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Osho on When is the world coming to an end?

When is the world coming to an end?

The world ends whenever you choose to live fully in the present; treat each day as your last, and watch the old fears dissolve into a celebration of life.

— Osho
According to Osho, the world 'ends' whenever you live as if it might—today at lunchtime. He uses humor to urge immediacy: drop pride and repression, let love and aliveness explode now. Treat each day as the last; then the old world of fear ends, and a new world of presence, intimacy, and celebration begins—even if tomorrow still arrives.

Pretend the world ends at lunch, so you stop holding back and love and live fully right now.

In His Own Words

From the Discourses

Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.

The Golden Future · Discourse 25Question 2 1987-05-24 Chuang Tzu Auditorium English

Beloved Osho, lately I feel my life has come to a peak. Living in your presence is such a precious and delicious gift. Every moment is becoming so joyful and contented, but then often the fear of death comes up intense and strong and the fear of having to leave all this beauty, this friendship, and love. You keep on telling us lately that we don't have much time left before this world finishes. How is it possible to relax in this certainty of death?

"Living in Your presence is such a precious and delicious gift. Every moment is becoming so joyful and contented, but then often the fear of death comes up." That means your joy, your blissfulness, your contentedness is not total -- it leaves spaces, loopholes, from which the fear of death comes in. The fear of death simply shows.... Dance a little faster, live a little faster. I have never forgotten... in Ahmedabad I used to stay at Jayantibhai's house. We had to cross a bridge, and as the bridge came near he would start driving faster, because there was a big board by the side of the bridge advertising Gold Spot. It said, "Live a little hot, sip a Gold Spot." I asked Jayantibhai, "What is the matter? Suddenly, on this bridge, you start going fast." He said, "Looking at that board, `Live a little hot,' I start going fast!"…
The Hidden Splendor · Discourse 15Question 2 1987-03-19 Chuang Tzu Auditorium English

Beloved Osho, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, in the midst of all this gloom about the future of the world, I honestly don't care if the world ends tomorrow. So what is the point of talking about it and fueling the already massive fire of doom which seems to burn eternally in the depressing mind of mankind? Enough is enough. I understand that it's "now or never, "so let's do it now. Let's dance!

It is restless as it has never been before. It has forgotten the language of relaxation, it has forgotten the language of totality, it has forgotten the language of intensity. And all those qualities are needed to make your meditation a revolution in your being. It is not a question of morality, not a question of character, not a question of virtue -- religions have been concerned with all those things for thousands of years, and they have not been successful in changing man. It is a totally different approach, a different dimension: the dimension of energy and the concentration of energy. And just as atomic energy is the explosion of a small atom into its constituent of electrons, protons and neutrons -- it is not visible to the eyes, but the explosion is so vast that it can destroy a great city like Nagasaki or Hiroshima -- exactly parallel…

Many people are ready to simply change their state of being, but they are terrified of the possibility of the end of the world. I, too, toyed around like a puppet until I searched in the scriptures. I found out that the ancient phrase is not "the end of the world" but "the end of time" or "the end of days." will the highest mystery be the destruction of the world, or will it be the salvation of human beings -- a glorious change of the universal forces of movement and man's measurement of time?

I was born into a Jaina family, and what happened to Kazantzakis was going to happen to me -- but I am a different kind of man. The supreme command of the Jaina religion was going to decide about my expulsion from the Jaina religion. I wrote them a letter saying, "You don't have to make any trouble. I expel you all; now you cannot expel me. I do not belong to your gang, I am finished with it." They could not expel me because I expelled them all. It is up to every individual not to be part of any dead, rotten ideology. Try to find out within yourself whatsoever is old, dead, and drop out of it. Throw it away. Clean yourself completely and be again a child. Be again innocent, with no ideas, no prejudices, no conditionings. You have already been born; a new man has come…
Be Still And Know · Discourse 7Question 1 1979-09-07 Buddha Hall English

Osho, I know that you love contradictions. A lot of it I can accept now as two sides of one coin. But today after lecture some questions still arose.

ON THE ONE SIDE YOU SAY THE GOOD AND THE BAD ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN AND BOTH HAVE TO BE AND THE ONE CAN'T BE WITHOUT THE OTHER. ON THE OTHER SIDE YOU WANT TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD WITH YOUR SANNYASINS. ON THE ONE SIDE YOU TELL US NOT TO THINK IN TERMS OF THE FUTURE. ON THE OTHER SIDE YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT THE COMING THIRD WORLD WAR. ON THE ONE SIDE YOU TELL US NOT TO WISH ANYTHING. ON THE OTHER SIDE IT SEEMS YOU WANT TO AVOID THE THIRD WORLD WAR. ON THE ONE SIDE YOU SAY THINGS ARE OKAY AS THEY ARE, THERE IS NO GOAL, NOTHING TO ACHIEVE, TO CHANGE. ON THE OTHER SIDE: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? I CAN FEEL THERE IS AN ANSWER, BUT I CAN'T POINT IT OUT. CAN YOU? That is…
The Golden Future · Discourse 28Question 1 1987-05-25 Chuang Tzu Auditorium English

Beloved Osho, towards the end of the first millennium, humanity was afraid that god would put an end to the world, because of what he said in the apocalypse of st. John. Nowadays, as we are coming close to the end of the second millennia, man is becoming more and more afraid that perhaps he himself is going to put an end to the world. Has anything changed at all in human consciousness during the last one thousand years? What does man need to understand now that he knows that he and only he will be responsible and not some fictitious god?

The old man has to disappear to give place to a new man with fresh values, with one earth undivided into nations, with one humanity undivided by religions, because religions don't need to be organized. Religion is a love affair, a love affair with existence. There is no question of any organization like Christianity, or Hinduism, or Mohammedanism. Religion is as much purely individual as love, because religion is nothing but the purest and the highest quality of love. You don't organize love! You don't say that this is Christian love, this is Hindu love, this is Mohammedan love. Love is simply love, meditation is simply meditation, peace is simply peace, enlightenment is simply enlightenment. It cannot have any adjective with it. Changes have been happening. They will come to a peak by the end of this century when the moment of ultimate decision will have to be faced by…