Our sannyasins are not pacifists, but peace loving, silence loving

Q: Each day we feel the Third World  War is coming closer and closer. Is there some possible way to prevent the war?

The truth is that the nuclear war is never going to happen. Even when I say it is coming closer and closer, the reason to say it is not that the war is coming closer and closer. The reason is to awaken you somehow – that the war is coming so close now that there is no time to waste:  get up as quickly as possible, before the war finishes you.

But the Third World War is impossible – for the simple reason that both nations, America and the Soviet Union, are equally balanced with nuclear weapons. And if a war starts, the whole point of a war is to win. But in a nuclear war, nobody wins. So war has lost its basic foundation. Why should you fight when both are going to be finished by it? The possibility of one becoming victorious and the other being defeated is no longer there. So I say with nuclear war, war has reached to such totality that it has committed suicide. Now war is not possible – I mean nuclear war is not possible.

Just the other day, I saw a petition of American scientists who had made the first nuclear weapons plant in America – the pioneers of nuclear weapons. Fifty scientists have signed the petition to the president and to the Supreme Court, saying, “We are trembling with fear at what we have done. And we have already so many nuclear weapons on both sides that they are enough to destroy all life on the earth within ten minutes.”

Those fifty scientists who have been making nuclear war possible have visualized the situation that is happening. The same is happening in Russia: the scientists are becoming aware that what they are creating is a mass scale, worldwide, suicide. It is so absurd and meaningless.

Those fifty scientists have mentioned one thing which I have been saying again and again: “Up to now, all our efforts to find some antidote for nuclear weapons has failed. And we don’t think that we will be able to find anything that destroys the power of nuclear weapons – no counter energy is available. It is because of this fact that they have put in the petition – because now it is simply destruction, there is no way of protecting anybody.

I am tremendously happy that nuclear weapons have come to the point where fight becomes useless, war becomes utterly stupid. And if, even seeing this stupidity, the politicians decide to go for a nuclear war, then I think this earth deserves it. If its leaders are ready to destroy it, then perhaps it is good – be finished. The universe will go on. It was going on before this earth was born; it will go on, with the same beauty and with the same splendor. It doesn’t matter that the earth is gone. There are fifty thousand planets, exactly like this earth in the universe, where life exists.

So if the situation for life to exist on this earth disappears, the bodies will be dead here, and your souls will be transplanted to other planets. They don’t need missiles, they don’t need rockets; they can simply jump – a quantum leap – from this planet to another planet.

But as far as I am concerned, I am totally convinced that war is impossible, for the simple reason that they… That’s why they have been postponing it. And they will go on postponing it. They want to find something. Either party, whoever finds the antidote for nuclear weapons first, will immediately go for nuclear war, because he can protect his country and you cannot protect your country. Then war again gains meaning: somebody will be victorious, and somebody will be defeated.

But I don’t see there is any way to find an antidote, for the simple reason that three hundred years of continuous creation of war mechanisms, destructive weapons, has led to nuclear weapons. You have never worked for life; you have never thought about how to create a more beautiful life healthier, more intelligent, longer. If, side by side, you were working for these three hundred years, putting your whole energy as you have been putting into war, perhaps you may be able to find an antidote. But there is not enough time. If all the scientists of the world start together now, perhaps in one hundred years they may be able to find a clue which nullifies all nuclear weapons. But that seems to be impossible.

So to me, the Third World War is over. We have passed it. Now think about the fourth, and prepare for the fourth. The third is not possible.

And I am not a pacifist, and I don’t want my sannyasins to be pacifists. A pacifist is against war – so much so, that if he had nuclear weapons he would fight with nuclear weapons against war. A pacifist is not a peaceful man.

Our sannyasins are not pacifists – but peace loving, silence loving, trying to find their inner serenity. If we can create millions of people around the world who are centered in their meditation, who know who they are, who know the tremendous bliss that comes when you enter into your innermost core, that will create an energy blanket around the earth. That is the only possibility to prevent war.

So I am not directly concerned with war. My concern is how to create more peaceful people, more loving people, more meditative people – because if the balance for peace-loving people in the world is greater, then any war can be prevented. If there are millions of meditators in the world, nobody can force them to go to war, to destroy innocent people. In fact, these people who have attained some light within themselves, will become a tremendous barrier – not only against nuclear war, but against any kind of war.

