Society has been divided into different cultures, religions and nations - all based on superstitions. None of the divisions are valid.
However, these divisions show that man is divided within himself: these are the projections of his own inner conflict. He is not one within, that's why he could not create one society, outside.
The cause is not outside. The outside is only a reflection of the inner man. Charles Darwin proposed that human beings evolved from apes. It might seem far-fetched, because for thousands of years apes have coexisted with humans but none of them have evolved into human beings!
Secondly, Darwin was unable to find a link between man and ape, because whenever things develop there are always steps, not jumps. Maybe, just maybe, we have to look for more than just physical evidence.
Interestingly, according to Eastern mysticism, in a very different way, man is evolved from animals - maybe not necessarily as far as his body is concerned, but as far as his being is concerned, yes. And that seems to be more relevant. Eastern mysticism has a theory ^ not that the ape's body develops into a human body, but that an ape's soul or an elephant's soul, or a lion's soul, can develop into a human being. First the soul develops, and then, according to the soul's need, nature provides the body. So there is no bodily evolution, but there is a spiritual connection.
This is profoundly supported by modern psychoanalysis, particularly Carl Gustav Jung's school, because in the collective unconscious of man there are memories that belong to 'animalhood'.
If man is taken deep into hypnosis, first he enters the unconscious mind, which is just the repressed part of this life. If he is hypnotised even more deeply, then he enters into the collective unconscious, which has memories of being animals.
People start screaming - in that stage they cannot speak a language. They start moaning or crying, but language is impossible; they can shout, but in an animal way. And in the collective unconscious state, if they are allowed to move or they are told to move, they move on all fours - they don't stand up.
In the collective unconscious there are certainly remnants that suggest that they have been sometime in some animal body. And different people come from different animal bodies. That may be the cause of such a difference in individuals. And sometimes you can see a similarity - somebody behaves like a dog, somebody behaves like a fox, somebody behaves like a lion.
And there is great support in folklore, in ancient parables like Aesop's Fables or the Panchatantra, in which all the stories are about animals, but are very significant for human beings and represent certain human types. So even if physical evolution theories are open to debate, there are possibly strong spiritual links.
Man still carries much of the animal instinct - his anger, aggression, sense of possession and cunningness, for instance, all point to this probability. All that has been condemned in man seems to belong to a very deep-rooted unconscious. And the whole work of spiritual alchemy is how to get rid of the animal past.
The animal past and man's humanity cannot exist as one, because humanity is meant to have higher qualities. The world can come to a harmony if meditation is spread far and wide, and people are brought to one consciousness within themselves. This will be a totally different dimension to work with.
(Excerpted from Light on the Path. Courtesy: Osho International Foundation. www.osho.com)