War signifies a lust for power

13 December 2001, 11:22pm IST
SWAMI CHAITANYA KEERTI.

Disciple asked osho, ‘‘what is the best government?’’ osho or bhagwan rajneesh replied, ‘‘no government. the very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman. government is a game, the ugliest and the dirtiest game in the world. but there are people in the lowest state of consciousness who enjoy it: these are the politicians’’. the only joy of a politician is to govern, to be in power, to enslave people. the greatest desire of all those who have reached the peak of consciousness has been the dream that one day we can get rid of all governments. that day will be the greatest in the whole history — past, present, future — of a human being, because getting rid of all governments will mean destroying the ugliest game, the game the politicians have been playing for centuries. they have made a human being just a chess piece, and they have created so much fear, fear that without government there will be anarchy, disorder and chaos and that everything will be destroyed. and the strangest thing is that we go on believing this nonsense. governments have not done anything for the people except exploit them, exploit their fear, and set them against each other. a continuity of war somewhere or the other on earth is almost an absolute necessity for politicians to exist. adolf hitler, in his autobiography, has many insights; and he is a man worth understanding because he is the purest politician — i mean, the dirtiest. he said that war is an absolute necessity if you want to remain in power. if you cannot create war people start thinking of you as a nobody. only in wartime are heroes born. he was right. if you think of all the ‘heroes’ — alexander the great, napoleon bonaparte, winston churchill, benito mussolini, joseph stalin and adolf hitler himself, they would have been diminutive figures without the ‘wars’ to prop them up. the bigger the war, the bigger the heroes it creates. hitler says that if you cannot create war then at least continue to propagate the idea that war is coming. never leave people in peace, because when they are in peace, you are a nobody. they do not need you; your very purpose is not there. they need you when there is danger. create danger. if there is no real danger, at least create the climate of a false danger. osho says that every country lives in the fear of every other country. and it is nothing but a game of the politicians. people themselves are exactly the same all over the world — they do not want to be killed in wars and they do not want to kill others in wars. but the politician cannot exist without wars. hence i call it the dirtiest game — because it depends on human blood, the bloodshed of millions of innocent people. when i say no government is the best government i know perfectly well that perhaps it will not ever be possible. but it is better to have dreams that are impossible but are of a higher consciousness, of beauty and love. perhaps if the idea goes on existing, some day we may come close to it. we may not be able to achieve it in its totality — hence i say, the closest to no government is one government, which is not impossible. after achieving one government, the next step which then becomes very possible is ‘no government’. when there are so many presidents in this world and prime ministers and kings and queens, and everyone is trying to prove that he or she is the greatest, then it becomes a game. however, when there is one government then it becomes functional; there is nobody against it. the whole joy of politics is in ‘‘the enemy’’. when there is no enemy, then you are just working like the red cross society or the organisation of post offices or railways or aeroplanes. we do not know, for example, who runs the railway trains in america as he is just a functional head. and when there is one government we can make it something like a rotary club. we will not need a president for four or five years. a few weeks will be enough and then the post can be rotated. so every part of the world is represented. one government means that nations disappear and every unit becomes a direct democracy which is functional, utilitarian and not based on a lust for a power. this was osho’s message in his discourse, ‘from darkness to light’. he wanted us to inhabit an enlightened world.

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