The new man: a citizen of the world

Question 1:

Veet Niten, the first thing to be remembered about my attitude about the future is that all predictions are guesswork. The future remains always unknown and takes strange turns which no one would have ever conceived.

Moreover, my approach to life is to not be bothered with past and future. The past is no more, the future is not yet - all that we have got in our hands is this moment. The past is dead and the future is unborn.

Keeping this approach in mind, I would like to say a few words. First, there is every possibility that there will be no future as far as life is concerned. We are coming closer to a dead-end street. It is sad to recognize the fact, but it is good to recognize it, because then there is the possibility of taking a different turn. As things are moving today, the logical conclusion is a global suicide.

There is only one hope: that life does not follow logic, that it is irrational. If it was rational, mathematical and logical, then you could not give more than twenty years to life on this earth.

The reasons are five:

First, the nuclear weapons are piling up every day. Right now, only five countries are nuclear powers.

Within twenty years, twenty-five more countries will have joined the nuclear club. Thirty countries will have nuclear weapons. Already we have so much nuclear power that the whole earth can be destroyed seven times. And this will show you the insanity of man. Now what is the point of piling up more and more nuclear weapons?

Everybody is not a Jesus Christ, and everybody is not going to be resurrected again and again and again - seven times. The truth is, even Jesus himself was never resurrected, because in the first place he never died.

Just the other day the prime minister of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev, said, "It is not possible to calculate how much destructive energy is already available." Just one submarine - and there are thousands of submarines moving underwater carrying nuclear weapons - just one submarine is equal to hundreds of second world wars. So the first problem is nuclear weapons.

The second problem is the immense rate of population growth. By the end of this century we will have seven billion people on the earth. And the earth is so heavily exploited that it cannot support that much population. Fifty percent of the population has to die simply of hunger. And just think, if fifty percent of the people die, what will be the situation of the living ones? There will be nobody even to carry their corpses to the graveyard; they will be rotting in your streets, in your neighborhood, even in your own house. The whole world will have become a vast graveyard, stinking of death.

No effort is being made by the politicians to prevent the population growth. On the contrary, a few rich countries of the West, for example Germany - where people are intelligent and can see that more population means more death, more population means more poverty, more population means more disease - have stopped producing children. And the politicians of those countries are giving incentives to produce more children because their population is decreasing.

They are not worried about the whole world. Their whole worry is... for example, Germany is losing three thousand people every day and thirty thousand immigrants are entering into Germany. The politician is not worried about the world, he is worried about his power, his country. If this goes on for twenty years - that their population goes on decreasing and immigrants go on coming more and more - the immigrants will be in the majority, they will be the rulers. So before it becomes a problem, the Germans have to start producing as many children as poor countries are doing. And the same is the situation of a few other Western countries.

The third problem is the disease AIDS, which is spreading like wildfire. And there seems to be no possibility, at least in the coming twenty years, of finding a cure for it. Scientists are more or less certain that there is no cure.

But no country is making celibacy a crime, and celibacy is the cause of the disease AIDS. It is the monks, the soldiers, the students, who are living separately from women, who become homosexuals - and homosexuality has created the disease. But homosexuality is only a symptom; the real problem is celibacy, brahmacharya.

Mahatma Gandhi has written a book, CELIBACY IS LIFE. Now somebody has to write a book, CELIBACY IS DEATH. And every country is trying to hide the facts: how many homosexuals they have, how many people are suffering from AIDS - because no one, no country, wants to be exposed to the world as homosexual. But you can see that every day people are dying from AIDS, all over the world. And AIDS takes time to ripen - it can take years - and then for death, at least two more years. If so many people are dying, millions around the world must be practicing homosexuality.

But it seems nobody has the guts to say that celibacy should be made a crime, and that those who are homosexuals should not be punished, but trained again to become heterosexuals. Every college, every school, every hospital, every institution that is concerned with human welfare should teach homosexuals, uncondition their mind from homosexuality and turn it to the natural way, the well-trodden way of heterosexuality.

All the religions are suffering from it, because they all teach celibacy. But no religion is ready to accept it, and whenever you don't accept an enemy you are giving more power to the enemy.

