Terrorism simply symbolizes that to destroy human beings does not matter, that there is nothing in human beings which is indestructible, that it is all matter — and you cannot kill matter, you can only change its form. Once man is taken to be only a combination of matter, and no place is given for a spiritual being inside him, then to kill becomes just play.
The nations are irrelevant because of nuclear weapons. If the whole world can be destroyed together within minutes the alternative can only be that the whole world should be together. Now it cannot remain divided; its division is dangerous, because division can become war any moment. The division cannot be tolerated. Only one war is enough to destroy everything, and there is not much time left for man to understand that we should create a world where the very possibility of war does not exist.
Terrorism has many undercurrents. One is that because of nuclear weapons, the nations are pouring their energy into that field, thinking that the old weapons are out of date. They are out of date, but individuals can start using them. And you cannot use nuclear weapons against individuals — that would be simply stupid. One individual terrorist throws a bomb — it does not justify that a nuclear missile should be sent.
What I want to emphasize is that the nuclear weapon has given individual people a certain freedom to use old weapons, a freedom which was not possible in the old days because the governments were also using the same weapons.
My understanding is that the way he has lived, man needs every ten to twelve years — a war. He accumulates so much anger, so much rage, so much violence, that nothing short of a war will give him release. So, war after war, there is a gap of only ten to fifteen years. That gap is a kind of relaxation. But again you start accumulating, because the same psychology is working — the same jealousy, the same violence.
And man is basically a hunter; he is not by nature vegetarian. First he became a hunter, and for thousands of years he was just a meat-eater, and cannibalism was prevalent everywhere. To eat human beings caught from the opposing tribe you were fighting with was perfectly ethical. All that is carried in the unconscious of humanity.
Religions have imposed things on man very superficially; his unconscious is not in agreement. Every man is living in a disagreement with himself. So whenever he can find a chance — for a beautiful cause; freedom, democracy, socialism — any beautiful word can become an umbrella to hide his ugly unconscious, which simply wants to destroy and enjoys destruction.
It has been observed by psychologists that in wartime people are more happy than in peacetime. In wartime their life has a thrill; in peacetime they look bored. In wartime, early in the morning they are searching for the newspaper, listening to the radio. Things may be happening far away, but they are excited. Something in them feels an affinity.
A war that should have happened somewhere between 1955 and 1960 has not happened, and man is burdened with the desire to kill, with the desire to destroy. It is just that he wants good names for it.
Terrorism is going to become bigger and bigger, because the third world war is almost impossible. And the stupid politicians have no other alternative. Terrorism simply means that what was being done on a social scale now has to be done individually. It will grow. It can only be prevented if we change the very base of human understanding — which is a Himalayan task; more so because these same people whom you want to change will fight you; they won’t allow you to change them easily.
In fact they love bloodshed; they don’t have the courage to say so.
The hunter was satisfied in the war. Now the war has stopped and perhaps there is no possibility for it. The hunter is back; now we cannot fight collectively. Each individual has to do something to release his own steam.
Things are interconnected. The first thing that has to be changed is that man should be made more rejoicing — which all the religions have killed. The real criminals are not caught. These are the victims, the terrorists and other criminals.
It is all the religions who are the real criminals, because they have destroyed all possibilities of rejoicing. They have destroyed the possibility of enjoying small things of life; they have condemned everything that nature provides you to make you happy, to make you feel excited, feel pleasant.
They have taken everything away; and if they have not been able to take a few things away because they are so ingrained in your biology — like sex — they have at least been able to poison them.
So man has tried, and religions have helped him to get rid of it — thousands of disciplines and strategies have been used. The total result is that sex is there, but poisoned. That word poisoned is a tremendous insight. Religions have not been able to take it away, but they have been certainly successful in poisoning it.
And the same is the situation about other things: religions are condemning your living in comfort. Now, a man who is living in comfort and luxury cannot become a terrorist. Religions have condemned riches, praised poverty; now, a man who is rich cannot be a terrorist. Only the “blessed ones” who are poor can be terrorists — because they have nothing to lose, and they are boiling up against the whole of society because others have things they don’t have.
Religions have been trying to console them. But then came communism — a materialist religion — which provoked people and said to them, “Your old religions are all opium to the people, and it is not because of your evil actions in this life or in past lives that you are suffering poverty. It is because of the evil exploitation of the bourgeois, the super-rich that you are suffering.”
What religions have somehow been consoling people with — although it was wrong and it was cunning and it was a lie, but it kept people in a state of being half asleep — communism suddenly made them aware of. That means this world is now never going to be peaceful if we don’t withdraw all the rotten ideas that have been implanted in man.
The first are the religions — their values should be removed so that man can smile again, can laugh again, can rejoice again, can be natural again. Second, what communism is saying has to be put clearly before the people — that it is psychologically wrong. You are falling from one trap into another. No two men are equal; hence the idea of equality is nonsense. And if you decide to be equal then you have to accept a dictatorship of the proletariat. That means you have to lose your freedom.
First the church took away your freedom, the God took away your freedom. Now communism replaces your church, and it will take away your freedom. And without freedom you cannot rejoice. You live in fear, not in joy. If we can clean the basement of the human mind’s unconscious… and that’s what my work is. It can be cleaned away.
The terrorism is not in the bombs, in your hands; the terrorism is in your unconscious. Otherwise, this state of affairs is going to grow more bitter. And it seems all kinds of blind people have bombs in their hands and are throwing them at random.
The new situation is that every human being needs to go through therapies, needs to understand his unconscious intentions, needs to go through meditations so that he can calm down, become cool — and look towards the world with a new perspective, of silence.
Source – Osho Book “Beyond Psychology”
To view or buy this book visit the url:
http://oshoonline.com/index.php?route=product%2Fproduct&keyword=beyond&category_id=0&product_id=92
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