According to Osho, today’s chaos isn’t essentially different; every era imagines itself uniquely tumultuous—that’s the ego of the age seeking specialness. Life is either always ordinary or always extraordinary; without contrast, claims of uniqueness are empty. Drop the props (nation, religion, era), and anxiety subsides as ego collapses; attention returns to inner awareness, not historical drama.
People always think their time is the craziest—that’s ego; stop needing your era to be special and look within.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Is the chaos that is occurring today in our age any different from that of other times? It feels as though it is a special time. Or is it that all time is special?
He brought, next day, a map of the whole world. He fixed it on the wall and he said, Come here, now I will prove it. Which is the greatest country in the world? Of course, it was France because all were French. So the whole world was dropped, only France remained. And then he said, Which is the greatest town, city, in France? Of course it was Paris, all were Parisiens. Then he said, And which is the greatest place in Paris? Of course it was the University, the citadel of wisdom. Now the students started feeling a little restless because he was coming to the point, and it would be difficult now to disprove. And then he said, Which is the best and the greatest Department in the University? Of course it had to be philosophy: the most ancient, with the secret most knowledge. 'And who is the…
The earth seems to be shaking beneath our feet and our faces reflect some imminent cataclysmic event. What is happening?
DON'T be worried. It has always been so. Every age and every generation has thought that something great is happening to them, because every generation has a great ego. How is it possible that something great is not happening while you are here? No, something cataclysmic, something great, something really final is going to happen. This has been so from the very beginning. I have heard that when Adam and Eve were thrown out, expelled out of the Garden of Eden, the first thing that Adam said to Eve was, 'Darling, we are passing through a great revolution.' Since then man has always felt the same -- again and again and again down the ages. It is nothing new. A six-thousand-year-old stone has been found in Babylon with four or five sentences inscribed on it. When these sentences were deciphered people were puzzled. If you read those sentences you will…
Osho, you are always immersed in bliss—what is the secret of it? When will I be able to attain this ecstasy?
Yogananda, I have given you the name Yogananda; the whole secret is in it. A human being can live in two ways: either cut off from existence, or in oneness with it. Whoever lives separate will live in sorrow—anxiety and anguish. That is natural, for to live apart from existence is like a tree pulling its roots out of the earth and trying to live. It will wither; the leaves will droop, flowers will cease to bloom. Spring will come and keep coming, but that tree will never become a bride, never a bridegroom. For it there will be no spring. If the roots have been torn from the soil, what remedy can even the honeyed month of spring offer? Then where is bliss, where is ecstasy! Then there is no dawn—only a dark new-moon night, a night with no morning. Such a life is called ego. And the tree…
Osho, it is claimed that we learn from chaos. How much more does man need to awaken?
Sol Lewis, Chaos is not there outside -- the outside is a cosmos -- but inside there is a chaos. And it is because of the chaos inside that people don't look inwards. They are afraid to look, very frightened of looking in. They keep themselves occupied in every possible way so that there is no time left, no space left to look in. They go on listening to the Buddhas, who say, "Know thyself." They understand what is meant by "knowing thyself", but they don't make any effort to know themselves. They are afraid of the chaos. Inside there is chaos. Outside there is no chaos. The stars are moving in a rhythm, the whole existence is rhythmic, it is in absolute accord. It is just man's mind which is in a chaos. And if you see any chaos outside, that is man-made, man-created. Man remains a chaos unless…
Beloved Osho, the world seems to be getting more and more crazy from day to day. Nobody knows what is going on and everything is upside down and confused. This is what is told in the newspapers. Is it real? And if so, is there any intrinsic balance in life which is keeping everything stable?
Buddhaprem, the world is the same; it has always been the same -- upside down, crazy, insane. In fact, only one thing new has happened in the world, and that is the awareness that we ARE crazy, that we are upside down, that something is basically wrong with us. And this is a great blessing -- this awareness. Of course it is only a beginning, just the abc of a long process, just a seed, but immensely pregnant. The world was never so aware of its insane ways as it is today. It has always been the same. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars. Can you say this humanity is sane? One cannot remember a time in human history when people were not destroying each other either in the name of religion or in the name of God or even in the name of peace, humanity,…