Cataclysm

The earth seems to be shaking beneath our feet and our faces reflect some imminent cataclysmic event. What is happening?

DON'T be worried. It has always been so. Every age and every generation has thought that something great is happening to them, because every generation has a great ego. How is it possible that something great is not happening while you are here? No, something cataclysmic, something great, something really final is going to happen. This has been so from the very beginning. I have heard that when Adam and Eve were thrown out, expelled out of the Garden of Eden, the first thing that Adam said to Eve was, 'Darling, we are passing through a great revolution.' Since then man has always felt the same -- again and again and again down the ages. It is nothing new. A six-thousand-year-old stone has been found in Babylon with four or five sentences inscribed on it. When these sentences were deciphered people were puzzled. If you read those sentences you will…

[NOTE: This was published in THE RAJNEESH TIMES, 2nd September 1983 while Osho was in silence.] OSHO EXPLAINS THE COMING CRISIS (IN A MESSAGE GIVEN BY SHEELA?) Beginning next year, the world will face 15 years of catastrophic natural and man-made disasters -- including nuclear war. Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Bombay all will be destroyed -- but the holocaust to come will not be confined to these major population centers. And unless human consciousness changes totally, man cannot survive. As he is right now, he is already outdated. There will be floods which have never been known since the time of Noah, along with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and everything else that is possible through nature. There will be wars which are bound to end in nuclear explosions, hence no ordinary Noah's Arks are going to save humanity.

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…