Peace Is Always Just Beyond the Mind

7 min read

Osho,
It seems war is inevitable and there is nothing that even the U.N. can do to prevent it. What can we do?

“I think it is time that the people of the world start understanding the politician and his hypocrisy, his double personality, because if the third world war happens, then there will be no life on this beautiful planet. I don’t believe at all in this declaration of the UN, but I have another program for the people:

First, don’t trust your politicians. Don’t be consoled by their cunning strategies.

“Second, remember that you are going to be destroyed with your children, with your wife, with your parents, with your trees, with your animals – everything that is alive on the earth.
“If the people of the whole earth simply refuse and say, ‘We are not going to fight, there is no point in it,’ if they refuse and say, ‘We don’t want boundaries of nations. If there is going to be no war, why keep these boundaries? What purpose do these boundaries serve?’… If the people of the world force their governments and say, ‘Disperse all your armies. Let those people be creative….’”
From the False to the Truth: Joyous People Don’t Want War #34 

What are those cunning strategies of the politicians?

“The politician lives on violence, the nations live on violence. If the violence disappears there will be no Italy, no India, no Japan. There will be only one humanity. Why these boundaries? But without these boundaries the politician disappears, and he does not want to disappear, obviously. He has a great vested interest in the boundaries and the boundaries have to be defended. And the only way to defend is to kill, and whosoever is the bigger killer is the winner.
“And the same is true on a smaller scale in people’s lives. People are taught to be violent because unless you are violent you are not going to succeed in life. You have to be very violent, only then you can fulfill your ambitions.

A gentle person cannot succeed, he is bound to fail, because he cannot be competitive. He cannot push and pull people; he cannot step over people’s heads.

“All the politicians are criminals for the simple reason that crime pays. You only have to be cunning enough not to be caught. The most fundamental rule of this violent life is: all means are good if they fulfill the end. And of course, rather than arguing – because argumentation is a long thing and it may never come to any conclusion – it is better to pull the sword; it decides things immediately. It is easier to fight with a person and decide who is right. ‘Might is right.’ That rule still remains – the rule of the jungle.”
Guida Spirituale: Bliss Is a Consequence #2
“The politician’s mind is always concerned with war. Adolf Hitler in his autobiography, My struggle, says that if a politician wants to remain in politics he has to continue creating enemies. If there are no real enemies, create fictions that somebody is going to attack you, that you are surrounded by enemies. Only that will keep you in power –  not peace.
“And it is a factual thing to know; your whole history is filled with heroes who were nothing but warmongers, people who massacred millions of people. Your history does not consist of a single name who was a peacemaker.”
Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind: Marx and Buddha Hand in Hand #2

So our histories say nothing of peace?

“Human history can be divided in two parts: first when there is war; second, when they are preparing for a new war. There has never been a period of real peace. Preparing for war is cold war – getting ready, because the last has taken so much, destroyed so much, that you have to prepare again. Within ten to twenty years’ time they are again ready, the weapons are ready, the enemies are there.
“If really they mean what they say, then take the preliminary steps. The first is to dissolve boundaries, dissolve passports and green cards.

The world, the whole earth is ours. Wherever we want to be, it is nobody’s business to prevent us. Let there be freedom of movement. Let all the races, all the nations get mixed. And once the boundaries are not there, they will get mixed, they will spread all over the world – all kinds of races – and it will be a great experiment in crossbreeding. We will have better generations to come.”

 From the False to the Truth: Joyous People Don’t Want War #34

So, we always need a boundary, some political division to fight over?

“This society depends on hatred, not on love. Our whole politics and our whole so-called religions are based on hatred. Nations are divided – for what? The earth is one, what is the need for nations? India and Pakistan and Afghanistan…what is the need for nations? Can’t humanity live together? Why all these boundaries? These boundaries are needed by the politicians.
“Without the boundaries, the politicians will disappear; without the boundaries, there will be no politics.

These boundaries create the whole game, and these boundaries are just big prisons. You don’t feel as if you are imprisoned because the prison is so big you cannot see it.

“But try to cross over the boundary from India to Pakistan, or from Pakistan to India, and then you will see that it was all nonsense to think of yourself as free. You cannot go beyond the boundary: you need a passport, a visa, a permit, a this and that. Then suddenly you become aware that the prison was so big that you were not aware of its walls – but there are walls all around you.
“Man has not yet become civilized enough to be allowed to move around the earth in freedom. When you pass from one prison to another, you have to fulfill many conditions. And these nations go on fighting, continuously fighting. Seventy percent of human energy is wasted on war – and the people are starving and the people are dying.

