I have heard a joke and I want to share it with people in these troubled times when a war that is likely to start sooner than later.

The new fully automatic airplane was making its first cross-country flight. A recorded announcement said, "This is the first all-automatic jet. There is no pilot, no crew. Press a button and we take off. Press another button and dinner is served. Press another button and we land. Nothing can go wrong... can go wrong... can go wrong... can go wrong...."

And now we see that everything is going wrong! It is possible that we can manage with the computers, as they don't go wrong, and they don't function on their own; and if properly programmed, no human hands are needed to operate upon them. Compuetrs can be fixed or discarded if they go wrong. But what has become very difficult or next to impossible is to fix is the human psyche that has become damaged, deranged and wounded. The human mind is very vulnerable and receptive to all kinds of poisons. It can be very easily poisoned with the jargon of jingoism and jihads. Any falsely patriotic idiotic leader like Hitler or Osama can damage the minds of people on a large scale enough to trigger genocide. The minds of these Hitler’s and Osama’s are monstrously powerful and can effect any number of men. We have seen this in the past and we are witnessing it now.

And such idiots are given power to rule the world, and the so-called intelligent people follow them blindly. A few idiots that cannot come to a solution kill so many innocent people! How can they? They are not evolved in consciousness or compassion. They are not the Buddhas or enlightened ones. They are simply idiots who have reached the top positions with our help. And now they are fighting and inciting the whole world to join in their fight in the name of nation and religion.

Instead of asking these idiots to fight among themselves, or have a boxing match for the world to see it, we start following them and become involve in their fight. It is really very strange that idiots become so powerful in the world that the sane and sensitive people get ensnared into their political and jingoistic jargon.

We are witnessing this terrible situation that may trigger the third world war with the consequence that whole humanity, in fact whole life might get annihilated from this green planet. It is very much a possibility because these chimps today have their hands on the nuclear buttons.

I have heard a very serious joke. The third world war happened, and a monkey sitting on a tree said to a female monkey, "Darling, should we start it all again?" And he had an apple in his hand. "Eat it again"... and God will throw you out of the Garden of Eden and the beginning of another humanity....

But again this will be a monkey business all over again. Monkeys will become men and men will become terrorists. It is a vicious circle. Monkeys are great followers, because they are inherently imitators. Man only becomes individual when he does not imitate. Individuality is the result of meditation and not of imitation. And, meditation is the alchemy of transformation. Meditation is mutation. Meditation is metamorphosis.

The real change or transformation happens when a man becomes a meditator. Only then he does not become a follower of any idiotic leader. A meditator follows his own soul and is not interested in killing others, as he becomes capable of feeling others as individual souls and not just living mass of flesh and blood.

Osho says, "A meditator cannot kill; a meditator cannot be destructive. War, violence, murder, massacre of millions of people - this is not possible if a man knows something of meditation. Then he also knows not only himself, he knows the other whom he is killing. He is his brother. They all belong to the same oceanic existence."

Meditation is the medicine for the sick and the wounded psyche, as Osho points out, "that the word medicine and the word meditation come from the same root. Medicine means something that can cure your body, and meditation means something that can cure your soul. Meditation is meditation only because it is a medicine for your innermost illnesses."

Swami Chaitanya Keerti