FUTURE GOVERNMENT; ''MERITOCRACY'' : POWER IN THE HAND OF INTELLIGENTSIA.''OSHO''

ONE THING IS absolutely certain: The days of the politicians are over. They have done too well their job of being destructive, violent.

 

Nothing is favorable to the politician; and as each day passes his death comes closer. He himself is responsible. He improved the weapons, which can bring death to the whole world, to such a point that there is no way of going back. Either there will be an ultimate war – which means death to all and everything – or a total change of the whole structure in the human society. I am calling that change "meritocracy."

One thing – we have to drop the idea that every man, just because he is twenty-one, is capable of choosing who is the right person to decide the fate of nations. Age cannot be a decisive factor. We have to change the decisive factor; that is changing the very foundation.

 

My suggestion is that only a person who is at least a matriculate, a high school graduate, will be able to vote. His age does not matter.

 

For the local government, matriculation will be the qualification for the voters. And graduation from a university, at least a bachelor's degree, should be a necessary qualification for anybody running for election, for the candidates. A master's degree should be a minimum qualification for the one who is running for mayor.

 

For the state elections, graduation with a bachelor's degree should be the minimum qualification for the voters. A master's degree in science, the arts, commerce, should be the necessary degree for the candidates. For the cabinet ministers an M.A. with highest honors should be the minimum necessary qualification; more will be, of course, more appreciated. And anybody trying to become a cabinet minister will have to know something about the subject. His qualification should correspond to the subject matter that he is going to deal with in his term of office.

 

So if somebody is going to be an education minister, then his qualifications should make him capable of being an education minister.

 

He should have at least a master's degree in education with highest honors; with less than highest honors nobody should be a minister on the state level. Yes, if he has better degrees – doctor of education, Ph.D. in education – that is good, that will make him more qualified.

 

The attorney general should have at least a doctorate in law, an LL.D.– not less than that, because he is going to defend the law of the state, the rights of the citizens. He should have the best degree possible so he knows everything about it.

 

The governor should have the best of all the degrees possible for him: M.A. with highest honors, Ph.D. – his Ph.D. should be in political science – and at least one honorary degree, a D.Litt. or LL.D.

 

For the federal government, a master's degree will be the voter's minimum qualification. A master's degree with highest honors and a Ph.D. should be the minimum for the candidates running for election. And the ministers should all have the highest degrees in the subjects for which they are going to be ministers. If it is education then the highest degrees in education available in the country; if it is going to be health, then the highest degrees in health available in the country.

 

The president should have at least two Ph.D.s and one honorary D.Litt. or LL.D.; and the same for the vice-president because he can become president any day. In this way mobocracy is destroyed. Then just because you are twenty-one it does not mean you are capable of choosing the government.

 

Choosing the government should be a very skillful, intelligent job.

 

Just by being twenty-one you may be able to reproduce children – it needs no skill, no education, biology sends you well prepared. But to choose the government, to choose people who are going to have all the powers over you and everybody, and who are going to decide the destiny of the country and the world, just to be twenty-one is certainly not enough...the way we have been choosing them is simply idiotic.

 

I would like all the universities – within each state – to call a convention of all the vice-chancellors and the eminent professors; of the eminent intelligentsia who may not be part of the university: painters, artists, poets, writers, novelists, dancers, actors, musicians. It would include all dimensions of talents, all kinds of people who have shown their caliber – excluding politicians completely.

 

All the Nobel Prize winners should be invited – excluding the politicians again, because within these past few years a few politicians have been given Nobel Prizes, and this has degraded the value of the Nobel Prize.

 

So from each state a delegation should be chosen for the national convention, which goes into details of how the meritocracy can work.

 

From the national candidates there should be an international convention of all the universities of the world and the intelligentsia. This would be the first of its kind because never has the whole intelligentsia of the world come together to decide the fate of humanity. They should write the first constitution of the world.

 

It will not be American, it will not be Indian, it will not be Chinese – it is going to be simply the constitution of the whole of humanity. There is no need for different kinds of laws. There is no need – all human beings need the same kind of laws.

 

And a world constitution will be a declaration that nations are no longer significant.

 

They can exist as functional units but they are no longer independent powers. And if the whole intelligentsia of the world is behind this convention it will not be very difficult to convince the generals of the world to move away from the politicians.

