt Lake City, which is the capital of their religion. One million dollars every day reach Salt Lake City.
What is being done with those one million dollars? The empire is spreading; Salt Lake City is becoming almost a big empire. And the people who believe in it are so fanatical – are bound to be, because their leader was saying the same stupid kind of thing as Jesus was saying. If Jesus could create such a vast Christianity…. They choose their president and every president, once he is chosen, has direct contact with God, and whatever he orders has to be followed.
I would not have come to know all this about the Mormons and their city…. Just by chance, where our commune was situated in Oregon, three magistrates had to decide whether to give Rajneeshpuram the status of a city or not. One of them was a Mormon, and he was the most influential of the three. One was against; the other was just wavering, but because of the Mormon he voted for the city.
The Mormon judge used to come to the commune, and he loved the place. And he himself told my secretary, “You should be alert and aware, because what has happened to our leader…. We were not doing any harm to anyone, but our leader was shot. And the man you are following is saying such outrageous things that the danger is always there.”
And what happened? Because of this Mormon judge the city was recognized. For two years the city was on the map of America, in geography books. The federal government was giving money to it, as to any city; the state government was giving money to it. They managed a very tricky thing. They persuaded the president of the Mormons to send a message to the judge, “You have been chosen by God to go to Nigeria for missionary work.”
I wrote a letter to him, saying, “It is very strange that in the whole world God has chosen you to go to Nigeria. I suspect there is politics behind it – Ronald Reagan wants you to be removed from the place. The only way to remove you is a direct order from God.”
And actually what I had visualized happened. The moment he was removed another person was appointed and the three judges decided that the city was no longer a city. That’s what Ronald Reagan and his government wanted: first take away the recognition, then it is easy to destroy it. And they destroyed it. I had sent a message to the magistrate, saying, “You will be responsible for the destruction. You don’t understand that it is a political strategy.”
After one year, when he came back, he recognized that something strange had happened. The people who destroyed the commune were also angry with the magistrate who had recognized it. They caught hold of him when he came back from Nigeria, and there was a case against him, alleging that he had taken a bribe from us. And what was the bribe?
He had fifty cows. When he was going to Nigeria, after the city was recognized, he wanted to put those fifty cows somewhere and we were purchasing cows, hens, all kinds of things for the commune. And he was ready to sell them as cheap as possible; he was even ready to contribute them. Because we had purchased those fifty cows, he was dragged to court: “You recognized the city because those people purchased your cows.” Those cows could have been sold anywhere.
Strangely enough those cows were purchased after the city was recognized, months after. When he has received a direct order from God, now what will he do with fifty cows, where will he take them? And where to find a purchaser so quickly? Because he was told, “Immediately move to Nigeria.” He thought that we were in need of them – and we were in need.
They took revenge on him. They removed him from his post; he lost his job and then he was condemned for taking a bribe. I came to know about the Mormons because of this judge, when I heard that God had sent him a direct message. But God is so crazy. He goes on sending different messages to Hindus; to Mohammedans, against them; to Christians against them. Even to different sects of Christians, different messages. Either there are many Gods or there are many pretenders.
And how do these people receive these messages? Nobody gives any evidence. They have been killing, butchering, doing all kinds of things which are inhuman. They have destroyed the one humanity, divided it into pieces.
First the nations should go, if the world is to survive; second, the religions should go. One humanity is enough – there is no need of India and England and Germany. And one religiousness is enough: meditation, truth, love, authenticity, sincerity, which do not need any name – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan…just one religiousness, a quality, not something organized. The moment organization comes in there is going to be violence, because there will be other organizations in conflict. We need a world of individuals without any organizations. Yes, people who have similar feelings, similar joys, rejoicings, can have gatherings. But there should not be any organizations, hierarchies, bureaucracies.
First nations, second religions, and third, a science completely devoted to better life, to more life, to better intelligence, to more creativity – not to create more war, not to be destructive. If these three things are possible, the whole humanity can be saved from being destroyed by its own leaders – religious, political, social.
This crisis in a way is good because it is going to force people to choose. Do you want to die or do you want to live a new life? Die to the past, drop all that has been given as heritage from the past and start fresh, as if you have descended on this earth for the first time. And then start working with nature not as an enemy but as a friend, and ecology will soon be functioning again as an organic unity.
The damage can be repaired; it is not difficult to make the earth more green. If many trees have been cut, many more trees can be planted. And with scientific help they can grow faster, they can have better foliage. Different kinds of barriers can be created in the rivers so that they don’t flood poor countries like Bangladesh. The same water can create much more electricity and help thousands of villages to have light in the night, to have warmth in the cold winters.
It is a simple thing. All problems are simple, but the basic foundation is the trouble. Those three things will try in every way not to disappear, even at the cost of the whole world disappearing. They will be ready for this disappearance, but they will not be ready to declare, “We surrender to a world organization all our arms, all our armies.”
The function of nations will remain only simple: railway lines, post offices, a small police force to take care of internal affairs. But there is no need of armies. Millions of people are involved in armies, which are useless. They can be put to creative arts, to farming, to gardening. And they are trained people, they can do jobs which no other people can do. An army can make a bridge so quickly – that is its training – it can create more houses for people.
