What is the significance of a profound crisis in human experience?

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…

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…

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…

Osho, your words suggest that the coming ten years will be highly critical, catastrophic, and decisive for humankind. And perhaps your arrival is related to ensuring that, in the face of this impending calamity, humanity suffers the least possible harm and the core values of culture and religion are preserved as much as possible. Will you guide us in this direction?

Friends come to me and say, “Why don’t you do something so that ashes appear from your hand? Millions will come.” But they would be the wrong millions. Millions would come, but millions would be wrong. And among those millions, the few who are rightly close to me would be lost, they would be distracted. For those who are rightly close to me would not be able to survive before that crowd—the crowd would surge ahead. It would be a crowd of the ambitious, a crowd of the insane. Those who gather to see ash falling from a hand are mad; they should be in an asylum. They are diseased. And once you invite the diseased, they will not let the healthy remain. Economics has a simple rule: counterfeit coins drive genuine coins out of circulation. If there is a fake rupee in your pocket, you will try to spend…

A certain wall surrounds everybody, a subtle, very invisible wall, so you are not even aware that the wall is there. It is a very transparent wall. You can see through it and it hangs around you. So you can move and you can think that you are free but you are not free. You are not imprisoned in a prison made of stones and bricks, you are imprisoned in a prison made of thoughts, concepts, theologies, philosophies. It is a very invisible thing and one has to get rid of it. When the whole sky is yours with all its stars, then the whole existence is yours. That's exactly the teaching of all the masters -- Jesus, Buddha, Zarathustra. There is no difference, there cannot be. If truth is one, how can the teachings of those who have awakened to truth be different?