Recognize it, so that you can find ways to fight with the enemy.

The fourth great problem that man is going to face in the coming twenty years is a collapse of the ecology. We are unaware of how we are destroying our own sources of life in different ways. Life needs an ecological balance, and that balance is being disturbed.

For example, around the earth is a layer of air. And just on the top of that layer is the ozone layer, which is a protective seal for the earth. But we have made holes in it by sending rockets to the moon and to Mars, which was absolutely unnecessary. You cannot manage the earth and you are starting to manage the whole universe.

The rockets, going out and coming in, have made holes and those holes are now turning out to be one of the most dangerous things - because the sun sends rays and all of the rays are not life-giving.

That layer, the ozone layer, was returning those rays which would bring destruction and disease to the earth, and was allowing only life-giving rays. But we have made holes, not only with rockets, but by other means also, and now all those destructive rays are entering the atmosphere. Our atomic explosions have destroyed that layer; and there are many gases which scientists are producing - those gases have also created holes. Now the whole protective seal is no longer protective.

And it is not that the ecology is being disturbed from one direction alone. It is being destroyed by multi-dimensional methods. For example, because of the accumulation of carbon dioxide and man- made chemicals, the heat of the atmosphere has risen as it has never risen before. For the first time there is a possibility that the ice on both the poles, north and south, has started melting. It has never melted before. If all the ice from the north and south poles melts, then all the oceans will rise by four feet. Cities which are ports, like Bombay, New York, or London, will be filled with water. But four feet... perhaps we can manage somehow.

The Himalayan ice has never melted, it has been eternally there. If the heat of the atmosphere rises a little more, then the Himalayan ice will start melting, and that is the greatest danger. And the heat is rising because nobody is listening, nobody is caring about anything. What happens to future humanity is nobody's concern - they are concerned with their power, their politics.

Atomic experiments continue, nuclear experiments continue. And it is a really horrible picture if the whole Himalaya melts; all the seas of the world will rise by forty feet. Perhaps four feet... somehow we can protect ourselves by creating walls or something, but forty feet higher.... The oceans will drown all your big cities, all your wealth, because they are all near the ocean.

A forty-foot rising of the oceans has immense implications. All the rivers will start moving backwards, because the oceans will not absorb them. The land will be flooded with water, and a flood will happen exactly like the one we read about in the OLD TESTAMENT, which happened in Noah's time, when all life and everything got drowned. It has been, up to now, only a story; but the coming twenty years will see it happen as a fact. And there is nobody, and no way.... In that small story it was possible to create an ark, because sooner or later the floods would subside. But this is not a flood that is going to subside.

And the most dangerous thing is the fifth, which is man himself, with all his discriminations between black and white, between East and West, and a new discrimination has suddenly arisen between North and South. Humanity is divided by religions, by nations, by color, by race. and they are at each other's throats.

To avoid these five dangers, which man has never faced before, seems to be almost impossible - unless a miracle happens. But miracles happen only in stories, not in real life. And the most disturbing factor is that the intelligentsia of the world, the politicians of the world, the philosophers of the world are ignoring all these facts.

It happens in times of danger, that the only way to protect your peace of mind is to ignore the danger.

This is called the "ostrich logic." The ostrich lives in the desert, a beautiful animal with a long neck, very colorful. Whenever the ostrich sees its enemies, other animals who can kill it, it has a strange logic - but very human. It simply digs a hole in the sand of the desert and puts its head inside the hole, because then it cannot see the enemy. And its logic is: if you cannot see the enemy, the enemy does not exist.

People are concerned about trivia, very stupid things, when great dangers are ahead. I hope that some sanity comes to humanity and life can be saved, but we will have to encounter all these five factors very carefully.

The world should have one government, there should not be any nations anymore. That way we can avoid any possibility of war.

The world should have only one kind of religiousness. Not one religion, just one kind of religiousness - a gratitude to existence, a loving heart, a meditative awareness. The most essential part of religion should be saved, and Christianity and Hinduism and Buddhism and Jainism and Mohammedanism all should disappear from the earth.

They are no longer needed; they have done enough harm. But now the harm is so much that they cannot be tolerated.