Science is capable now, if it is no longer engaged only in war and creating more war material, to create so much food that five times more people can live happily on this earth than exist today. Today there are only five billion people. Twenty-five billion people can live joyously without hunger, without suffering from diseases. But science should be released from the hands of nations, which are forcing their scientists to create more war material. Scientists are functioning almost like prisoners.
I want it to be known to the whole world: if you are not ready to be one, be ready to disappear from this planet. But I hope there are intelligent people who would like to survive, who would like this beautiful planet to grow more beautiful, this humanity to grow more intelligent. I am afraid perhaps the whole of humanity is not even aware of the danger that is coming closer every moment.
You are asking me, “At various times I have heard you describe your work as ‘an experiment to provoke God….’” It is still the same. I am still trying to provoke the God within you, the divine within you…more consciousness, more light, more aliveness, more ecstasy.
Miserable people are dangerous, for the simple reason that they don’t care whether the earth survives or not. They are so miserable that deep down they may feel that it is better if everything is finished. Who cares, if you are living in misery? Only happy people, ecstatic people, dancing people would like this planet to survive forever. So my effort continues to be the same: An experiment to provoke God.
“…and ‘a model city for the future.’ In the present context of accelerating global crisis, how would you describe your work now, and what is happening to those who have gathered around you here?” It is the same; nothing has changed, because the world crisis has not changed.
The people who have gathered around me are learning how to be more happy, how to be more meditative, how to laugh more, live more, love more, and spread love, laughter around the world. This is the only protection against nuclear weapons. If the whole globe can learn to love and laugh and enjoy and dance, then Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev will look surprised…what has happened? The whole world seems to have gone mad!
People who are happy, contented, are not the people to be forced to kill other people who have not done any harm to them. It is not strange that all the armies, down the ages, have been kept sexually repressed, because sexually repressed people are bound to be destructive. Their very repression forces them to destroy something.
Have you ever watched in your own being: when you are happy, joyful, you want to create something; when you are miserable, suffering, you want to destroy something. It is a revenge. All armies are kept in repressed sexuality so the moment they get to kill that becomes their joy; at least their repressed energies are expressed – of course in a very ugly way, inhuman way, but some expression is there.
Have you watched? – painters, poets, sculptors, dancers are never sexually repressed people. In fact, they are oversexual. They love too much, they love too many people. Perhaps one person is not enough to exhaust their love. They have been condemned by the priests down the ages: these poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, these are not good people. And these are the only people who have made this humanity something beautiful, who have contributed to the world some flowers of joy, some flowers of music, some beautiful dances. What have the priests done to the world? They have burnt women, calling them witches; they have killed people who belong to other faiths. They have not been creative people. They have not enhanced the earth and they have not enhanced life.
We need, with these three fundamental changes, a great respect for creative people of any dimension. And we should learn how to transform our energies so that they are not repressed, so they are expressed in your love, in your laughter, in your joy. This earth is more than a paradise, you don’t have to go anywhere. Paradise is not something that has to be achieved, it is something that has to be created. It depends on us.
This crisis gives a chance for courageous people to disconnect themselves from the past and start living in a new way – not modified, not continuous with the past, not better than the past, but absolutely new.
Find ways to relate in a new way. Forget marriages, start thinking how to inquire into life. Forget all your beliefs, start to meditate in search of finding exactly who you are, because by finding yourself you will have found the very essence of existence. It is immortal and eternal, and those who have found it, their bliss and their benediction is inexpressible.
We need more happy people around the earth to prevent the third world war. You will be amazed, surprised by my answer. You may not be able immediately to find what connection there can be between nuclear weapons and people’s laughter – there is. These nuclear weapons and these destructive war machines cannot work by themselves. They are being worked by human beings, behind them are human hands.
A hand that knows the beauty of a roseflower cannot drop a bomb on Hiroshima. A hand that knows the beauty of love is not the hand to keep a gun loaded with death. Just a little contemplation and you will understand what I am saying.
I am saying, spread laughter, spread love, spread life-affirmative values, grow more flowers around the earth. Everything that is beautiful, appreciate it, and everything that is inhuman, condemn it. Take this whole earth away from the hands of the politicians and the priests and you will have saved the world, and you will have changed the world into a totally new phenomenon, with a new human consciousness. And it has to be done now, because the time is very short. By the end of the twentieth century, either we will enter the first century of a new history of man or there will be no one left alive, not even a single wildflower. Everything will be dead.
There are experiments going on in Russia, and perhaps in America too, with death rays. Rather than dropping a bomb, it is far easier to spread death rays, which simply kill the living people, animals, birds, trees. Only dead things – houses, temples, churches – will remain. It will be really a nightmare. And those death rays are not visible. We know that death rays exist; they are just trying to find out how to spread them, to reach a certain destination and destroy all living beings that come across them.
Man has to be freed from these monsters. Our work here is to teach people consciousness, more awareness, more love, more understanding, more joy, and spread the dance and celebration around the earth. Reduced to a single statement, I can say: if we can make humanity happier, there is not going to be any third world war.

