Scientists calculate that by the end of this century, all the oceans of the world will have risen by four and a half feet. There have never been any floods of the oceans – and this will be a permanent rise. Cities like Bombay and New York, which are on the seashore, will be filled with four and half feet of water.
This is only one calculation of one group of researchers who are working at the North Pole and South Pole. A third group is working on the Himalayan ice, which has been eternally there. If the temperature rises just one degree more, then the ice from the Himalayas and the Alps will start melting. And that will be a real calamity, because it will raise every ocean by forty feet. It will drown almost everything that we know as civilization; all our great ports, great cities, all will be under water. Anybody researching later on would find it to be a natural calamity – it is not. It is our own stupidity.
We can learn much, seeing what is happening, and then we can think introspectively about other civilizations which have disappeared, either through war or through calamities which apparently look natural. But I don’t feel that they were natural. Those civilizations must have done something stupid that caused the calamities.
“Were there not already highly developed civilizations living on this earth?” There were, but they all got into the same mess in which we are entering; they all got into the same darkness in which we are entering. “And yet their consciousness got lost and man had to start all over again.” Their consciousness was not lost – they had no consciousness. They had just the same superficial consciousness as we have.
What are you doing to prevent the calamity that is coming closer every day? The death of this earth is not far away – at the most, twenty years, twenty-five years. And that is a very optimistic attitude; for the pessimist it can happen even tomorrow. But even if we give twenty-five years to you, what are you going to do to help human consciousness rise in such a way that we can prevent the global suicide that is going to happen?
It is coming from many directions. Nuclear weapons are one direction which is almost completely ready. Any moment…and it is going to be a push-button war. It is not a problem of sending armies and airplanes.
Just the other day the prime minister of the Soviet Union declared that there are thousands of submarines underneath the ocean, moving around the world. Each submarine is carrying so much nuclear power that it is equal to one thousand second world wars. One submarine…and there are thousands of submarines, Russian and American, underneath the water. The explosion can happen just by accident. There is no need for any war, just by accident….