 

And what power do politicians have? All the power that they have we have given to them. We can take it back. It is not their power, it is our power. We just have to find a way to take it back – because giving is very easy, taking is a little difficult. They will not be so simple and innocent when you take the power back as they were when they were asking it from you. It is our power, but they will go on having it if the mob remains there to give it to them; the mob can be convinced about anything.

 

It is the function of the intelligentsia.... I would like to say that now, if anything happens to humanity, the whole condemnation will go to the intelligentsia: "What were you doing? If those idiots were ready to kill humanity, what were you doing? You simply went on grumbling, being grumpy, but you did nothing else."

 

And the time is running short. Once we decide that the voting power is not the birthright of every human being but is a right which you will have to earn by your intelligence.... You have to see the distinction: Everybody is given the opportunity to earn it, there is equal opportunity for all to earn it, but it is nothing birth-given; you have to prove it.

 

Once we move the power from the mob into the hands of intelligent people, people who know what they are doing, we can create something beautiful.

 

If a man who has devoted his whole life to thinking about education and its problems, has done all that was possible to do to find out every detail, every fundamental of education, all the possible philosophies of education – if he becomes an education minister, there is a possibility that he will do something.

 

I suggest to shift completely from the mob to the chosen few.

 

I am not against the people. In fact, in the hands of these politicians, the people are against themselves. I am all for the people, and what I am saying can be said to be exactly what has been said about democracy: for the people, by the people, of the people – just "by the people" I will have to change. This intelligentsia will be for the people, of the people. It will be serving the masses.

 

It is so simple a thing. You don't elect a doctor, and just anybody can stand, because it is a birthright and people can vote...two persons fighting to be the doctor or to be the surgeon. What is wrong in it? The people choose for themselves: for the people, by the people, of the people. They choose one person – to be the surgeon – because he speaks better, he looks good on the television and he makes great promises.

 

But he is not even a butcher, and he is going to become a surgeon! A butcher would have been better; at least he would have known how to cut – but you don't choose a surgeon by election.

 

How can you choose a president by election? How can you choose a governor by election? For one post so many people are hankering, desiring. Those who are most sick with ambitiousness will fight the most, they will kill – they will do anything.

 

You are giving so much power to power-hungry people; with your own hands you are helping them to hang you!

 

This is not democracy. In the name of democracy these people have been exploiting the masses.

 

So politicians and priests both have to be dropped out of their long, long-standing establishment, and a totally new kind of management has to be developed.

 

Just to make a distinction I am calling my system "meritocracy." But merit for what? The merit is to serve and share. And once you have decided to shift the power from the politicians to the intelligentsia, everything is possible – everything becomes simple.

 

Meritocracy is a whole program of transforming the structure of society, the structure of the government, the structure of education.

It is a difficult job, arduous but not impossible – particularly in such a situation when death is the only alternative

THIS CRISIS: DO YOU WANT TO LIVE A NEW LIFE OR DIE?''OSHO''

THIS CRISIS IS good in a way because it is going to force people to choose: Do you want to die or do you want to live a new life?

 

The damage can be repaired; then die to the past, drop all that has been given to you as a heritage from the past, and start fresh – just as if you have descended on this earth for the first time. Start working with nature not as an enemy but as a friend, and the ecology will soon again be functioning as an organic unity.

 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 overflood poor countries like Bangladesh. The same water can create much more electricity and help thousands of villages to have light in their nights, to have warmth in the cold winters.

 

It is a simple thing. All problems are simple.

 

But the basic foundations of those problems are the trouble.

 

Nations and organized religions will try in every way not to disappear. Even if the whole world disappears, they will be prepared to accept that, but they will not be ready to surrender all their arms, all their armies, to a world organization.

 

But there is no need of armies. These millions of people who are involved in armies are a sheer wastage. They are not doing anything. Their use comes only in force, when within the nation or with other nations there is war; in peace they are of no use.

 

A world government will slowly start dissolving armies...making them peaceful citizens.

 

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.

 

I want it to be known to the whole world that if you are not ready to be one, be ready to disappear from this planet.

WHAT PRIESTS AND POLITICIAN ACTUALLY WANTS?''OSHO''

THAT SAME U.N. report, "Our Common Future," fails to deal with the real roots of the problems because that would go against our own governments and religions.

For instance, it says the economy and ecology are connected, but what about religion and politics?

