According to Osho, no. Trying to celebrate the world while appeasing a distant God splits you in two, breeds inner conflict, and wastes your energy. Religions that oppose body and soul create schizophrenia and hypocrisy. Choose one boat: an integrated, present-centered life where the sacred and the worldly are not enemies. Wholeness—totality here and now—ends misery.
You can’t stand in two boats at once—be one whole person by living fully and honestly right now.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, can a man start a journey in two boats -- rejoicing the world, and cheering god?
Most likely you will dream of women, good food, comfortable clothes... small things which you had never thought of before. I have heard... One American billionaire became fed up because he had everything that money could buy, and naturally, he wanted some more excitement. He had achieved everything and there was nothing else in this world, so he started thinking of the other world. The other world is created by these fed up people whose ambition has come to an end. They have everything -- now what to do? They are bored. They need some new desire, some new journey, some new adventure, but this world is finished for them. Your priest opened the door of a dreamland -- the other world. So the American billionaire came to the East in search of the right way to the other world. It was a long journey, and finally he came to…
(Religions in the past succeeded only in making man unwholey, Osho told us.) The old idea of all the religions of the world was to renounce, to reject, to condemn this world in order to praise the other world. They were creating an unnecessary opposition between this and that, between this shore and the further shore. And they are not in opposition at all. This shore and the further shore are in deep cooperation with each other. They help the same river to flow between them. They belong to the same river, they are not separate. Underneath the river they both are joined together; they are holding he river. If one shore disappears the river will die -- it needs both shores, both are absolutely needed. But they are not two, just two extremes of one energy, two polarities like positive and negative electricity.
That inner self, that consciousness, is the traveler. And the whole world is an ocean; it is to be crossed. It is not bad, nor should one cultivate ill will toward it. But there is no shore there, no place of rest. There will be unrest, storms, tempests. If you want to be free of the storms, of unrest, of pains and afflictions, then cross this ocean of the world and reach the shore where storms and tempests have no effect. While you are in the ocean, the fear of drowning remains—even if the boat is good. Not only does sinking depend on the boat; there are the heaving waves of the ocean, the fierce impacts, the storms, the winds, rains. Therefore, cross as quickly as possible.
Osho, with a foot in two boats, how will one ever cross the river!
Within you there are two brains. The left brain is different, the right brain is different. You can check this with scientists now. When you lie on one side, one hemisphere works. When you lie on the other side, the other hemisphere works. Each dreams differently. When you breathe through one nostril, one hemisphere functions; when the breath shifts to the other nostril, the other hemisphere begins to function. Therefore within you great transformations of thoughts and moods keep happening. In a moment you appear cheerful, in a moment you become angry; your hemispheres are switching. About every forty minutes, when your breath shifts from one nostril to the other, notice: your mood-state also changes. This goes on twenty-four hours. At night too, when you change sides, your mood-state changes. So the old sannyas was like changing sides in sleep. The sleep continues; only the dream changes. Naturally, a man…
Osho, in the present situation, how far will you limit yourself? Will Rajneeshism once again envelop the world, or will you remain only a Charvaka?
There are two questions hidden in this one. First: will Rajneeshism once again take the world into its fold? There never was, is, or will be anything like “Rajneeshism.” I am an enemy of all “isms.” It is these “isms” that have ruined the world. What, after all, is Islam? What is Christianity? What is Jainism? They are the attempts of certain individuals to wrap the whole world in their net. They all failed—and in their failure they hurled the whole world into filth. I am not willing to commit such a sin. I do not want to encircle the world. I want the world to take me into its embrace. Let it forget my name, forget my address—let it remember itself. I do not want to leave a religion behind me. My only prayer to those who love me is this: there will be only one proof of your…