According to Osho, Hiroshima and Nagasaki mark humanity’s moral collapse: proof that civilization hasn’t arrived and that man has fallen below even monkeys. The bombs were unnecessary militarily; they were a crude display of American power, birthing unhealed wounds and a self-perpetuating nuclear arms race. Their lesson is urgent—shift from egoic domination to compassion, sanity, and disarmament before technology outpaces consciousness.
They showed people weren’t truly civilized—deadly bombs were used just to show power, starting a dangerous race to build even worse weapons.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, all the news media are talking about the sixth of august, the unfortunate day forty years ago when hiroshima and nagasaki were bombed with the first atom bombs. After all these years, governments are still spending most of their money making these nuclear weapons. Can you please comment?
The sixth of August can never be forgotten. That day we proved that civilization has not happened to humanity yet, that we are barbarians, that we are cannibals, that we are still animals. Darwin is wrong; the whole idea of evolution is just imagination. Instead of believing in Darwin, I believe in the monkeys, because monkeys also have their idea: they think man has fallen -- and certainly he has fallen -- from the trees. Falling from the height, you call that evolution? The sixth of August proved the monkeys are right, because to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the ugliest thing that man has done in the whole of history. Everything else paled before it. And the wonder of wonders is that it was not needed at all. Germany had already surrendered; the Japanese forces were almost finished. Perhaps without the dropping of the atom bombs…
Osho, why are you destroying the great religious leaders and ideologies of the world?
I am not in favor of destroying anything at all. My whole approach is creative. But creation involves destruction. That is not my problem. Creation itself is not possible without destroying something. The moment you create something you are simultaneously destroying something else. But when destruction is on the way towards creation you need not be worried about it. It is not destructive, it is creative. Let me repeat: it is creative destruction. There is a possibility, in the same way, of destructive creation. What are nuclear weapons? Certainly a tremendous act of creation -- but for what? Where is it going to lead? What is going to be the outcome? -- nothing but pure destruction. So this is creation leading towards destruction. Only fools will call it creativity. And only fools can call my action destruction. So that is the first thing to be understood. It is not creation…
Osho, but in Hiroshima two hundred thousand people died all at once!
Yes, yes, they died. Two hundred thousand people can die at once. Two hundred thousand people can die at once. Because that is how it appears to us, isn’t it! Someday it may even happen that the whole earth dies at once. It seems to us so accidental that two hundred thousand people died together! Because we have no entry into the inner being of those two hundred thousand individuals. We have no access to the possibilities at work within those two hundred thousand people. And on the surface it looks exactly as if it were purely accidental that the atom bomb was dropped. But someone should ask: why did it fall on Hiroshima? Hiroshima was not an important city; it could have fallen on Tokyo. Why Hiroshima? Why Nagasaki? Until we have complete inner access to the causes—which we do not—until we can enter into the people of Hiroshima,…
Beloved Osho, why have human beings gone through this struggle since the very beginning? Were there not already highly developed civilizations living on this earth? And yet their consciousness got lost and man had to start all over again. Right now it seems to be a particularly dark period. Is there such a cosmic law that says, "only out of the mud the lotus can grow"? And will this earth ever become a garden of flowers? In deep gratitude and love.
Prem Jaldhara, the question that you have asked has tremendous implications in it. First, there have been many civilizations before our civilization which have reached to even higher peaks, but they all destroyed themselves because all those civilizations, including ours, have been growing in a deep imbalance. They developed great technologies, but they forgot that even the greatest technological progress is not going to make man more blissful, more peaceful, more loving, more compassionate. Man's consciousness has not grown with the same pace as his scientific progress, and that has been the cause of all the old civilizations destroying themselves. There was no outer cause, no outer enemy -- the enemy was within man. He created monsters as far as machines are concerned, but he himself remained very retarded, unconscious, almost asleep. And it is very dangerous to give so much power to unconscious people. The same is happening today.…
Beloved Osho, I have heard you say that scientists are only now discovering things that people in the east knew five thousand years ago. How did we come to go backwards?
It is so strange and unbelievable that Hindus have worshiped one great sexologist, the first in the world, Maharishi Vatsyayana, who has written a book KAMASUTRAS, which means "Aphorisms on sex." It is the first obscene and pornographic book, with ugly drawings -- it is pictorial; photography was not in existence; otherwise it would have been like PLAYBOY. Sketches ... and he propounds eighty-four postures for intercourse. Now many idiots must have been trying them and wasting their whole life -- eighty-four postures! And a few are such that it is better if you join the gym and do some gymnastics rather than doing those postures. You will break your neck or your wife's neck. You will not believe that there is a posture -- the woman is standing on her head and the man is making love to her. And this man, Vatsyayana, is respected in India as a…