You have to be made aware who the real criminals are. The problem is that those criminals are thought to be great leaders, great symbols of holiness and respectability. So I have to expose all these people because they are the causes.

 For example, it is easier to understand that perhaps politicians are the causes of many problems – wars, murders, massacres – but it is more difficult when it comes to religious leaders, because nobody has raised his hand against them. They have remained respectable for centuries, and as time goes on their respectability goes on growing.

The most difficult job for me is to make you aware that these people – knowingly or unknowingly, that does not matter – have created this world.

The politicians and the priests have been constantly in conspiracy, working together, hand in hand.

The politician has the political power; the priest has the religious power. The politician protects the priest, the priest blesses the politician – and the masses are exploited, their blood is sucked by both.

Religions have made man's mind retarded by creating beliefs out of fictions. And politicians have destroyed man by creating as undignified a life as possible – because their power depends on your slavery. These barriers should be removed.

Rather, science should be employed not in the service of death and destruction, but in the service of life and love, affirmation, celebration.

We are in such a situation today that either we will let these rotten politicians and priests destroy the whole of humanity and the earth, or we will have to take the power from their hands and decentralize it into humanity.

For example, every religion goes on teaching against birth control, and no government is courageous enough to tell these religions that they are creating a situation in which the whole earth is in tremendous suffering. In forty of the poorest countries in the world today, one fifth of all children die before the age of five.

The politicians are afraid to say to the people anything in favor of birth control, in favor of abortion, because their whole interest is not whether the country survives or dies, their interest is that nobody should be offended.

People have their prejudices, but the politicians don't want to touch their prejudices because they need their votes. If they hurt their prejudices, these people are not going to give them their votes.

The population explosion is the problem.

All the religions are teaching: "Serve the poor," but not a single religion is ready to say: "Accept birth control so that the population is reduced."

The pope is continually interfering. He will not allow birth control: it is a sin, a sin against God. And what kind of God is this, who can't see that the earth is overburdened with the population?

Politics is a game of numbers.

How many Christians you have in the world – that is your power. The more Christians there are, the more power is in the hands of Christian priests, the priesthood. Nobody is interested in saving anybody, but just in increasing the population.

What Christianity has been doing is to continually issue orders from the Vatican against birth control, saying it is a sin to use birth control methods, that it is a sin to believe in abortion or to encourage abortion or to make it legal.

Do you think they are interested in the unborn children? They are not interested; they have nothing to do with those unborn children. They pursue their interest knowing perfectly well that if abortion is not practiced, if birth control methods are not practiced, this whole humanity is going to commit a global suicide.

And it is not so far away that you cannot see the situation. If things don't change, just within twelve years the world population will be such that it will be impossible to survive.

Just now, just recently, the Vatican has come out with a long message to humanity – one hundred and thirty-nine pages: "Abortion is sin; birth control is a sin." Now, nowhere in the bible is abortion a sin.

Nowhere in the bible is birth control a sin, because no birth control was needed.

Out of ten children, nine were going to die. That was the proportion, and that was the proportion in India just thirty or forty years ago: out of ten children, only one would survive. Then the population was not too great, not too heavy on the resources of the earth. Now, even in India – not to say anything about developed countries – even in India, out of ten children, only one dies.

So medical science goes on helping people to survive. And Christianity goes on opening hospitals and distributing medicines, while at the same time condemning birth control and preaching stupid ideas like: "children are God-sent," and Mother Teresa is there to praise and the pope is going to bless you....

They are even worried about Russia. There is, in America, a Christian association called Underground Evangelism, which works in communist countries to distribute the bible freely, and to distribute these stupid ideas that abortion is sin and birth control is sin.

Somehow Russia is not starving; they are not rich but they are not starving. Please, at least leave them alone. And it is because of birth control that they are not starving. If birth control is prohibited, if abortion is prohibited, Russia will be in the same position as Ethiopia. Then Mother Teresa and the pope will be very happy. The underground evangelists will come overground – a great opportunity to convert people to Christianity.

If some day this whole earth dies because of this explosion of population, then these people will be responsible for it – they are against birth control and abortion. Now, without birth control, without abortion, there is no possibility for this earth to be rich.

ONE RELIGIOUSNESS IS ENOUGH FOR THE HUMANITY.''OSHO''

AFTER NATIONS, the second great disease is religions, because they have been fighting, they have been killing, and for reasons in which nobody is interested.

