TO ME THE FUTURE OF THE EAST APPEARS BLEAK WHICHEVER WAY ONE LOOKS AT IT -- EITHER POVERTY AND STARVATION THROUGH FATALISM, OR WESTERNIZATION THROUGH CAPITALISM -- FOR IS IT NOT NECESSARY FOR THE EAST TO BECOME WEST BEFORE PEOPLE AGAIN BECOME INTERESTED IN THEIR INNER SEARCH? IS IT NOT NECESSARY FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE EAST TO BECOME MATERIALLY RICH BEFORE THEIR SPIRITUAL POVERTY AGAIN BECOMES EVIDENT?

BUT THE BURDEN OF THE WEST ALREADY LIES HEAVY ON THE WORLD: THE ATOMIC BOMB; VIOLENCE THROUGH FRUSTRATION; THE AUTO-MATIZATION OF THE SOUL; THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FORESTS AND THE POLLUTION OF THE AIR AND SEA SO THAT IT IS UNCERTAIN WHETHER THE ENVIRONMENT CAN MAINTAIN ITS DELICATE BALANCE. CAN THE WORLD SUPPORT ANOTHER WEST?

 

 Ruparahi, the future only appears bleak, but it has always appeared so. This is not anything new. You can go as far back as possible in human history, to the very first moment of human beginnings when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden, and you will find the future has always looked bleak. Just think of Adam and Eve being thrown out of the garden of God and the doors being slammed behind them. How was the future? It must have appeared very bleak. All that they had known was being taken away. Their security, their safety, their world, everything was being taken away. What future hope was there? Only darkness, death. It must have been frightening.

 And this is not only a parable: each time a child is born the future looks bleak, because again the womb -- the safe secure environment of the womb -- is taken away from the child, and the helpless child is expelled. What do you think about the child? Psychoanalysts say that the greatest trauma is the birth trauma, and the person suffers it his whole life. The word "trauma" comes from a root which means "wound". The birth trauma is the greatest wound; it is very rare to find a person whose birth trauma is healed.

 It heals only when a person becomes enlightened, because when a person becomes enlightened he is again in the eternal womb of God; otherwise the wound goes on and on hurting.

 Your whole life you try to hide that wound, but by hiding it it cannot disappear. Each child being born, coming out of the birth canal, must be feeling the future is bleak; and each age has felt it. Because the future is unknown, that's why it looks bleak.

 This is not something new that modern man is feeling; it is as ancient as man. You can go to the ancient-most records and it is always said in every ancient scripture, "The future is bleak." And the corollary to it is that the past was golden. "The future is bleak." The past was good -- satyug, the Age of Truth; and the future, kalyug -- the Age of Death and Darkness.

 This attitude is somewhere deep in your mind; it has nothing to do with time and the realities surrounding you. And you have to drop this pessimistic attitude, Ruparahi. It all depends on your approach.

 For example, it is so simple to say that "the burden of the West already lies heavy on the world: the atomic bomb," and nobody will argue against you, it looks so obvious. But I would like to tell you to think again, reconsider. In fact, it is the atom bomb which has made wars impossible. Now there can be no world war.

 In the past we could have continued wars because our wars were so inefficient, there was no danger. That's why, down the ages, in three thousand years we have fought five thousand wars. There was no problem; it was just a game. And the male egoistic mind has enjoyed it very much, it has needed it very much. And wars would have continued if there was no atom bomb.

The atom bomb is the end of war.

 The future is not bleak. The very existence of the atom bomb means, now, if you decide for war, it will be universal suicide. Who is ready to take that risk? Nobody can win and everybody will die. Nobody can be the winner; then what is the point of the game?

 War is significant if somebody can win and somebody is defeated. War becomes absurd if nobody can win and both are destroyed. It is only because of the existence of the atom bomb that Russia and America are prevented from war; otherwise there seems to be no other possibility except war. Both are ready, absolutely ready, but the atom bomb is making it impossible.

 It is ridiculous now to go to war. If both parties are going to be destroyed, then what is the point? The atom bomb has made war pointless.

 When I think about the atom bomb I see great hope. I am not a pessimist at all. I believe things are going to be better every day, better and better. You will be surprised, but this is so simple if you understand.

 It is because of the atom bomb that war has become total. Up to now it was a partial thing -- a few people will die -- but now the whole earth will die. We have attained to superkill. We have so many bombs ready that we can kill each person one thousand times, we can destroy one thousand earths like this. This earth is small now before our destructive powers; compared to our destructive powers this earth is nothing.

 Now who is going to take this risk, and for what? You will not be there to gloat over your victory -- nobody will be there.

 War is not going to happen. The Third World War is not going to happen, and it will not be because of Buddha and Christ and their teachings of non-violence and love, no! It will be because of the atom bomb. Because death is absolute now, suicide will be complete. Not only will man be destroyed, but birds, animals, trees, all life will be destroyed on earth.

 This is the only possibility of dropping war forever. We have become too efficient in killing; now killing can be allowed no more. Think this way and you will be surprised -- then the future is bleak no more.

