On the one hand, seventy-five percent of the income of every country goes to war; and on the other hand, these politicians really have beautiful masks. And they must be having many because they have to change again and again. When Ethiopia is there and people are dying, you are so sympathetic and you want to save Ethiopia…. These two things don’t go together, they are inconsistent.

So my first alternative is that the nations should stop creating more war, and the poverty not only from Ethiopia but from the whole world will disappear today. The poverty is there because our whole energy is involved with war, with the preparation for war.

If you cannot do it, then at least don’t be a hypocrite. Be direct and say, “Let Ethiopia die, we don’t care. We are going to make more nuclear weapons and we are going to have a Third World War, and what does it matter?” The whole world is going to end in the Third World War. Ethiopia will be saved from nuclear weapons, they will die before that. That’s perfectly good, let them die, but don’t be a hypocrite.

Osho,
If President Reagan decided to ask you to be his advisor, what would you advise him in regard to these nuclear arms?

Just tell your scientists to find some creative use for all these weapons, because you cannot throw them into the Pacific as sooner or later they will explode just by accident. You cannot throw them into the Atlantic, you cannot bury them under the earth. Anytime, anything can trigger them and they can explode your own country or somebody else’s. But energy is neutral, energy is never decisive whether it can destroy or it can create. It depends on the direction that the human mind gives it.

If the human mind can create nuclear weapons to destroy, it can change nuclear power into construction. It can create more electricity, it can give better rains, it can give better earth. It can do miracles. So much energy is piled up in these two nations, and smaller piles in smaller nations, that if they all simply think once, “What are we doing? Our scientists should be together….”

My advice is that the scientists should not be under any national regime. There should be a world academy of scientists who can decide how to convert nuclear weapons and energy into positive things. It is possible.

But practically, should the United States disarm?

I am not saying disarm. Changing nuclear weapons into creativity does not mean disarm, because you have many more arms than just nuclear weapons. You could fight the First World War without nuclear weapons, you could fight the Second World War – you had already won before you threw the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Germany had already surrendered and Japan was on the verge of surrendering.