Are religious leaders fully aware of their deception towards their followers?

Beloved Osho, the pope and his bishops -- are they really fully aware of how they are cheating their people? I can't imagine that they are just a big heap of criminals, without any respect for truth.

The religious leaders are as asleep as the people they are leading. The only difference between the leaders and the led is theoretical. The leaders have a great store of theological knowledge, all borrowed; nothing in it is of their own experience, but it gives them great authority over the people who don't have even borrowed knowledge. And these leaders are consistently emphasizing the fact: "You are sinners, you are ignorant. We are the saints, we are the knowers." The poor masses cannot make a distinction between authentic knowing and borrowed knowledge. Even these leaders -- popes, bishops, shankaracharyas, ayatollahs -- even they are not alert of the distinction. They know only one kind of knowledge, and that is borrowed knowledge. They have no awareness of a different dimension of knowing, so whatever they are doing is done in deep sleep. They are not cheating people consciously. You cannot cheat…

Question: The last question: Osho! Are religious leaders really fools? My sannyasin does not walk behind me; he walks with me. Between walking behind and walking with there is the difference of earth and sky. Behind me walks a follower; with me walk friends. This is a brotherhood, a friendship, a maitri. I am not your leader. A religious leader was sitting in a railway compartment and kept taking out two watches again and again to check the time. A fellow passenger asked, “Sir, why do you carry two watches?” The religious leader said, “One has no hour hand, and the other has no minute hand.” See the genius! Nasruddin’s bull wandered into the mosque. The imam cursed him up and down—said all kinds of things. “Aren’t you ashamed? You’re a Muslim and your bull enters the mosque!” Nasruddin replied, “Sir, he’s an animal—he strayed in.

Do you feel, Osho, that all leaders—whether political or religious—are caught in the same dilemma?

If someone were to ask Buddha, “Is there God?” Buddha would say, “There may be.” And if someone were to ask, “Is there no God?” he would say, “There may not be.” How can such a person assume leadership? Buddha is so perfectly in the middle. It is like this: in a room a glass is kept half-filled with water. One man comes out and says the glass is half empty; another says it is half full. These two can argue; two parties can form. A third man, utterly in the middle, having seen the whole, returns and says, “The glass is both half empty and half full.” He will say, “You are right, and you are right—and you are wrong, and you are wrong. It both is and is not half. It is half empty and also not; half full and also not.” Such a man makes such a…

There was a monk who called himself `the master of silence'. Actually he was a fraud and had no genuine understanding.

TO SELL HIS HUMBUG ZEN HE HAD TWO ELOQUENT ATTENDANT MONKS TO ANSWER QUESTIONS FOR HIMBUT, AS IF TO SHOW HIS INSCRUTABLE SILENT ZEN, HE HIMSELF NEVER UTTERED A WORD. ONE DAY, DURING THE ABSENCE OF HIS TWO ATTENDANTS, A PILGRIM CAME TO HIM AND ASKED: MASTER, WHAT IS THE BUDDHA? NOT KNOWING WHAT TO DO, OR HOW TO ANSWER, HE LOOKED DESPERATELY AROUND IN ALL DIRECTIONS FOR HIS MISSING MOUTHPIECES. THE PILGRIM, APPARENTLY PLEASED AND SATISFIED, THANKED THE MASTER, AND SET OUT AGAIN ON HIS JOURNEY. ON THE ROAD THE PILGRIM MET THE TWO ATTENDANT MONKS ON THEIR WAY HOME. HE BEGAN TELLING THEM ENTHUSIASTICALLY WHAT AN ENLIGHTENED BEING THIS MASTER OF SILENCE IS. HE SAID: I ASKED HIM WHAT BUDDHA IS AND HE IMMEDIATELY TURNED HIS FACE TO THE EAST AND TO THE WEST IMPLYING THAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR BUDDHA HERE AND THERE, BUT ACTUALLY,…

Osho, why have priests and pundits always opposed awakening human beings? And why do the masses keep getting caught in their nets again and again?

I went to Surat. A friend said, “Listening to you felt refreshing. I was born in a sect where there is a strange arrangement. You donate a lakh rupees to the sect’s chief mullah now, and he writes a letter in God’s name—an official certificate—detailing everything that will be arranged for you in heaven for that lakh. And when you die, that letter is placed on your chest in the grave. People are doing this. The money doesn’t reach God. Nor does the letter—because it stays right there in the grave! Who is going to carry it?” I said, “Dig up a few graves and see—you’ll find the letters lying right there.” He said, “They are still there; they haven’t gone anywhere!” Yet people keep giving. Greed! Man is so weak he is easy to exploit. It is easy to frighten him, to unnerve him. And the whole art of…