What is the need for nations? The whole earth is one.

Problems can be very easily solved if there is only one functional world government. Politicians will not like the idea because then they cannot go on bragging as presidents and prime ministers and cabinet ministers and parliamentarians do. If there is only one world government - and that too has to be functional, just like the post office or railway trains - somebody has to arrange things, so somebody should arrange things. And whoever is most capable technically, scientifically to tackle the problem, should manage it - but not because of votes.

It is a strange situation that the most important things - your prime ministers, your presidents, your education ministers - are chosen by votes, votes of people who are absolutely ignorant of what they are doing. So there are education ministers who know nothing about education; there are prime ministers who have nothing to do with all these vast problems and don't even have the intelligence to tackle them.

You don't choose doctors, you don't choose surgeons: "It is a democracy, we will choose the surgeon; whoever gets the most votes will become the surgeon." Then instead of surgery there would be butchery, and that is exactly what is happening.

Merit should be decisive, not the power of votes. And the meritorious should be invited because the meritorious are not the ones who are going to beg for votes. A man of merit has a certain dignity.

Politicians don't have any dignity. They are beggars.

Although all the religions have been preaching celibacy, nobody raises the question: Is celibacy natural? Is it humanly possible to be celibate? Can any scientist, or any medical expert, or any psychologist support the idea of celibacy? Nobody is going to say a single word against celibacy - that it is bringing all kinds of sexual perversions into humanity. Perhaps AIDS is only a beginning; even more dangerous diseases may be coming up.

And last I mention man. Man is not contemporary; he lives a thousand years back - and everything else has changed. His anger is the same, his fighting instinct is the same as when he used to have stone weapons. Now, the same man who used to have stone weapons has nuclear weapons. Man has not changed, and the technology has given him more and more destructive power.

If there is going to be a world war, it is going to be a push-button war. Nobody will be seen fighting in the field. Just from the White House, or from the Kremlin, the prime minister or the president simply pushes a button, and the whole world goes into the mouth of death. Nobody is going to win and nobody is going to defeat... it is such a stupid concept of war. Wars were fought for victory, but now the war is going to end all of them, friends and enemies, because both are capable of destroying each other.

It has been calculated that if the Soviet Union attacks America or America attacks the Soviet Union, which is more possible - in these last few months Ronald Reagan has shown his real face: he is absolutely stubborn, adamant, is not ready to stop creating more nuclear weapons - but whoever attacks first, the difference will be only of ten minutes; the other will be able to attack within ten minutes. So the only thing is, who was ten minutes before and who was ten minutes after - no question of defeat, no question of victory, because there will be nobody left to write the history.

It is a good idea, Veet Niten, to write the history now, because after twenty years perhaps there will be nobody to write history. You have a very beautiful idea, the history of the future. We have always been writing the history of the past; nobody has written the history of the future. But this is the right time to write it, because after twenty years there will be nobody to write it, and nobody to print it, and nobody to read it.

If you raise questions which are so dangerous, people will be annoyed with you. I have turned the whole world into my enemy for the simple reason that I go on pulling the necks of the ostriches out of the sand, and tell them that it does not matter whether you see the enemy or not. It is better to see, because by seeing you may have some way to escape, but putting your head into the sand you are absolutely defenseless. But the shuturmurg, this ostrich, feels very happy when his head is underneath the sand. If you pull his neck out he becomes angry, because again he has to see the enemy. Nobody wants to see the enemy. If we are fully aware of all the enemies....

Nuclear weapons have to be drowned in the Pacific Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean has to be banned for a few years to any kind of traffic. The Pacific Ocean is five miles deep; the name is also very significant, it means "peaceful". All the nuclear weapons, whoever possesses them, should go into the Pacific.

Celibacy should be a severe crime all over the world. All the monks and nuns should be allowed to marry each other, and it should not be thought that marriage or a love-relationship is against spirituality.

But people are so idiotic. Just the other day I came to know that the bishop of London, who ranks third in the hierarchy of the Church of England - the Archbishop of Canterbury is the first, he is the third, just one man is in between - has threatened the Church of England that if women are accepted as priests, then he will create a division in the Church of England. He will separate, with all those who are against women's initiation into becoming priests, bishops, cardinals.

