From Instinct to Boredom — Have Human Beings Stopped Evolving?

Osho,
Why have human beings seemed to have stopped evolving, and instead are often bored and even suicidal?

“Boredom and suicide are both human. No animal can commit suicide, no tree can commit suicide.
Why has this happened? What is the reason behind it?

“Has man forgotten completely how to live, how to celebrate, how to be festive? While the whole existence is festive, how has man retreated out of it and created a sad milieu around him?

“It has happened.

“Animals live through instinct; they don’t live through awareness.

“They live through instinct, mechanically. Nothing has to be learned. They are born with whatsoever they need to know. Their life runs on a smooth instinctive plane; there is no learning. They have an inbuilt program, a blueprint in their cells, for all that they need to live and be happy, so they go on living mechanically.

“Man has lost instinct; now there is no blueprint to live. You are born without any blueprint, without any inbuilt program. No mechanical lines are available for you to move on.

“You have to create your own path. You have to substitute instinct with something which is not instinct, because instinct has dropped.

“You have to substitute your instinct with intelligence, with awareness.

“You cannot live mechanically. You have gone beyond that stage where mechanical life is possible — it is not possible for you. You cannot live like animals and you don’t know how t live in some other way — this is the problem.

“You don’t have a natural inbuilt program to follow. Without a program you have to face existence. And boredom, suffering, is bound to be your destiny if you cannot create such awareness that you can live through awareness rather than living through instinct. You have to learn everything. This is the problem. No animal needs to learn anything. You have to learn everything, and unless you learn it, you cannot live it.

“You have to learn how to live. No animal needs it.

“This learning is the problem. You learn many things: you learn how to earn money, you…