The whole humanity can have a quantum leap

Osho,

In America I see signs that the overall consciousness is evolving. There’s some hope that we’re not going to self-destruct in the near future. Would you please comment?

Man is coming to a very unique point from where a quantum leap will be possible. The human consciousness has not changed for many centuries – it has remained the same. Some individuals, few and far between, have evolved: a buddha, a christ, a krishna, a zarathustra, but they are exceptions; they are not the rule.

Very rarely has a human being taken the quantum leap – jumped beyond humanity, surpassed humanity – but they have paved the way. By and by, slowly… the work has been hard, the work has been slow. For at least ten thousand years, many pathfinders have been trying to create a possibility for a breakthrough – not for individuals but as a human consciousness as such, so that the whole humanity can have a quantum leap.

The moment is coming closer, because for the first time, particularly in the west, the society has come to such a state where it is feasible, it is practical. Otherwise in the east people have lived in such starvation – how to think about consciousness?

People have been so poor that the very idea of consciousness seems to be very far away – a fiction, luxurious, aristocratic. Maybe a few rich people can talk about it, can sit and argue about it, but the greater mass cannot even understand the word; it has no connection with them.

For that quantum leap a certain affluence was needed, and it has happened in America. That affluence has happened and society has created a stage where poverty is no more the rule and people can afford to think of higher things.

People can become starry-eyed, can become lotus-eaters, can close their eyes and gaze upon their navels. The possibility has come and the frustration also….

The society has evolved materially. The more material affluence has come, the more spiritual poverty has become clear in contrast. So, on one hand richness – on another hand an inner poverty. It hurts! When you are poor outside and inside too, it doesn’t hurt – because the contrast is missing; you cannot compare. Poverty just seems to be the fate.