People are concerned with such stupid problems. My feeling is that this is a way of avoiding the real problems. This is the ostrich's logic. For forty years continuously, there is a district in Maharashtra, Belgaum, where they have been fighting about whether Belgaum should be in Maharashtra, or it should be in Karnataka, another state on the border of Maharashtra. And they have been killing each other; riots have been happening, arson has been happening.

Strange people. What does it matter whether Belgaum is in Karnataka or in Maharashtra? And if you want to decide, let the Belgaum people decide it - they can vote on where they want to go.

Under impartial observers this can be decided within two hours. For forty years they have been killing each other - and the problem remains where it was when the British left India. And I cannot conceive at all that, whether Belgaum is in Karnataka or in Maharashtra... what difference does it make? Maharashtra and Gujarat were fighting for Bombay. Gujaratis and Maharashtrians had been killing each other because... where should Bombay go, in Gujarat or in Maharashtra? Bombay will remain where it is.

I remember a beautiful story: When India was partitioned into India and Pakistan, on the border there was a madhouse. Obviously nobody was interested in that madhouse - thousands of mad people - but it had to be somewhere. The superintendent of the madhouse called a meeting of all the mad people and asked ,"You raise your hands whether you want to go to India or you want to go to Pakistan." They said, "We want to live here. We don't want to go anywhere."

The superintendent tried hard, "You will not be going anywhere, you will remain here." But the madmen could not understand. "If we will remain here then what's the problem? Then why are you asking, 'Who wants to go to India and who wants to go to Pakistan?' We are all friends and we want to remain here."

The superintendent could not explain to them the idea that their madhouse would belong to India, or it would belong to Pakistan. They said, "It does not matter. What is the problem? Why are you so worried?"

Finally it was decided that these people were not going to understand anything, so it was better to divide the madhouse into two parts. A wall was raised in the middle, and half the madhouse remained in India and half the madhouse became part of Pakistan.

I have heard that still the mad people climb on the wall from both sides and laugh at the whole matter, saying, "We are where we used to be. What happened to that 'going to India,' 'going to Pakistan'?

Nobody has gone anywhere, and unnecessarily they have created this wall!" Small things go on keeping the human mind involved, so it cannot tackle the real problems.

I have told you there are five real problems which are going to destroy humanity. Solutions are very easy, but it is a big madhouse; nobody seems to understand.

All nuclear weapons into the Pacific.

The whole idea of celibacy has to be condemned as a crime, and the homosexuals have to be trained - they have become perverted - for heterosexuality.

But you will be surprised... the parliament of Holland prevented my entry into Holland, like many other countries. When the question was asked, the minister concerned answered, "Osho has been prevented from coming into Holland: first, he is a dangerous man, he corrupts people's minds; second, in one of his statements he has appreciated Adolf Hitler." Out of context... I had made one statement, in which I had said that Adolf Hitler was a greater saint than Mahatma Gandhi. He never produced a single child, he was always going to bed early and getting up early in the morning, he was not using any kind of alcoholic beverage, and - you will be surprised - he was a vegetarian.

So I was simply joking, that if saintliness consists of these things then Adolf Hitler has defeated Mahatma Gandhi very easily. Mahatma Gandhi took the vow of celibacy after he had created four children. At that age one naturally wants to get rid of sex, because it is simply tiring. The American Medical Association has exposed that there are millions of people in America alone - to say nothing about the whole world - who have a migraine whenever they make love. They are doing great research into why they have a migraine after making love - after making love they should have a good sleep.

But to show you an example of conditioning: the scientists and the medical people who are doing the research into why the migraine happens are finding all kinds of causes, except the real cause.

The real cause is Christianity, because sex has been condemned; so their minds are divided - half of their mind is against sex and half of their mind wants to go the natural way. This creates the tension.

I am not a medical man, I am not a scientist, but I can say with absolute authority that it is the condemnation of sex that is creating the migraine. Because the researchers are all Christians, they will find out many things, but they will not look at a simple psychological fact that no aboriginal ever has a migraine after making love. All these millions of people are Christian, and most of them are very pious and religious people. It is their religion that is creating the migraine because it is creating a split. And a migraine is nothing but a split in the head - one part wants to go, one part pulls back - naturally a migraine will be the result. All condemnation of sex and all appreciation of celibacy should be absolutely stopped; otherwise we cannot get rid of AIDS. It is going to spread - it is spreading.