The same energy can transform the whole earth into such a rich planet that nobody will bother about heaven at all. We can create a far better heaven here; we are more scientifically equipped.”

Come, Come, Yet Again Come: Freedom Is the Ultimate Value #7

What is preventing us creating that “far better heaven”?

“What is the reason for all this conflict and war and violence and murders and massacres? The mind!
“The world will know peace only when we have learnt how to go beyond mind. Then you are not a Christian and you are not an Indian, you are not a Chinese and you are not a communist. Then you are simply a human being. In that utter purity of humanness, the world will come to know exactly what peace is and what a celebration it brings with itself.
“Mind as such is nothing but misunderstanding. If you really want to understand, get rid of the mind.”

Why is the human mind so destructive? Is there any alternative? 

“Your mind is created by the society you are born in, and of course, they create your mind for their own purposes. It is not for you but for the society, for the state, for the church. Your mind is a slave. Whoever has created it has created it for its own purposes – to exploit you.
“Every nation fills your mind with nationality. Every religion fills your mind with the idea that even to die for your religion is the greatest virtue or to kill for your religion is not a sin. All these religions, all these nations, these political, social, religious ideologies, go on conflicting, fighting. Man has not done anything much on the earth except fighting or preparing for fighting…. Man has never known peace.”
The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here: Become the Mystery #27
“Mind is nothing but the process of the ego, the functioning of the ego.

Mind is the boundary between you and the whole. It is a wall, not a bridge – no-mind is the bridge. Hence the emphasis of all the awakened ones to move from mind to no-mind.

“The ego can exist only if you remain in constant fight; a continuous struggle is needed, because it is a false entity. You have to maintain it; it is not something spontaneous, it is not something natural that can exist on its own. It needs competitiveness, it needs conflict; it needs all kinds of jealousies, possessiveness, hatred, war. It can exist only with all that is wrong.”
Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol.2: Intelligence and Intuition #6

How can one live with so much conflict inside?

“There are only two ways: either you suffer this unease or project it on somebody else. When you are inwardly tense you are ready to fight – any excuse will do. The excuse is irrelevant; you will jump on anybody – the servant, the wife, the child.
“How do you throw your inner conflict and unease? You make the other responsible, then you pass through a catharsis. You can become angry now, you can throw your anger and violence and this will give you a release, a relief – of course, temporary because the inside has not changed. It will again accumulate, it remains the old. Tomorrow again it will accumulate anger, hatred, and you will have to project it.
“You fight with others because you go on accumulating rubbish inside yourself and you have to throw it out.

A person who has conquered himself has become a self-conqueror, has no inner conflict. The war has ceased. He is one inside — there are not two. Such a man will never project, such a man will not fight with anybody else.

“So this is a trick of the mind to avoid the inner conflict, because the inner conflict is more painful – for many reasons. The basic reason is that every one of you has an image of yourself as being a good man. And life is such that without this image it will be difficult to live.”
The Mustard Seed: Jesus Is Very Paradoxical #2

Is there a way to dissolve the inner war?

“Learn to be silent, peaceful, still. Learn to be a no-mind. That has to be the beginning for all sannyasins. Nothing can be done before that and everything becomes easier after that. When you find yourself utterly happy and blissful, then even if the third world war happens and the whole world disappears leaving you alone, it won’t affect you. You will be still sitting under your tree doing vipassana.
“The day that moment comes in your life you can share your joy – now you are able to give love. Before that it is going to be misery, hopes and frustrations, desires and failures, dreams… and then dust in your hand and in your mouth.

Beware, don’t waste time. The earlier you become attuned to no-mind, the better it is. Then many things can flower in you: love, creativity, spontaneity, joy, prayer, gratitude, godliness.”

The White Lotus: When Sex Becomes Prayer #10
“If more and more people become peaceful, joyous, if more and more people can dance and sing, if more and more people can say ‘Alleluia!’ from their very innermost core, it will become impossible for these few mad people to create a war. Then we can put these mad people into mental asylums very easily. We can convert our capitals into mental asylums; that is not a big problem, once many many people’s inner consciousness is transformed.
“Be a meditator.
“Be a lover.
“Be a celebrant.

Create the whole existence with as much bliss and joy as possible. Make life so beautiful that nobody wants to die.”

The Dharmapada: The Way of the Buddha: Towards a New Humanity #8
END
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