 

Christianity was the first religion to create in people's minds the idea that a war too can be religious.

 

I say, war as such is irreligious. There cannot be anything like a crusade, a jihad, a holy war! If you call war "holy" then what is left to be called unholy?

 

Who is interested in God except the priests?

 

I have never come across a man who is really interested in God. If you offer him five dollars in one hand and God in another, he will take the five dollars and he will say: "God is eternal, we will see later on. For the moment five dollars will be helpful."

 

But the priests are interested, because God is their business, and they want their business to spread.

 The religions have destroyed man's integrity.

 

They have broken him – not only in parts but into opposing parts, and these parts are continuously fighting with each other. In this way they have made humanity schizophrenic; they have given everybody a split personality. It has been done in a very clever and cunning way by condemning your body, your sex – by turning you against your own nature.

 

All the religions are against everything that man can enjoy. It is their vested interest to keep man miserable, to destroy every possibility of his finding peace, joy and fulfillment – to find paradise here, now.

 

Your misery is absolutely needed for the "other world" to exist. For example, if your sex is really fulfilled, you don't need God, because your life is fulfilled. But if your sex is condemned, repressed, destroyed, if you are made to feel guilty about it – then God can go on living forever. God derives his energy from your suicide!

 

The religions have taught you that you are not part of this world; you are here to be punished, to repent your "original sin." They had to do it in order to create God, who is a poetic fiction; and to create heaven, which is an extension of human greed; and to make people afraid of hell, which is to create a great fear in the very center of the human soul. Of course those fictions are very profitable to the priests.

 

No religion accepts the simple, natural and factual phenomenon that man is a unity – body and consciousness together – and this world is not separate from man. Man is rooted in this world just as trees are rooted. And the roots are as essential a part of the tree as the flowers. In fact, without roots there wouldn't be any tree!

 

This planet, this earth, is our mother and we are all part of one life force – part of one oceanic existence. And because we are one deep inside at our center, the possibility of love exists.

 

I am against all organized religions, without any exception, for the simple reason that truth cannot be organized, love cannot be organized – it is not politics.

 

All these religions have made you parts of crowds, dependent on the crowds. They have taken away your individuality, your freedom, your intelligence. In its place they have given you bogus beliefs, which mean nothing.

 

Belief is just a strategy to deceive yourself.

 

You don't want to go on the path of seeking, searching, discovering. It is arduous, because you will have to drop many superstitions, and you will have to deprogram yourself from many conditionings from the past which are preventing you from knowing the truth, from knowing yourself. No belief can help, and all religions are based on belief – that's why they are called "faiths."

 

Truth is a search, not a faith. It is an inquiry, not a belief. It is a question, a quest. To avoid this search you easily become gullible, you easily become victims of anybody who is ready to exploit you.

 

And naturally it feels cozy in a crowd. There are six hundred million Catholics. It feels cozy. And it feels like six hundred million people cannot be wrong. You may be wrong, but six hundred million people cannot be wrong – but that's what every one of them is thinking.

 

Four hundred million Hindus feel that they are right, and the same is true about Mohammedans, Buddhists and other religions.

 

A religion should be not a dead organization, but a kind of religiousness, a loving heart, a friendliness towards the whole. For these, no holy scriptures are needed.

 

An authentic religiousness needs no prophets, no saviors, no churches, no popes, no priests – because religiousness is the flowering of your heart.

 

If religiousness spreads all over the world the religions will fade away. It will be a tremendous blessing to humanity when man is simply man, neither Christian, nor Mohammedan, nor Hindu.

 

Religiousness is an individual affair. It is a message of love from you to the whole cosmos. Only then will there be a peace that passeth all misunderstanding...otherwise these religions have been parasites, exploiting people, enslaving people, forcing people to believe – and all beliefs are against intelligence.

 

I would love the whole world to be religious – as an independent search out of each individual's freedom.

 

So first, the nations should go if the world is to survive. There is no need of India and England and Germany.

 

Second, the religions should go.

 

One humanity is enough. 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, there can be gatherings of people who have similar feelings, similar joys, rejoicings, but there should not be any organizations, hierarchies, bureaucracies.

