Nowhere in the world are any of the basic rights being applied (2)

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Osho speaks on human rights; part 2 of 4.

Osho Manali 1976

Part 1: Human rights are just hypocrisies, part 1 of 4

In the introduction to this declaration it says, ‘We are determined to eliminate all forms of intolerance and of discrimination based on religion or belief.’ And this is not true in any country. Religions are fighting continuously, and if the government consists of fanatic, religious people, the minority is crushed and destroyed in every possible way. The desire is good, but the people who are desiring it are all wrong.

In the convention at which the UN declared these fundamental rights, the Soviet Union was absent; eight other communist countries were absent. America was present. Unanimously the declaration was adopted – all in favor and nobody against. I am mentioning it because it was basically an American initiative to make this declaration. And America is the first to be going against every human right.

Just now, America has given two hundred million dollars to the terrorists in Nicaragua, a small country which has become communist, just like Cuba. To destroy the country, America has flooded it with terrorists. Now millions of dollars are being poured in continuously, to support the terrorists with weapons and with everything. And in this declaration it says that every country is sovereign, and no other country should interfere in any other country’s life, religion. That is their business – how they want to live, what they want to believe or not to believe. It is nobody else’s business at all. If in some small country people have accepted communism as their lifestyle and their social structure, who is America? – and what right have they?

Nicaragua appealed to the world court; and the world court is full of American judges. Still the world court said to America, “Your act is against the human rights declaration, it is criminal.” Ronald Reagan simply cancelled it. He said, “We don’t care about the world court or their decisions.” Now these are the people who have made the declaration. They have created the world court to decide in situations where some conflict arises. And these same people are not ready to listen.

Do you see the politics behind it? The World Court, the declaration – all are facades to hide things. If some small country was doing it, then the world court would be right, and America would have taken action in favor of the world court to destroy that country because it was doing a criminal act. Now, because America itself is doing the criminal act, it simply can say, “We don’t care about the world court.”

And what can the world court do? It has no armies, it has no power. It has all the power that has been given to the politicians; but if those politicians themselves go against the law that they have made, what can the court do?

And the UN is silent. Its Court has been insulted. If the people in the UN have any dignity they will dissolve the UN and dissolve the world court – because what is the point? Today America is doing it, tomorrow the other countries will. And the Soviet Union is far better, and is right, because it never participated in this declaration. It is not part of this declaration; no communist government participated in it. So at least they have shown from the very beginning that these things are all bogus: “Who are you trying to cheat?”

All the rights are, in a way, not very rational. For example, in this long declaration, the right to leave the body when one has lived enough and is now weak, sick, old, a burden, and of no use… One is suffering unnecessarily and waiting for death. Why wait? Why put this man unnecessarily in torture?

The society is responsible for thousands of people who are in torture – in hospitals or in nursing homes. They don’t have any possibility of coming back to life healthy, creative, of any use. But they can go on vegetating; and medicine is developed enough – you can keep them in the hospitals for years. Artificial breathing… perhaps the man is already dead, but because of the artificial breathing you are deceived.

In this long list, one of the most important human rights is not included; and that right is the right to leave the world, to give the ticket back, to say, “I want to go back home. Who are you to prevent me or anybody?”

But that right, which is very significant today because in the advanced countries, the average life has gone to such lengths that more and more people will be in a situation where their sons and daughters are already old – eighty, ninety…. The fourth or fifth or six generation has already arrived, and that fifth or sixth generation cannot have any connection with a man one hundred and twenty years old, just vegetating in a hospital. Those new arrivals have no relationship, they don’t have any respect.

Now, months pass and those old people are hanging around in the hospitals waiting, hoping that somebody may come – a friend, a child, an old acquaintance – to meet them. Nobody comes. People avoid them. They are boring, naturally. It is almost as if you are reading a fifty-year old newspaper. They don’t have anything new; everything is fifty, sixty years old. If you go to them they will talk only about those golden days when they used to be young, and life was an adventure. You cannot connect with them, and you feel simply bored. Everything has changed in fifty years, and those people are not even aware of what has changed.

But no government in the world accepts euthanasia, the right to die. In this long declaration it is not included.

Politicians are very, very cunning. They don’t want to be controversial, so they say only things which you like or everybody is going to like. They are not concerned with the actual situation, and the changes it needs. Their whole effort is in how to make you happy just by giving you bogus words.

Nowhere in the world are any of the basic rights being applied.

I will go through a few important rights.

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights has resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind….

It has two implications in it. One is that the people who made this declaration have accepted that humanity is civilized. That’s why once in a while if there is any barbarous act, those human beings in the world – the whole of mankind – suffers in conscience, feels the pain, the anguish. Both are lies, because I don’t see humanity having any conscience.

When Mohammedans kill Hindus, no Mohammedan thinks that he has done wrong – the question of conscience does not arise. In fact, according to his religion he has done some virtuous act. He was trying to convert the Hindus to Mohammedanism, because if you are not a Mohammedan you cannot enter paradise.

He was trying to help you in every possible way, to smuggle you, rightly or wrongly, into paradise. From the front door or from the back door, it doesn’t matter. But you are resistant, you don’t want to go to paradise, you are determined to go to hell – that’s why he prevents you, he beheads you: It is better to be killed by the hands of a religious Mohammedan. The Koran says, “The man who is killed by a Mohammedans will enter paradise, just as the Mohammedans who have killed him will enter paradise.” So they are really trying to save people from going to hell – why should they feel any pain in their conscience?

