According to Osho, speculating about mankind’s future is futile—'humanity' is an abstraction and tomorrow never arrives. Liberation from war and injustice begins only with individual transformation here and now: drop inner conflict, violence and fear; cultivate love, meditation, celebration. Become a living example without missionary zeal; your fragrance may inspire others, but deciding for the whole is neither possible nor necessary.
Don’t worry about fixing everyone—be peaceful and loving yourself right now, and others may catch the vibe.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, from your talks I understand that there is some kind of evolutionary process that happens. But I have also heard you say that man has not evolved at all. Where are all the seekers who died enlightened?
Man as a collectivity has not evolved. Whatever little bit of humanity has happened to the collective mass is because of those few seekers who became enlightened. But you should understand the proportion. It is like a spoonful of sugar you drop in the ocean to make it sweet; it is not going to do much to the ocean. The ocean is too vast. A spoonful of sugar was perfectly good for a cup of tea, but it is not good for the ocean. An enlightened man is a cup of tea. Even his group -- those who become attuned with him -- are still so small that they cannot make much change in the collective mass, in its vast darkness, unconsciousness. But in thousands of years so many people have become enlightened that a little bit of change in humanity you can see. But the credit does not go…
On man's path of evolution is it possible that at some time in the future humanity as a whole can attain enlightenment? At what point of evolution is man today?
The conscious choice to evolve is a great adventure, the only adventure there is for a human being. The path is arduous; it is bound to be so. Errors are bound to be there, failures, because nothing is certain. This situation creates tension in the mind. You do not know where you are, you do not know where you are going. Your identity is lost. The situation may even reach such a point that you become suicidal. Suicide is a human phenomenon; it comes with human choice. Animals cannot commit suicide, because to choose death consciously is impossible for them. Birth is unconscious, death is unconscious. But with man -- ignorant man, unevolved man -- one thing becomes possible: the ability to choose death. Your birth is not your choice. As far as your birth is concerned, you are in the hands of unconscious evolution. In fact, your birth is…
Osho, do something! Man is sinking day by day into the abyss of sin. Man was never as bad as he is today. What on earth has happened to man?
Bitterness seems to dissolve into the air, Darknesses keep surging and surging, Lightning ripples close to the nests, Life is a steadfast, mighty mountain—yet Even the devils of oppression dash against it, Storms of fire and blood crash against it, They smash their mouths, are thrown back, get shackled, How many autumn onslaughts ravaged the garden of the world, How many raids did death make upon life. Sometimes storms rose from Greece, sometimes from Rome, From the valley of the Nile a bloody flood at times boiled up, The fires sometimes blazed from Persia’s fire-temples— Life kept being tempered and refined in the flames, The more it was ravaged, the more it was adorned. Life kept being tempered and refined in the flames, Life has kept on being refined; all the fires kept burning, the flames kept pouring down. Life kept being tempered and refined in the flames, The more…
Even if we press all the modern conveniences and innovations into service; even if politicians, sociologists and religious leaders do their utmost, wars will not cease, tensions will not ease, and violence and jealousy will not disappear. For the last ten thousand years, the apostles, the messiahs and the leaders have preached against war, against violence, against anger and so forth -- but nobody has listened. On the contrary, we murdered a man who preached the gospel of love, who tried to teach us not to be violent, who showed us a spiritual path. Gandhi taught us to practice non-violence, to refine our souls, to live in harmony together, and we rewarded him with bullets. That is how we expressed our gratitude for his noble services. All of humanity's apostles, both past and present, have been unsuccessful. They have failed.
Osho, shortly before he died the famous thinker Aldous Huxley said it is hard to say who is more barbaric: the caveman or the man living in skyscrapers. You have said recently that man has not yet risen above the ape. Please say something about this.
Look at man’s actions. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars! His whole history is a story of murders, of burning people alive—not one, but thousands. And this story has not ended. Recently I was in Greece, only for four weeks. And the Greek church and its chief authority, the archbishop, began to spew poison—telegram after telegram to the president, the prime minister, the newspapers—saying that if I was not expelled from Greece, they would burn alive this dangerous man along with the house in which he was staying. I did not even step outside. None of those who came to meet me were Greeks; they were sannyasins from different European countries, and they were meeting me inside the house. What danger was I? And to threaten to burn me alive—do you think man has evolved beyond the monkey? No monkey has ever burned another monkey alive.…