First nations, second religions; and third, a science completely devoted to a 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

THE FUTURE WORLD TO SAVE HUMANITY.''OSHO''

ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT 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 U.N. But the U.N. 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 discussion club.

 

To make it a success, the simple thing is to make it a World Government. All nations should surrender their armies, their arms, to the World Government. Certainly if there is only one government, neither armies are needed nor arms. With whom are you going to have a war?

 

Now each big country, each power, is loaded with nuclear weapons, so much so that if we want to, we can destroy seventy earths like this, right now. That much nuclear power is there, available; to destroy each person seventy times. We also have war-gases enough to kill the entire life on earth five thousand times. It is not needed, one time is enough – but politicians don't want to take any chances. Their faces are all masks. They say one thing, they do another thing.

 

Politicians are basically, deep down, impotent – hence the urge to power.

 

They feel their weakness, inferiority and powerlessness; they know they are nobodies. But if they can convince the mediocre mob that they will be fulfilling their needs – then it is a mutual understanding, a bargain. Then the masses give them power, and once they have got the power, they forget all their promises; in fact they never meant them. Once they have the power, then you see their real faces.

 

The politician is nothing but an egoist. Inside he feels inferior – and afraid of that feeling of inferiority. He wants to be somebody, so that he can forget that feeling of inferiority. Power gives him the chance: he can see that millions of people are under his thumb. He can convince himself that he is not a nobody, he is somebody special. And he starts behaving that way. He starts misusing power. Once he is in power, he never wants to be out of it, because subconsciously he knows very well that out of power he will have to face his emptiness, his feeling of inferiority, his impotence.

 

And the power is in such people's hands. Any crackpot can push a button and finish the whole of humanity – the whole of life on earth.

 

The United Nations should be converted from a formal organization into a real World Government, and all nations should surrender their armies and arms to it.

 

Then ways can be found for the arms technology to be used for some creative purposes. And millions of people in the armies will be released for such creative work, and all the scientists that all the governments are holding in their power will become, under the U.N., one single unit.

 

Each prime minister of the existing countries will become a member of the World Government, and all the prime ministers of the countries which join into one World Government will continue to work functionally. They won't have any real power, because the question of anyone invading anyone else does not arise. They will simply run the railways and post offices, etc., of their countries.

 

There is a possibility that a few governments won't join the World Government; then they have to be boycotted completely as if they don't exist. There should be no relationship with them, no communication, because that is the only way to bring them to join. And they cannot stand against the World Government. They will have to surrender. It is better to surrender gracefully. And then they will have their government, they will have their internal guards, a national force which can manage internal affairs, but they will not have plants making nuclear weapons and millions of people engaged in the unnecessary exercise of killing man.

 

The members of the World Government will choose the world president. But the world president will be chosen not from the members of the World Government, but from outside. And one thing should be absolutely certain about him – that he is not a politician. He can be a poet, a painter, a mystic, a dancer, but not a politician. Anything except that. So in this way we will destroy the political power which has been the whole torture in the past.

 

The way the U.N. is now, with a few countries having veto power, should be dissolved.

 

It is again a power trip, and this has been the cause of many troubles: one single government can veto something for the whole world. Instead, each president from different nations will have voting power according to the nation's population of matriculates, of high school graduates.

 

This will change the whole power structure in the world. Then details can be worked out very easily

THE TRANSFORMATION OF HUMANITY IS NEEDED,NATIONS HAVE BECOME OUT OF DATE.''OSHO''

NATIONS HAVE BECOME out of date – but they go on existing and they are the greatest problem. Looking at the world with a bird's eye view, a strange feeling arises that we have everything – just we need one humanity.

 

For example, in Ethiopia people were dying – one thousand people per day – and in Europe they were drowning billions of dollars worth of food in the ocean.

 

Anybody looking from the outside will think humanity is insane. Thousands of people are dying and mountains of butter and other foodstuff is being drowned in the ocean. But Ethiopia is not the concern of the Western world. Their concern is to save their economies and their status quo. And to protect their economic structures, they are willing to destroy food which could have saved the lives of thousands of people.

 

Problems are worldwide – solutions have also to be worldwide.

 And my understanding is absolutely clear, that there are things somewhere where they are not needed, and somewhere else 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. And once we think of one world, then there is only one economy.