It is a simple fact that the earth is undivided. What is the need for so many nations, except that they fulfill so many people's ego trips? There is no other need. Why should Germany be afraid of immigrants, and give incentives to Germans to produce more children, when the earth is dying from overpopulation? If there was one world government we could shift population from one place to another place. Wherever the population starts decreasing, it should be replaced by the increasing population from other nations.

Once we accept that the world is one, then there is no need to destroy, every year, billions of dollars' worth of food in America, in Europe. They have to destroy it, and people in the East are dying. In Ethiopia one thousand people were dying every day, and at that very time in Europe they wasted two billion dollars in carrying their foodstuffs to be drowned in the ocean. If the world is one, and some countries are producing more and some countries have become barren, the food can be distributed very easily.

If religions disappear from the world, then many idiotic things will disappear with them. They are against birth control, although they know perfectly well that Jesus is the only begotten son of God - God created only one son in the whole of eternity. He must be practicing birth control; otherwise why only one son? - at least one daughter as well. But the religions are against birth control, they are against abortion, without any feeling for the danger of overpopulation - that the world will kill itself.

That death will be very cruel because it does not come immediately; when a person dies because of hunger, it takes months of torture and suffering. A healthy man can live without food for three months; then he will die, because the healthy man has a reservoir of energy in his body, which is for emergency purposes. But even the poorest man, the sickest man, will take a few days, a few weeks to die. Those few weeks of hunger are going to be absolute hell.

But religions are concerned with creating more children because more children means more power - power in two ways: more votes, and more fodder for your cannons in war.

For twenty to thirty years absolute birth control should be practiced. It is not a question of democracy, because it is a choice between life and death. If the whole world is going to die, what are you going to do with your democracy? Democracy will be the rule then - for the graves, of the graves, by the graves - because people will have disappeared.

Religions carry superstitions of all kinds which are hindering your intelligence, your vision, your possibility of creating a new man in the world.

One thing is certain - the old humanity is going to die. If we can make the people of the world understand, then a new kind of man can survive.

He will be a citizen of the world - no nations.

He will be religious - but no religion.

He will be scientific - but not destructive; his whole science will be devoted to creation.

He will be pious, compassionate, loving - but not celibate; that is a kind of lunacy. A celibate is a lunatic.

The new man will stop all kinds of experiments which are increasing the heat of the atmosphere around the earth, because the priority is life, not your experiments. The new man will not send rockets to create holes from which death-rays can enter into our atmosphere; there is no need at all. And if the need arises, then you should also be prepared to close those holes - the moment the rocket goes out, the hole is closed; the moment the rocket comes in, the hole is closed.

That is the only way to avoid the seas bringing the old story of the flood in which everything was destroyed... and now even Noah's Ark will not help, because the flood will never recede.

A new man without any burden of the past, more meditative, more silent, more loving... all the universities, rather than wasting their time on superficial subjects, should devote time to creating more consciousness in man. But football seems to be more important. It is one of the most idiotic games... and millions of people go mad when there is a football match.

I know one of my friends - he is a professor - he takes leave when there is a football match. If he cannot go to the match itself, then he sits in front of his television set. I was staying with him, he lives in Amritsar. Television came first to Pakistan, because Pakistan is an ally of America; it came to India almost twenty years afterwards. But Amritsar is only fifteen miles away from Pakistan, so they were enjoying Pakistani programs on television, even when in India there was no television. I was staying with that friend, and I got fed up sitting in the room, because seeing a football match... it is so idiotic - millions of people are going mad, as if something very crucial is involved. And because the team that he was identified with was defeated, he threw his television set on the floor, he was so angry.

I said, "You must be an idiot! That I knew from the very beginning, but what is the crime of the poor television set?"

He said, "I became so enraged. It is absolutely unjust."

But I said, "It may be unjust or just, the television set is not concerned in it."