Giovanni wants to have a ride on a bicycle so he decides to go and ask his friend Mario if he can borrow his. On the way he starts to think, “For sure, Mario will tell me to be careful with the bike, but I will tell him not to worry; then he will tell me that his sister wants to use it, but I will tell him that I will be back in time; then I know Mario will get scared and tell me it is not the time of year for riding bikes…”
Meanwhile Giovanni arrives at Mario’s house and he looks up to the window and shouts, “Hey, Mario! Go and fuck yourself, you and your bike!”

Hamish MacTavish has not seen his old friend, Gordon MacPherson for forty years. So when they bump into each other in the street one day, they rush to the nearest pub to celebrate.
“It will be wonderful to have a drink together after all these years,” says Gordon.
“Aye, it will,” says Hamish. “But don’t forget, it is your round.”

There is an accident on the construction site. Seamus runs over to where Paddy is lying in a heap of rubble.
“Are you dead, Paddy, after such a terrible fall?” asks Seamus.
“Yes, certainly I am,” replies Paddy.
“Ah, bejabers!” says Seamus, “you are such a terrible liar, I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”
“That proves I am dead, you idiot,” says Paddy. “If I was alive, you would not be calling me a liar to my face.”

The last…

Hamish MacTavish is careening down the road in his old Ford car when a policeman pulls him over.
“Excuse me, sir,” says the cop. “Would you mind blowing into this bag?”
“By all means,” says Hamish. “Would you like me to play a jig or a reel?”
“No, no,” says the cop. “This bag tells you how much you have been drinking.”
“Oh, there is no need for that,” says Hamish. “I have got one of my own at home…. I married her!”

No, you need one more….

Pope the Polack is very sick. Doctors come from all over the world to try and diagnose his illness, and finally a little Jewish psychiatrist finds the cause of the problem.
He tells the pope, “Your holiness, because you have had nothing to do with women all your life, your hormones are unbalanced and there is only one possible cure. You must make love with a woman.”
“No, no!” cries Pope the Polack, “I can’t. All the vows I have taken…. I just can’t!”
“But, your holiness,” replies the shrink, “you must or you will die, and this too is a mortal sin.”
The pope retires for a few days to consider his fate, and then calls the psychiatrist again.
“Okay,” says Pope the Polack, “I have reached my decision. I will do as you ask. But please, be sure that the girl has nice, big tits.”

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