What broke the chain of enlightenment in the world?

These zen sutras seem to come from a time when there were many enlightened ones in this world. What broke the chain of enlightenment, and left our planet with a single precious and unhidden flame of buddha nature? How is it we have evolved into such an unenlightened planet when we were once blessed with so many masters?

But the magistrate said -- a woman magistrate... For the first time I had a thought that perhaps a woman in power may prove more dangerous than a man. That woman magistrate said, "You have not proved anything, but still I refuse to give him bail. The reason? The reason is that he is an influential man, he has thousands of followers. The maximum bail is only half a million dollars. He can jump bail; there are inexhaustible sources behind him." Not because of any crime, but because of the possibility of my jumping bail, she refused. But the real reason was to drag me through six jails. A journey of six hours was done in twelve days. Only now do we know from poison experts that they were poisoning me in small doses; that's why it took them twelve days. If that amount of poison is given in one…

Beloved Osho, rocks easily destroy flowers. The politicians and religions sense that enlightenment, freedom and individuality threaten their power. Is it fear alone that is the basis of the dark use of intelligence to crush man's finest blossoms? Or is there an unconscious urge for "endarkenment" too?

It seems it is not only one individual, but perhaps the whole of humanity that has lost the will to live, the will to be more conscious, the will to be more aware, the will to reach to the highest peak of enlightenment, to be a Gautam Buddha. On the contrary, people are waiting to disappear into darkness, into death, because life is so meaningless and so futile. There seems to be no reason to go on living. For the first time, on a tremendous scale, millions of people are feeling meaninglessness. It is creating tremendous anxiety, and it seems death is the only cure. With death, everything will subside. There will be no problem, no anxiety, no struggle, no jealousy, no tension. Perhaps, Devageet, your word "endarkenment" may become a contribution to our language, as the opposite of enlightenment. People have always lived unconsciously, but today, the unconsciousness has…

Osho, what are the reasons that very few persons in the world are interested in transforming their inner heat into spiritual light? Do you feel that the present generation is capable of creating enlightened ones like krishna, lao tzu and christ?

That also did not do because you cannot force yourself to be a Buddha, you cannot imitate. But Devadatta is forgotten and Buddha remains. The whole age is forgotten; only Buddha remains. Everything has disappeared; only Buddha remains. And then we compare Buddha with our own age. Because of that, this problem arises over whether a Buddha or a Jesus can be born today. It looks impossible. How is it possible in "this age of darkness, corruption, immorality"? How is this possible! Another factor also enters: whenever a person is dead for twenty centuries, we forget how we behaved with him when he was alive. Jesus was crucified not because he was a great Teacher or a great Enlightened One, but only because he was "immoral, undisciplined -- against the code and against the tradition". This behaviour was not that of a respectable man. And when he was killed, it…

In these last hundred or two hundred years, is there any name in the West?

Yes, yes—there is! When someone like Eckhart appeared in Germany, he was a man of tremendous worth, but not a teacher. A chain catches momentum only when a thousand conditions come together; otherwise it doesn’t. Eckhart is a man of great worth—of the worth of Jesus—but the chain could not take hold because he was not a teacher. He says things that become unintelligible; he cannot make them understood. And the things are unintelligible. Unless one has a great art of explanation, they cannot be explained at all. They are downright contradictory; only with great understanding can their contradictions be dissolved and brought closer to comprehension. Boehme appeared in Germany—he too could have become a chain, but he didn’t. The Catholic chain, in a certain sense, is alive and moving slowly; but there is no very gifted person to give it momentum. All chains slowly die. For instance, in Japan…

Beloved Osho, why haven't other enlightened masters told the truth about god, jesus, heaven and hell?

"And if a man is capable of all this," Buddha thought, "even without me, sooner or later he will become enlightened. It may take a little more time, but that does not matter in the eternity of time." The story is beautiful.... In Buddhism it is said that gods came, after waiting seven days for Buddha to speak. In Buddhism there is no God, but there are gods. And gods are not creators of the world. They are just people like you who have earned so much virtue in their past life that they are given a holiday period in paradise. As they spend their virtue, they have to come back to the earth again, back into the misery, the suffering. Yes, they enjoyed the weekend in heaven.... Those people are called gods in Buddhism. The gods became very much afraid, because they were waiting for Buddha to speak. If…