Do suicide rates fall during wartime?

Do suicide rates fall during wartime?

They do—indeed, they drop completely. Suicide declines, murder declines, theft goes down, robberies go down. Because war brings so much thrill, so much “juice,” who would bother with these? These too are done to bring a little excitement; they too are born out of boredom. So I hold that boredom goes with “the old”; as long as the old remains, boredom will remain.

Especially sexually. Especially sexually. And in a way it is a happy society. There is no misery or destitution. Yet the suicide rate there is very high. More and more people are dying, committing suicide. They are dying by their own hand; no one is killing them. So they have raised this question: what is going on? And India’s sannyasins also raise it; they too say, “We are more peaceful and blissful. Look, we have fewer suicides. They are more unhappy and afflicted; they have more suicides.” This is completely wrong.

In truth, the very question of suicide can arise only for a happy person; never for an unhappy one. Understand this a little. As far as suicide is concerned, a miserable person cannot even think of dying; he continuously thinks only of living. The unhappy person keeps thinking: How can I live, how can I live, how can I live? If there is no house—how do I get one? No clothes—how do I get them? No wife—how do I find one? The unhappy person feels, “I’m in so much pain, and if I get these things—wife, house, car, money—then I’ll be able to live.” His whole mind is engaged in removing his suffering. Do you get my meaning? And to remove suffering, one has to live; otherwise, how will you remove it? Suffering cannot end today; you will have to make arrangements, make efforts—earn money, fall in love, build a…

Beloved Osho, I seem to have heard you say that people are attracted to war because it is exciting, whereas peace is boring. In my own experience I seem to enjoy indulging my personal dramas and traumas, and when I'm not indulging them life is a bit flat. Is it possible to be attracted to peace? Will the new humanity find peace, rather than war, exciting?

It has never happened. Man has never found peace exciting. It seems that the way man is, war certainly will remain exciting, because the peace that you know is not the real peace; it is the peace of a cemetery, not the peace of this mandir! No war is going on, everything is silent -- do you think it is flat? The new man will know this peace twenty-four hours round the clock, waking or sleeping. And the peace that is not only absence of war but a positive flowering within you, a positive wordless song within you, is totally different. Up to now man has known peace, but that peace was only preparation for war. History can be divided into two parts: the period when people are fighting, and the period when people are exhausted, tired, ruined, preparing for another war from scratch. War or preparation for war: these…

Why did van gogh kill himself? Why did hemingway put a shotgun in his mouth and blow the top of his head off? Why do they poison their rivers, their air and their own food? Why do they justify it all with their reasoning, psychology and laws? Why do they come here for a couple of months, and why do you have so much compassion for them? I am sick and tired of them!

Why this question? Such a long question has arisen in Prageet's mind, and this is his first question. He has been here for almost two years. Why has such a long question arisen? He has a very violent mind. He is a good groupleader, but a very violent one. He runs the gestalt and the bio-energetic groups and he goes on beating people. And he had never asked this question up to now. But just a few days ago one guy beat him really hard. Hence the question. If you are tired and sick of them, you are one of them. Feel compassion, feel love. Help people through love and compassion. I know that sometimes you have to be hard too, just because of compassion, but that is another quality of hardness. Sometimes you have to push their buttons, but when you push their buttons, naturally they can go to…

Beloved Osho, I come from a family where there are four suicides on the maternal side, including my grandmother. How does this affect one's death? What helps to overcome this perversion of death which runs as a theme through the family?

Heidegger has said: "Death isolates me and makes of me an individual." It is my death, not that of the multitude to which I belong. Each of us dies his own death; death cannot be repeated. I can sit an examination twice, or thrice; compare my second marriage with my first, and so on and so forth. I die only once. I can get married as many times as I like, I can change my jobs as many times as I like, I can change my town as many times as I like... but I die only once. Death is so challenging because it is at once certain and uncertain. That it will come is certain, when it will do so is uncertain. Hence there is great curiosity about death, about what it is. One wants to know about it. And there is nothing morbid about this contemplation of death.…