He said, "It is not a question of the television set. I was so angry, I wanted to destroy something."

In a Californian university, for one year they have been studying... that whenever there is a boxing match - which is the ugliest thing you can conceive of, people hitting on each other's noses....

Boxing proves Charles Darwin is right: man has come from animals and still has animal instincts in him. The report of the California university is very significant: whenever there is a boxing match, crime rates go fourteen percent higher immediately, and they remain at that level for at least one week - fourteen percent higher.

Just seeing people hitting each other, their own animal becomes alive - more murders, more rape, more suicides. It takes seven days for them to calm down, back to their normal criminality. Still, boxing is not banned. The same happens with football matches.

You will be surprised to know that American researchers have found that the crime rate is always on the increase. But a new phenomenon has started, and that is small children committing crimes, which has never happened before - thirteen-year-old boys, twelve-year-old boys trying to rape girls; ten-year-old boys, nine-year-old boys murdering, assassinating; seven-year-olds, eight-year-olds taking drugs - and in millions. Now drugs are not thought to be for adult people, but for primary school children.

But nobody seems to be concerned about why this is happening. It can be prevented. People use drugs because without drugs they are so much in anguish and anxiety drugs calm down their minds for a few hours. But again the problems are back. Unless meditation becomes an absolute in every educational institution, drugs cannot be prohibited. You can prohibit... they go underground. Man has to be taught some other ways of becoming calm and quiet and blissful, then there is no need for all these things.

A fourteen-year-old boy committing rape simply shows that you have to change your attitudes about sex. Boys and girls should be raised in hostels together; they should be allowed to make love with no inhibition. Up to a certain age there is no problem, because the girls are not going to get pregnant, so it is simply a game, a joyful game they can enjoy. But rape is a crime - and you are responsible for it.

By the time the girls are of the age that they can become pregnant, the pill should be available in every institution. And now there are pills available for men also; either the girl can take it or the boy can take it. In the past it used to happen sometimes that you had not taken the pill, and suddenly you met your lover - and man always thinks, "This is not going to happen to ME...." But now they have found a new pill which can be taken after love-making. It is more secure.

Things should be thought about in a scientific way, not in a superstitious way; then there is a possibility of man's future. In many countries now they are declaring homosexuality a crime - that will make homosexuality go underground. This I call unintelligent. They should create special campuses for homosexuals, with absolute respect for their dignity. They can move to a special campus. Near every big city beautiful campuses should be available, where homosexuals can move, so that the disease does not spread among the general public. And among homosexuals there are many who are suffering from AIDS, so there should be a special section in the homosexual campus for the AIDS people.

No disrespect should be shown to them, but compassion. They are victims of religious ideologies.

And there are doctors who are homosexuals, there are doctors who are suffering from AIDS. These doctors should be moved to those campuses. We can prevent the rest of humanity from being affected, and without destroying the dignity of the homosexuals or the people who are suffering from AIDS. It is so simple, and they will not be a burden on society. They can work, they can produce, they can do whatsoever they are skilled in; but they should remain in their own monastery. I call it a monastery, homosexual monasteries.

If we take a serious step against all these five dangers that are facing humanity, Veet Niten, there is a possibility of a new man, of a better man, of a natural man, of a healthier man, of a more religious man in the future... a world without wars, without nations, without religions... a world peaceful, loving... a world in search of truth, of bliss, of ecstasy.

But if these five problems are not solved immediately, there is no future possible.

You should start writing your book, A HISTORY OF THE FUTURE, as quickly as possible, because most probably there is not going to be any future.

Question 2:

Sarjano, I still want you to be a mirror, but not an Italian mirror. There are more varieties of mirrors.

Not only are Italian mirrors full of spaghetti sauce, even Italian heads are full of spaghetti. In this whole world I hate only one thing and that is spaghetti.

But you can be a German mirror, a Belgian mirror - the best of all mirrors is the Belgian mirror; and if you are going to be a mirror, why not be the best? But a mirror you have to be. And avoid spaghetti as far as possible, because that makes the Italians greasy. From every pore of their body you can see spaghetti coming out.

I love the Italians minus spaghetti.

Okay, Vimal?

Yes, Osho.