On Basic Human Rights

Osho thrusts his sword into the heart of the matter of what we collectively call “Human Rights.”

One of the struggles we face as human beings is how to cope with, how to bring light to, how to dissolve the roots of the perverse and incomprehensible horrors — physical, psychological, spiritual — that we seem capable of inflicting on one another. What are the roots of wars, of torture, of murder and hatred and our all-too-easy dehumanization of the “other”?

He quotes the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to expose the hollowness of the words.

Why is our human reality on this planet so far off from these beautifully worded declarations?

Osho exposes the hypocrisy and the vested interests that underlie the core of that document and so many others like it. But he doesn’t stop there. He challenges us to create a new language, a new narrative, a transformative and liberating vision of what it means to treat one another with awareness, with love, and with respect.

In our individual lives, as in the lives and generations of our society, there is a revolution, a transformation that happens alongside each change that happens in consciousness — individual and collective — as our technology continues to bring us (potentially) all together into a “global village.” And alongside it, the change in consciousness that is now required of us, as a common humanity living on a smallish and rather beautiful, sacred planet. To see ourselves as God’s creation, if you will. Or Gaia, or whatever term of oneness most appeals to you.

This small volume is an opening to the revolution in consciousness that is so urgently needed for our times.