When you feel scared about the world, stop panicking and be loving and calm—one truly kind, aware person helps more than many fearful ones.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, the other morning, discourse left me feeling terrified and desperate: desperate to save this incredible, beautiful planet, and terrified because the odds against us seem so high and I feel so insignificant, and helpless to do anything! The only thing I can see to do is to be here with you as much as possible, nourishing my consciousness and supporting your vision. Is there any more that can be done?
This was all strategy. You can see how politicians work -- cunningly, inhumanely. They prevented us from putting a case against the man. They said, "There is no need. Ten thousand witnesses, his words are recorded, even the sound of the falling knife is recorded, and twenty police officers of high rank are witnesses -- you need not be worried. It is going to be a police case. We will take him and produce him in the court." They took him away, presented him before the court, and the court released him, saying, "Such a thing has not happened at all." And because we had not put any case against him, then it was too late. The police managed it in such a way that they did not insist that the case happened. But I have been thinking about it: in such a crowded place even if a blind man…
Beloved Osho, many times in my meditation I asked you not to show me directly the tremendous tragedy that is happening on earth today, as I know I could never tolerate such suffering. Yet I'm sensing this all the time, even with my buffers. I know you are the light for this whole planet, and knowing this carries such a responsibility. I would be so grateful to hear you speak to me on helping, knowing I can't help, and the angst of feeling helpless -- and also of relaxing when feeling such a state of urgency.
Prem Kaveesha, I can understand your anguish about the whole of humanity, about this planet earth; because every day we are coming closer and closer to a disaster. It is because the disaster is coming very close; even with your buffers you cannot forget it -- and it hurts. And it hurts more because you feel you cannot help; you cannot do anything. It is simply beyond the capacity of any individual to prevent this calamity, this disaster, this global suicide that seems to be almost certain. But I have a way of my own. You feel helpless because you think in terms of helping other people to understand, and that is an impossible job. The world is so big, and people are so full of violence that it seems the calamity is not coming from outside, but it is the accumulated violence in people themselves that is going to…
Beloved Osho, on one hand the world is preparing for a global suicide; it looks like there is not much time left for our growth. On the other hand, what I heard from you is that growth is only possible when we relax, sit silently, and wait. This is a paradox. Beloved Osho, please can you speak about how to come out of situations where one part of me is restless and wants to do something? -- yet deep down I feel that this leads me nowhere.
In the Old Testament, there is a beautiful story of two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. God became very angry with these two cities, because in both people were practicing perverted sex. In Sodom people were making love to animals; hence `sodomy' has become the word for making love with animals. In Gomorrah people had become homosexuals, and all kinds of perversions ... God finally decided to destroy both those cities completely, and in the Old Testament he did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. It does not look right of God, but the Jewish God is an angry God. That is our projection: it is not a question of whether God is angry or not. God is a hypothesis -- you can make anything out of it, whatever you want. God declares in the Jewish scriptures, "I am a very angry God, very jealous. I will never forgive you if you go…
Beloved Osho, though your emphasis has been for us, as individuals, to go within to save ourselves, I guess I am still naive enough to feel that our love, our dancing, our joy could still save this beautiful planet. Can you please say something about this?
He said, "My condition is that I should not become aware of what is happening through me, by you. It should happen behind my back; it should happen through my shadow, not through me. I may be passing and my shadow may fall on a dead tree, and the tree may become alive again -- again lush green, again heavy with flowers and fruits -- but I should not know it, because I don't want to fall back. "If I know it -- that I have done it, or even that God has chosen me as the instrument to do it -- it is dangerous. So my condition is: a blind man may start seeing, but neither should he know that it is because of me, nor should I know that it is because of me. My shadow behind my back will do all the miracles. "If you can accept…
Beloved Osho, in the last days I often have the feeling that the ground is going beneath my feet. It seems to me as if all that I love or loved in the past is being destroyed. The recent disaster in the soviet nuclear station makes painfully clear how fragile and mortal everything is. My parents, my son, my brother and sister, my friends and my beloveds -- all are in danger. It is so hard for me to conceive that there is nothing but the moment. I am fearfully asking myself, "what is going to happen next?" but who is asking whom? All seems so absurd and empty. Sometimes I even feel I am going m
They are ready to give their wheat, they are ready to give their food, but they want war material because they are continuously afraid of their surrounding neighbors who are collecting war material. So the Soviet Union is going to sell old war material, which is not of any use if a new war is going to happen any day, to get food for itself. Another accident like that... And it all depends on the winds. You cannot control it; the winds can take the clouds, the fumes, the radiation in any direction, to any country, to anywhere. So it is not only a question of one place and its surroundings being affected. The place may be anywhere and you may be thousands of miles away but you can be affected because the winds can carry radiation. And you will be more vulnerable because you will not be so alert…