According to Osho, modern humanity hasn’t decayed—it has awakened. Compared to the past, people are more conscious, less superstitious, and freer from priests, dogmas, and ‘holy’ justifications for violence. The loosening of old structures may look like decline, but it signals growth: rising individual awareness, moral sensitivity, and a dawning sense of global oneness—early blossoms foretelling an approaching spring in human evolution.
People today are waking up, questioning old rules, and caring more about everyone as one family.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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, what according to you is the most significant thing that is happening today in the world?
The new man will have no use for sham, facade or pretense, he will be true, because only through truth is there liberation. All lies create bondages. Tell a single lie and you will have to tell a thousand and one to defend it -- you will have to tell lies AD NAT(SEAM. Then there is no end to it. A single lie sooner or later will spread all over your being. It is like cancer. Be truthful and you need not hide, you can be open. Be truthful and you need not protect yourself against existence, you can be vulnerable. In that vulnerability existence penetrates you, God reaches your heart. Tell a lie and you are afraid. You will be afraid of God too, you will be afraid of facing him. You will be afraid of facing yourself. You will be continuously escaping from yourself, from others, from God.…
But Osho, as I understand it, there are certain subjects like chemistry, physics, or medicine where positive values are essential. What are your views about that?
Einstein was doing an experiment. He had failed seven hundred times, yet every morning he came into the laboratory laughing, ready to begin again. The young assistant with him was exhausted. “Is this old man mad? Seven hundred failures—and again he starts fresh!” The youth was tired; he said, “We should drop this now. How many times have we been defeated?” Einstein said, “Defeated? You’re crazy—each time we have won.” “Where have we won? Every experiment has failed.” Einstein answered, “In seven hundred directions we have searched, and we now know truth is not there. We have succeeded seven hundred times. Truth is being endlessly eliminated into nearness. Suppose truth will reveal itself on the seven hundred and fifteenth attempt; then fourteen more eliminations are needed. Then only that will remain; it cannot escape. Where will it go? We have searched seven hundred paths and found it absent. That much…
Osho, do something! Man is sinking day by day into the abyss of sin. Man was never as bad as he is today. What on earth has happened to man?
Bitterness seems to dissolve into the air, Darknesses keep surging and surging, Lightning ripples close to the nests, Life is a steadfast, mighty mountain—yet Even the devils of oppression dash against it, Storms of fire and blood crash against it, They smash their mouths, are thrown back, get shackled, How many autumn onslaughts ravaged the garden of the world, How many raids did death make upon life. Sometimes storms rose from Greece, sometimes from Rome, From the valley of the Nile a bloody flood at times boiled up, The fires sometimes blazed from Persia’s fire-temples— Life kept being tempered and refined in the flames, The more it was ravaged, the more it was adorned. Life kept being tempered and refined in the flames, Life has kept on being refined; all the fires kept burning, the flames kept pouring down. Life kept being tempered and refined in the flames, The more…
Osho, what message do you have for the world symposium on humanity?
A great meeting I teach: the meeting of Zorba and Buddha. I teach ZORBA THE BUDDHA -- a new synthesis. The meeting of the earth and the sky, the meeting of the visible and the invisible, the meeting of all the polarities -- of man and woman, of day and night, of summer and winter, of sex and samadhi. Only in that meeting will a new man arrive on the earth. My sannyasins, my people, are the first rays of that new man, of that HOMO NOVUS. The inner division has led humanity into a state of suicide. It has created only slaves -- and slaves CAN'T really live, they have nothing to live for. They are living for others. They have been reduced to machines -- skillful, efficient, but a machine is a machine. And the machine cannot have the joy of living. It cannot celebrate, it can only…