 

The last time America drowned its foodstuff, just the expense of drowning it was millions of dollars. That is not the cost of the product, but just of carrying it to the ocean and drowning it. And America itself has thirty million people who can't afford enough to eat. 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 in producing any more. What is the point? Afraid of disturbing the economy, they let thirty million people starve on the streets, and go on drowning the superfluous production in the ocean.

 

Not only that, thirty million people in America are suffering from overeating. Science is perfectly capable of helping them, it is very simple – perhaps the overeater simply needs a small brain surgery and the overeating will disappear.

 

Thirty million people are dying from diseases caused by overeating, thirty million people are dying with no food – sixty million people can be immediately saved with a small understanding.

 

But a bird's eye view is needed to look at the whole world as one unit.

 

Our problems have brought us to a situation where we will have to transform man, his old traditions, his conditionings – because those conditionings, and those educational systems and 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 have all 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.

 

And the most dangerous thing is that this preparation for our suicide, by all the nations, is in the name of war and victory – all childish and stupid. You can see it in the way nations respect a piece of cloth as their flag and if it is removed their whole glory and freedom is lost – you cannot insult the national flag. This is the situation of human retardedness.

 

It is a simple fact that the earth is undivided.

 

What is the need of so many nations, except that it fulfills 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 the population could shift from one place to another place. Whenever the population starts decreasing it could be replaced by the increasing populations from other nations.

If there is only one world government, no division of nations, and the freedom of movement without any need of passports and visas and all other kinds of idiotic conditions, then problems can easily be solved

INTERNATIONAL SOLUTION FOR INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM.''OSHO''

THE WHOLE ECOLOGY around the earth is being destroyed. But 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 man on other men, not only one nation 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 – trees a hundred years old, two hundred years old, even a thousand years old, have been destroyed and cut to create more paper for all kinds of stupid newspapers without ever giving any consideration to what you are doing. You will not be able to replace those trees.

 

Nepal, one of the poorest countries in the world, has nothing except the eternal Himalayas and deep forests, ancient and old. So it has been selling its forests 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 the Soviet Union has purchased the rights to much of the remaining forest. And they are not cutting trees the old way, with an axe, but by very modern techniques so that in a single day, hundreds of trees simply disappear – miles of land become a desert.

 

These trees had been preventing the rivers of the Himalayas from coming down with such great force; they were slowing down the flow of water. By the time the waters reached Bangladesh, where they meet with the ocean, the quantity of water was exactly as much as the ocean could absorb. But now those trees have disappeared – the rivers are flowing with such great force and with so much water that the ocean cannot absorb it so quickly.

 

And every year Bangladesh is suffering great floods, strange floods, rivers flowing backwards 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 even sold them for the next thirty years; it has already taken the money, to survive.

 

A similar kind of situation exists in many areas of the world.

 

The world's tropical forests are disappearing at the rate of eighteen to twenty million hectares a year – an area half the size of California, and California is one of the biggest states in America. Within the next twenty to thirty years, all the tropical forests will be gone; and the implications are tremendous because these forests are supplying you with oxygen and life. If these forests disappear at the rate they are disappearing, mankind will be at a loss to find oxygen – from where?

 

And on the other hand, whatever carbon dioxide you exhale, these forests inhale. If these forests were not there...already there is so much carbon dioxide continuously accumulating in the atmosphere that its effects are being felt everywhere on the earth And because of that carbon dioxide, the temperature of the atmosphere is rising. It is already some degrees higher than it has ever been.

 

If the temperature goes on increasing, as is the possibility, because nobody is listening – trees are being cut, without any understanding, for useless things; for third-rate newspapers you are destroying life – there is a possibility that the eternal ice of the Himalayas will start melting, which has never happened in the whole past. Then all the oceans will rise twenty feet higher and will drown all the coastal cities – for example, New York, London, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Bombay, and Calcutta.

 

During the next twelve years, the world population is expected to increase thirty to forty percent, from five billion to seven billion people.

 

This population growth alone will cause requirements for water to double in nearly half the world, and we don't have that much water for drinking. Food is another thing....

 

In addition, the United Nations report says that globally, six million hectares a year of farm and grazing land degrade into desert-like conditions and twenty million hectares a year are being reduced to zero productivity. Many hundreds of plant and animal species become extinct each year – which easily can become thousands each year as the forests and grazing land are vanishing. One and a half to two million people in developing countries suffer acute pesticide poisoning annually, and pesticide-related deaths are estimated at ten thousand per year.

