What good can arise from times of great stress?

It has been said that in times of great stress -- social, economic, religious -- that great good is possible. Is this formulation reflective of what we are in poona experiencing in your presence?

There are two possibilities. One, one is the possibility that you may start fixing the old falling structure: you may become a social servant and you may start making things more stable. Then you miss, because nothing can be done: the society is dying. Every society has a life-span and every culture has a life-span. As a child is born and we know the child will become a youth, will become old, and will die -- seventy years, eighty years, at the most a hundred years -- every society is born, is young, becomes old, has to die. Every civilization that is born has to die. These critical moments are moments of the death of the past, the old; moments of the birth of the new. You should not bother; you should not start supporting the old structure -- it is going to die. If you are supporting, you may…

Beloved Osho, as society's hold on people's minds begins to disintegrate, in times of social crisis such as now there seems to be a tendency for an increasing number of people to fall below the mind into madness. Also, is it true that this is paralleled by a tendency for people to look at the possibility of going beyond the mind into enlightenment?

Times of crisis are both dangerous and immensely important -- dangerous for those who have no courage to explore new dimensions of life. They are bound to disintegrate into different kinds of madness, because their mind was made by the society. Now the society is disintegrating, the mind cannot remain; its roots are in the society. It is constantly nourished by the society -- now that nourishment is disappearing. Because the society is disintegrating, a great suspicion, a doubt that was never there before, is bound to arise in the individuals. And if they were just obedient people who have never gone beyond any limit that society has decided, who have always been respected, honorable citizens -- in other words, just mediocre -- they will immediately go mad. They will start committing suicide, they will start jumping from high buildings... or even if they live, now they don't have a…

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…

Beloved Osho, your words indicate that the coming ten years are going to be full of crisis and disaster, and are going to be decisive for the human race. Your arrival is also perhaps connected with the fact that man comes to minimum harm from the imminent tragedy, and maximum values of the culture and religion are saved. Would you please provide guidance to us in this area?

Before the temple of religion falls down, either you take charge of it, or the West takes charge of it, but it should not be allowed to crumble and become the showpiece of a museum. Through it the door to the possibility of man's survival will open. The race for money only annihilates, ambition just destroys, and leads in the end to insanity. No one has ever come to contentment through ambition. No matter how great the ambition in which you succeed, each success brings only more discontent. Even an Alexander dies weeping; he seems to have attained nothing, in spite of conquering the world. Only religion brings contentment. Contentment is a miracle. Even a beggar can be contented, while even an Alexander dies full of discontent. Religion has some mysterious keys which open these doors of the heart that can shower nectar. It is these keys I am calling…

The body is becoming more and more sensitive; it seems to vibrate at a faster rate. The more work on consciousness and awareness, the less conscious awareness is there. Meditation seems to be taking a new form unrecognizable and incomparable to the previous meditation states or experiences. There is less time and space and tranquil conditions for passive, receptive meditation in the midst of noise and physical chaos, yet something is happening. Immense trust in you is there in the face of this loss of rational understanding. Please explain, if you will, what indeed is happening and how it is p

When Ibrahim, a Sufi Master, came to his Master to be initiated, Ibrahim was a king; and the Master looked at him and he said, "Drop your clothes. Take my shoe, go into the marketplace, naked, and beat your head with my shoe." People who were sitting around, his old disciples, they said, "This is too hard. Why? You never asked this from us. You never told us to be nude and go into the marketplace and beat your head with your shoe.' Why are you so hard with King Ibrahim?" The Master said, "Because his ego is bigger than yours. He is a king, and I have to drop it; otherwise further work will not be possible." But Ibrahim didn't ask a question; he simply dropped his clothes. It must have been very, very difficult for him -- in the same capital where he has always been a king,…