Why did the mind develop in a destructive direction?

Question: His question is: WHY DID THE MIND DEVELOP IN A DESTRUCTIVE DIRECTION? Man has lived almost four million years on this planet. In these four million years most of the time there were dark nights without fire, wild animals, danger all around, and every moment full of fear. Out of this fear and danger man has had to create a certain capacity to survive. You may have observed that man's child is the weakest child in the world. He needs care for years until it is possible for him to stand on his own. The mother was continuously afraid for the child: in the deep forest -- all the wild animals were in search of food just as man was in search of food. That was the basic search for millions of years -- food. And even today, for millions of people, that is the basic search.

Osho, in a discourse at Shanmukhananda Hall you said that the tendency toward violence is a disease, and that recognizing it in all its forms is the first condition of becoming nonviolent. So please shed light on the biochemical and psychic structure of the violent tendency, so that we can recognize violence more deeply.

For man, violence is a disease; for the animal, it is not. For the animal, violence is natural. On the animal plane there is no possibility of nonviolence, therefore there is no awareness of violence either. For the animal, violence is natural—nonviolence is impossible. For man, violence is a conditioning inherited from the animal. But for his evolved consciousness, it is a disease that obstructs. The moment consciousness begins to evolve, its past becomes chains for it. For those who are growing, their “yesterday” becomes a bondage every day. Therefore, one who wishes to evolve must drop yesterday each day and go on. One who is unwilling to erase his past is refusing to evolve. If I remain today what I was yesterday, then my today is wasted. And if I am to evolve today, there is no way except to go beyond my yesterday. The past must be transcended.…

Beloved Osho, rocks easily destroy flowers. The politicians and religions sense that enlightenment, freedom and individuality threaten their power. Is it fear alone that is the basis of the dark use of intelligence to crush man's finest blossoms? Or is there an unconscious urge for "endarkenment" too?

It seems it is not only one individual, but perhaps the whole of humanity that has lost the will to live, the will to be more conscious, the will to be more aware, the will to reach to the highest peak of enlightenment, to be a Gautam Buddha. On the contrary, people are waiting to disappear into darkness, into death, because life is so meaningless and so futile. There seems to be no reason to go on living. For the first time, on a tremendous scale, millions of people are feeling meaninglessness. It is creating tremendous anxiety, and it seems death is the only cure. With death, everything will subside. There will be no problem, no anxiety, no struggle, no jealousy, no tension. Perhaps, Devageet, your word "endarkenment" may become a contribution to our language, as the opposite of enlightenment. People have always lived unconsciously, but today, the unconsciousness has…

Beloved master, the other day, you spoke about the mind as our greatest enemy, saying that it is the creator of suffering. Can it also be the creator of joy?

One California university has studied, for a year, the results of football matches, boxing matches... what they do to the public minds. Crimes rise fourteen percent; there are more murders, more rapes, more thefts -- in every direction, all crimes start rising immediately. And this fourteen percent increase remains stable for almost one week after the match is finished. What has the match done to the people's minds? And can you think this society is sane? -- which has boxing matches where two persons are being almost barbarous to each other, hitting on their noses, blood coming out. And thousands and thousands of people are watching so attentively, breathlessly -- as if something great is happening -- shouting madly, starting to fight amongst themselves. If somebody is shouting against your favorite, immediately fights break out amongst the spectators. And why do we have such ugly games? We know that everybody…

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.…