According to Osho, “disaster” names his teaching’s role as a radical rupture with the past—he is a disaster to traditions, religions, ideologies, and national boundaries. He urges a total discontinuity from an insane past, shattering vested interests that bind humanity, so outdated structures fall and a freer, saner, new human consciousness can emerge.
Osho says he’s like a wrecking ball that breaks harmful old rules so people can be free and begin fresh.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Remember our interview, august last year, Osho? This interview had very high ratings, only shown when disaster films are seen on television. Are you a kind of a disaster?
I am! I am a disaster to all the traditions, to all the religions, to all the political ideologies, to all the national boundaries, to everything that belongs to the past. I want man to be discontinuous with the past. The past has been insane. So I am a disaster for all those who have vested interests in the past.
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…
[NOTE: This was published in THE RAJNEESH TIMES, 2nd September 1983 while Osho was in silence.] OSHO EXPLAINS THE COMING CRISIS (IN A MESSAGE GIVEN BY SHEELA?) Beginning next year, the world will face 15 years of catastrophic natural and man-made disasters -- including nuclear war. Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Bombay all will be destroyed -- but the holocaust to come will not be confined to these major population centers. And unless human consciousness changes totally, man cannot survive. As he is right now, he is already outdated. There will be floods which have never been known since the time of Noah, along with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and everything else that is possible through nature. There will be wars which are bound to end in nuclear explosions, hence no ordinary Noah's Arks are going to save humanity.
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…
Another friend has asked; he has asked that... Osho, what difference do you see between socialism and communism?
I see the same difference as between the first stage of tuberculosis and the third—no other difference. Socialism is a somewhat pale, diluted communism; it is the first stage of the disease. And in the first stage the disease is not clearly visible, so it is easier to be taken in by it. That is why, all over the world, communism has started using the word “socialism.” The word “communism” has become notorious. And because of what communism has done to the world in the last fifty years, its respect has withered. In these fifty years, communism’s prestige has been dragged into the dust. So now communism has begun to use the word “socialism.” Now it talks of socialism and may even try to say it is different from communism. But there is no fundamental difference between socialism and communism—only a difference of words. Yet by changing the word we…