I am aware that nuclear war is impossible. And it is possible that the Soviet Union and America will come to a conclusion to throw all their nuclear weapons into the Pacific – I don’t know who gave it the name ‘Pacific’, perhaps for this purpose – and stop all traffic in the Pacific. Although it is five miles deep, there is always a danger that anything can trigger, and then it can become a chain explosion.

So, for at least a decade, no traffic in the Pacific. Drown all the weapons there. And my feeling is that soon Russia and America will come to that conclusion. But that does not mean war will not happen. Then the old type of war – the First World War, the Second World War – that type of war will continue. Thinking of the Third World War, they look like child’s play, but they were immensely horrible. So as far as I am concerned, a Third World War is out of the question. But still, other wars will be there.

If we want to prevent all kinds of war in the world, then we have to spread the red people everywhere, to the farthest corners, so that we have a commune of millions of young people who declare that they are the owners of the earth, and they refuse any kind of passport, any visa: movement is our birthright, and the whole earth is ours. If we have millions of people to destroy the boundaries of nations, the boundaries of religions, then there is nothing to fight for. Fight with whom?

So my direct effort is not to prevent war, or to be a pacifist and print pamphlets against war, and protest, and put posters on the walls and scream and shout. All that nonsense is not going to prevent it. They were doing the same thing before the First World War, they were doing the same thing before the Second World War, they are doing the same thing before the Third World War. They are just useless people – well intentioned but unintelligent.

My effort is to create a vast atmosphere of peace around the earth, and that will be enough. War will become impossible. In every country we will have thousands of sannyasins who will prevent that country itself. Because they will say, “First kill us and then you can kill the neighboring country.” They will be sitting on the boundary line, meditating: “Kill us first.” On both sides – on the other side also, back to back! And I don’t think any politician has the courage to kill millions of his own people, because then the whole country will destroy the government and the politicians and everything –  because these children are not doing anything wrong, and they belong to the whole country.

So create peaceful people, and if time comes we will risk all our peace-loving people. And I don’t think that any country can go to war.

It has never happened that the people of a country are opposing its own government, saying, “War is not going to be our game anymore.” And it will happen in both countries, in the enemy camp young people are ready too: “Kill us first and then you can do whatsoever you want.”

There are a thousand-and-one possibilities to change this world. But the basic need is to spread more and more sannyasins all over the world. Already the red color is no longer associated with the communists. We have taken its possession of it already; the copyright is ours now.

Even in Russia we have a beautiful group of sannyasins. Just the other day there was an article against me in a Russian magazine. They have been persecuting sannyasins, they have been taking their books away. The sannyasins have done nothing wrong – nothing illegal, no crime – so they cannot do anything to them. But in the article they have published the most prominent sannyasins’ names, so that they can be recognized by the people everywhere. Because they are my underground sannyasins; they don’t wear red clothes, they don’t wear a mala, and they meet in the basements of houses so that they can meditate and nobody hears. They can listen to the tapes, they can read a book.

And they are more excited than anywhere else, because for sixty years the Russian youth has been missing something which is the very flavor of youth: something revolutionary, something rebellious. For sixty years, the Soviet youth is the poorest youth in the world. From their childhood they simply become adult. That season – youth – never comes. Those days of dreaming of changing the whole world, of changing man, of creating a new humanity – if they are not there, youth loses all its glamour, its splendor.

So they are immensely excited. And I know that communist countries will soon have thousands of sannyasins – without any question. And nobody else can provide the communist countries with anything that I am offering to them. They have been taught that there is no God. I say, “Perfectly good, there is no God.” They have been told there is no hell, no heaven – perfectly true. They have been told not to believe – that’s my whole teaching.

Only on one point I am giving them something new – that is meditation. And Marx or Lenin or Stalin, nobody has said that meditation is against communism. Just sitting silently, doing nothing. How can it be against communism? Or against anybody?

So my sannyasins need not be afraid in communist countries either, because my teaching agrees with Marx on every point – except meditation. But that is the whole secret, that meditation will destroy all those communist ideas, those Marxian concepts. And about meditation, there is not a single word against it in the whole communist literature, because they have never even heard about it. Marx knew nothing about it.

So try to spread meditation far and wide, and find out whatever is possible in your situation. The country is poor, then manage something. But communes have to exist. And once a commune is there, soon you will be able to produce many things, create many things.

And the commune is not going to remain poor long. And it will become a prototype for other people that, if we can create and we can live comfortably and we are not starving and we are rejoicing, why cannot you? Just do the same as we are doing.

Osho, The Last Testament, Vol 1, Ch 29, Q 4