 

There are many gases being produced by our factories, which have made us aware of a strange phenomenon: those gases move upwards and make holes in a certain layer of ozone, a variety of oxygen, which covers the earth twenty miles up. That ozone is absolutely necessary for humanity, for animals, for trees, because it absorbs the harmful sun rays and allows only life-affirmative sun rays to enter. Now great holes have been caused by the gases that our factories and industries create – and from those holes, death rays from the sun are entering into our atmosphere.

 

No government is ready to give the scientists support so they can create more ozone and fill up the gaps which we ourselves have unconsciously created.

 

This earth has never been so sick; it has never been so much in danger of new diseases. But the vested interests are not ready to stop these factories or find alternatives.

 

The world's current war budget is approaching one thousand billion dollars per year. One thousand billion dollars every year spent on warfare, and every year fifteen million people die from malnutrition and disease.

 

Every minute, thirty children die for lack of food and inexpensive vaccines, and every minute 1.3 million dollars of public funds are spent on the world's military budget.

 

It seems we are not interested in life anymore, we have decided to commit suicide.

 

Man has never been in such a suicidal mood – never, in the whole of history.

 

Two hundred and fifty million children have not received even a basic education. A single nuclear submarine equals the annual education budget for sixteen million school-age children in the developing countries. Just one submarine! And there are hundreds of submarines moving around in the oceans all over the world – American and Russian both – and each submarine has nuclear weapons six times more powerful than all the weapons that were used in the second world war. They are so costly that we could have provided our children with education and food, with nutrition. But our interests are not there.

 

Half a million scientists are engaged only in creating more war material.

 

Ten million people around the earth already have AIDS – which has no cure. And this number is not accurate, because many countries have not yet declared how many of their people have AIDS; they don't have any way to find it out – for example, India. Mohammedan countries are bound to have a very large number of people suffering from AIDS, because homosexuality has been there for thousands of years.

 

Everywhere sexual perversions have become so rampant that Sodom and Gomorrah look very outdated.

 

Even according to very moderate estimates, by the end of this century there will be one hundred million people suffering from AIDS, which is such a vast number that there is no way the hospitals will be able to take care.

 

These are the multi-dimensional ways that death is approaching the earth.

My emphasis is that our problems are international and our solutions are national, but no nation is capable of solving them. I take it as a great challenge and as a great opportunity. Nations should collapse into one world government.

DISCOVERING THE ROOTS CREATES FUTURE.''OSHO''

THE BASIC PROBLEMS dealt with by the same report, "Our Common Future" – food security, human population and resources, species and eco-systems, industry, pollution and urban problems – are really only a small part of the overall problem. The report ignores the real problems. It says that nations must work together, but it doesn't look at the roots:

Who is dividing the earth?

It says that economics and ecology are connected, but what about the vested interests of the past, religion and politics, which are the cause of national divisions?

By saying that we have to work now to save the future, the report implies that the present situation is created by the past. But we are still clinging to the past in every way.

If we are responsible for the future, who is responsible for us?

We are created by the past, and we are living in misery.

We haven't created these problems; they have been created by the past humanity. If we really want to find solutions for the future, we have to discover the roots of these problems in the past.

By pruning the leaves of the trees nothing is changed – you will have to cut the roots. And the moment you start at the roots, you will be in difficulty, because the politicians are in the roots, the organized religions are in the roots, all nations are in the roots – and the very basic unit of the society is marriage, from which all our problems basically stem.

If we can dissolve marriage, the society dissolves, and as a by-product, nations, races, politicians and priests disappear; that is why they all insist on marriage – they know it is the root, and that it is needed to keep man miserable and enslaved.

To have a different future from the one which will come on its own, we will have to disconnect ourselves from the past.

It seems man exists for all these kinds of things – democracy, socialism, fascism, communism, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Mohammedanism.

The reality should be that everything exists 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. In the last three thousand years we have fought five thousand wars, as if life is all about fighting and not at all about being creative, not at all about enjoying the gifts of nature.

We have to drop all this insanity.

We cannot change anything in this world unless we cut these roots completely.

The most important need of humanity today is to be made aware that its past has betrayed it; that there is no point in continuing the past – it will be suicidal – and that a new humanity is absolutely and urgently needed.