No Hindu feels it, no Christian feels it. Christians have killed more people than anybody else, and particularly they have burned living people. Others have been killing and then burning; Christianity has a shortcut. Why make it in two parts? When the book can be published in one book, why make two volumes? First kill the man and then burn him? – burn him directly! Thousands of people have been burned alive.

I don’t see anywhere that anybody is outraged.

If people are outraged things will change – because who is doing them? We are doing them.

This sentence in the beginning of the declaration is such a lie. First it says, “Barbarous acts….” In fact, in these fifty years we have done more barbarous acts than in the whole history of man. In ten thousand years we have not been able to do so many barbarous activities as we have done just within fifty years. We are becoming more and more barbarous – of course with a style and method.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki – what do you think? Are these barbarous acts, or an effort to send the beautiful people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima directly to paradise together? Whole cities, more than two hundred thousand people, entered within five minutes. I don’t think there was ever such a crowd at the gates of paradise. And it was America that was responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is now absolutely confirmed by the people who understand military science that dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was absolutely useless. Japan was already surrendering – Germany had surrendered and now there was no question that Japan could go on fighting; not for more than one week, or maybe not even that long.

Seeing that Germany was finished, Japan could not fight alone. It is a small country of very courageous people, brave people but a very small country. It was fighting with the support of Germany, and when the main support disappeared…. Japan was going to surrender.

And this was the fear of President Truman of America: Japan may surrender tomorrow; then he will miss the chance to drop the atom bombs. And they had put so much money and energy and genius into creating atom bombs, they wanted to try them.

Man is not important, but money…. Their bombs had to be tried.

And you say that because of barbarous acts, the civilized people feel a prick of conscience. Was President Truman a civilized man or not? Even his own military experts had told him that it was absolutely meaningless, unnecessarily destroying human life. But he went ahead.

The next morning hundreds of journalists had gathered at the White House to see President Truman, because world’s greatest catastrophe created by man had happened. Their first question was, “Mr. President, did you have a good sleep in the night?” – because he had gone to bed only after he had received the message: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in smoke, they are no longer on the map of the earth.” Then he went to bed; otherwise he waited for the news to reach him.

He said, “Yes, I slept more peacefully than ever, because our experiment has succeeded. Now we are the greatest power in the world.”

And you are talking about conscience?

More than two hundred thousand people died within three minutes, and the man whose order killed them, slept very ‘peacefully,’ as he had never slept before. And if this is the situation of President ‘True-Man,’ then what about the people who are not such true men?

As far as I am concerned, civilization is still a dream, a hope, a utopia. And if we don’t get into the tricks of the magician, and start believing that we are civilized people, the hope can become a reality, the dream can become a concrete experience.

And conscience arises only after meditation, never before it. You are not born with a conscience. You can watch small children: if they see an ant they will kill it. Do you think the small child has some conscience? Do you think the small child is a criminal, a murderer? No, nothing like that. It is just out of curiosity, he’s just exploring his world. He has entered into a new world, and he is exploring it. But there is no question of conscience. He does not feel that when he has been beating a dog for no reason, the dog also feels pain. Children don’t have any conscience; they have only seeds.

All these politicians are trying to convince humanity: “You have a conscience.” You don’t have. You will have to grow it, you will have to work upon yourself. You will have to learn how to be silent, and how to listen to the still, small voice within.

I don’t think any of the politicians who made this declaration have had any experience of what conscience is, of what consciousness is. It comes only after a long, long pilgrimage inwards. You are not given everything by birth. You are given by birth only the necessary things for survival; everything else is given only as a seed. If you are intentionally interested in evolving your consciousness to its highest peak, then it is up to you.

Nature provides only for survival – not life, not joy, not silence, not ecstasy, not love. Nature can manage itself with only lust – what is the need for love? Why create complications? Love you will have to find, consciousness you will have to grow. You will have to become a gardener of your own being – your being is your garden.

Your being is the Garden of Eden talked about in The Bible. That Garden of Eden is not somewhere else on some other star – it is within you. You have been thrown out of it, and you have been running all around but never going in. The moment you go in, you are back in the Garden of Eden.

But now, nobody has taken care for thousands of years. You have never been back inside. Everything has gone to seed; now nothing blossoms, no foliage, no greenery. But you can bring it back to life because everything is potentially there.

These people don’t understand what conscience is.

They have learned only words.

I have heard… a psychologist was appearing for an oral examination for his doctorate. There were three examiners. The first question they asked was: “What are the most important qualities of the human mother’s milk?”

The psychologist was a little puzzled: “What has psychology to do with mother’s milk? I have not come here to be an expert in milk products or anything. But what to do, I have to answer….”

So he said, “First, it has all the nutrients for the child’s growth – it is perfect food. Second, it comes from within the mother’s body, so it is warm, easily digestible; and because it comes from within, it cannot be carrying any infection, any disease which may be around. The child is protected.”

They said, “Right! Now, the third?”

There was a moment of silence because he could not figure it out – what is the third? The first two also he had made up. The third was coming up again and again in his mind, but he was repressing it. When he could not find anything else he had to say it. He said, “The third is that it comes in nice containers!”

Now, these idiots are going to be psychologists! And that was the first thing that had come to his mind – “nice containers.”

Looking at the declaration, my first feeling was that these people are articulate, they can play with words. They can use beautiful words which influence you and deceive you, and hide the reality.

Osho, Sermons in Stones, Ch 26 (part 2 of 4)

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