 You say, "... violence through frustration." That's true. Whenever one feels frustrated... and the world is feeling frustrated, particularly the West. Frustration comes as a shadow of success. In the East there is no frustration because there is no success, so the shadow is missing. In the West there is great frustration because the success has come; all that man ever needed is available, and there is no content ment. Success has failed -- that's the frustration.

 But that's also the point of sannyas, meditation, religion. Yes, you can become frustrated and you can become violent because all that you have hoped for has failed -- you have succeeded, and nothing has succeeded -- great frustration arises in you -- you can become murderous, you can become suicidal. But the other possibility is also there, you can start thinking in a totally new way: that success cannot be in the outer world, that success has to be something inner, that you were rushing in a wrong direction. Your direction was wrong; that's why you have failed.

 In the West, because of frustration, people are becoming more and more interested in meditation, prayer, contemplation. That too is part of the same frustration. My own observation is a person becomes a meditator only when there are only two possibilities: suicide or transformation.

 When in the outside world there seems to be only suicide and nothing else, then one turns in. Only at that point, at that peak of frustration, does one turn in. The turning in cannot happen in a lukewarm person; it happens only when things are really hot and there is no way outside anymore, all ways have been proved false. When you have been frustrated totally by the outside world and all exterior journeys, when all extroversion seems meaningless, only then does the desire, the longing for an inner pilgrimage open up.

 It has always been so. It is only at the extremes, when life faces a crisis, that transformations happen. Water evaporates at a hundred degrees; that much heat is needed. The West has created that much heat of frustration. A few people will become violent, a few people will become murderous, a few people will become suicidal, but the major part of humanity will start turning in.

 You say, "... the automatization of the soul." Industrialization and the growth of technology has not made man automatic, has not made man a machine. Man has always been a machine. Industrialization has only revealed the truth. It is a great revelation. Man has always lived in slavery, but the slavery was not so apparent, was not so penetrating; there was always an illusion of freedom.

 The mechanization of all that you are surrounded with has made you aware that you are also nothing but a machine. You have always been that. Buddhas have always been telling you that you exist unconsciously, that you exist like a robot, that you are not yet a man, but illusions persisted. The modern world has taken the last illusion from you, it has revealed the truth to you: that you are nothing but a machine efficient, inefficient, but a machine.

 It had to be so because only when you live with machines, only then can you become aware of your machine-like existence. You had always lived with trees and animals and people, and it had always given you the false idea that there is freedom.

 Freedom exists only when you are utterly conscious. Only a Buddha is free. Freedom is in Buddhahood; nobody else is free, nobody else can be free. But people can believe... it is a very consoling illusion. The modern world has taken your illusion away from you; and it is good because now a great desire to be free will arise, a great longing to attain to something beyond the machine.

 For example, the computer has proved that howsoever efficient you are in your mind it does not make you really a man, because that can be done better by a computer than by your mind. Now the people who used to do beautiful mathematics, remember things or play chess will be offended because the computer can do it in a far better way. And the work of the computer is so fast that they say, if a problem will take seventy years of his whole life for a great mathematician to solve, working day in, day out, the computer can solve it within a second.

 Now, what is the lesson to be learned? That the brain is nothing but a biocomputer. Without the computer it would never have been revealed to you that your brain is a computer. With the computer, now, the people who think they are great intellectuals, mathematicians, scientists, specialists, are all reduced to machines. It was not possible two thousand years before: there was no way to know that the mind functions as a machine, that the mind is nothing but a machine.

 There is just one thing the computer cannot do. It can be logical, but it cannot be loving; it can be rational, but it cannot be meditative. A computer cannot meditate, a computer cannot love -- and that is the hope, and that is where man can still go beyond machines. You can love. Your love will be the decisive factor in the coming days -- not logic: the computer is perfectly logical, more logical than any Aristotle; not mathematics: the computer is more mathematical than any Albert Einstein.

 The computer is going to solve all problems. The computer will solve every problem that scientists used to take years to solve. It can solve them within seconds. Sooner or later science will go into the hands of computers; the scientist will be needed only to operate the computer, that's all. The computer can do it far more quickly, far more efficiently, with less and less possibility of making any errors. This is something tremendously significant. It can make you very much frightened, it can give you the idea that there is nothing left, man is a machine; but it can also fill you with great hope that now the computer has revealed that the head is not man's real reality.

 Now we have to search for the heart, because the computer has no heart. Only by searching for our heart, only by allowing our heart to dance and sing and love, will we be able to retain the glory and dignity of being man; otherwise it is gone.

 The future looks bleak to you because you only see the darker side of the phenomenon. You are not aware of its lighter side. I see the dawn coming very close. Yes, the night is very dark, but the future is not bleak, not at all.

 In fact, for the first time in human history millions of people will be able to become Buddhas. It was very rare to become a Buddha in the past because it was very rare to become aware of the mechanicalness of man. It needed great intelligence to be aware that man is a machine. But now it will not need any intelligence at all; it will be so obvious that man is a machine.