According to Osho, rituals are futile only when they are empty performances—acts done from ego, duty, or imitation without the heart. The act itself is neutral; its truth is decided from within. When love, presence, and an irresistible inner urge move you, the same act becomes prayer, celebration, and living communion—not ritualism.
A ritual works only if your heart truly feels it; doing it just to copy or obey is empty.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, is it really true that even the devil cannot deceive the Marwaris?
Sahajanand! After hearing yesterday’s discourse, even Nasruddin got riled. I had said that even the devil cannot deceive a Marwari. So the mulla thought to himself: To hell with the Marwaris! Today I’ll trick a Marwari in such a way that her seven generations will remember it. It was dusk; the sun had set, and because of a power failure the street was dark. Nasruddin saw that the neighbor, the Marwari Seth Dhannalal’s new daughter-in-law, was coming along with a long veil drawn, a beautiful bag dangling from her hand. The mulla thought, A good chance—let me give this Marwari woman a taste today. He quickly got up and fell into step with her. Half past seven in the evening, the darkness, and then that long veil! The woman thought, My husband has come. She said, Listen, dear, I feel like having a Coca-Cola. The mulla understood she was taking…
Osho, you said religion is sadhana, not ritual. But many of the very things Saraha would call ritual—such as bhajan and kirtan—have become parts of practice in your ashram and elsewhere. Kindly explain.
And that priest who blows the conch in the temple, and the adhan that rises from the mosque—there is no real difference. If there is soul in the conch’s sound and soul in the adhan, they are two styles of the same call. The priest’s way of calling in the temple is to ring the bell and blow the conch; in the mosque, instead of bells there is the adhan. It is the same call. The essential question is: from whom does the call arise? Is it truly his, or is he parroting someone else? Does the voice issue from him, is it his own? Are his life-breath and being in it? If not, it is all futile. Then you can buy plastic flowers in the market, place them in the window; perhaps the neighbors will be fooled. Mulla Nasruddin watered the flowers in his window every day. The neighbors…
Why are you so much against rituals and rules?
BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT RELIGION, and they cannot be religion. I am against rituals, but that does not mean that a religious person cannot go into a ritual. But when a religious person goes into a ritual, it is not a ritual at all. His heart is in it; then his words have wings. So remember it: I am against the ritual when there is no heart in it. Then it is a ritual! But if there is a heart... just remember those three mystics, those three Russian mystics, praying to God: "You are three, we are three -- have mercy on us!" This too is a ritual, a simple one, of their own invention; this too is a prayer -- but their heart was in it. A famous story about Moses: He was passing through a forest. He saw a man praying. But the man who was praying was…
Sarva karma niraakaranam aawahanam cessation of the cause of all actions is aawahanam -- the invocation.
RELIGION is not ritual. Really, when a religion dies it becomes ritual: the dead body of a religion becomes the ritual. But everywhere ritual is to be found. If you go to find religion, you will find ritual. All these names -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian -- these are not the names of religions, they are names of particular rituals. By "ritual" I mean something done outwardly in order to create the inward revolution. This belief, that something done outwardly can create an inward revolution, creates rituals. Why does this belief come into existence? It comes because of a very natural phenomenon. Whenever there is inward revolution, whenever there is inner mutation, whenever there is some inner transformation, it is followed by many outward things and sign -- sit is bound to be, because the inward exists in relation to the outward. Nothing can happen inside which will not affect the…
Osho, Ashtavakra is the proponent of uncontrived, natural samadhi. In his vision, apart from awakening, no ritual, means, or effort has any place. Then is prayer also useless there?
Any prayer that can be done is useless. On Ashtavakra’s path, doing is useless, action is useless, duty is useless, the sense of doership is useless. So the prayer that can be done is useless; yes—prayer that happens is not useless: a prayer in which, while it is happening, your doer is absent. A prayer that comes from arrangement is futile. That which happens unawares—sometimes, seeing the sun rise, your hands come together; not that you joined them. If you joined them, they didn’t truly join. If they came together of themselves, only then did they truly join. And what kind of thing is it that you are doing Surya Namaskar because you are a Hindu? That makes it petty. Because you are a Hindu you salute the sun? Salute because the sun is rising. The sun is rising—and a Muslim’s hands don’t fold because he is a Muslim; a…