Can religion be termed as neo-education?

Question: BELOVED MASTER, COULD RELIGIO BE TERMED AS NEO-EDUCATION? No, because education is something very ordinary. Religio will remain religio. It cannot be replaced by another word, for the simple reason that it has multidimensional meanings which no other word can have. The first meaning of religio is: to make you one. All the societies and cultures and religions have made you schizophrenic, split. They have divided you in many parts -- the good part, the bad part, the light part, the dark part, the higher and the lower. They have been teaching humanity for centuries that you are not acceptable as you are; you have to drop many of your essential parts. Then only will you be acceptable; otherwise you will remain a sinner. To become a saint, you have to go on destroying many parts of your being, your nature.

Can you call this religious education: Is the repetition of memorized answers what education is? Wouldn't the world have become religious long ago if it were that easy? I informed the administrator and the teachers that the education they were giving those children was not a religious education at all, that all they were doing was training the children to become parrots. If an individual learns to memorize certain things and to repeat them mechanically his intelligence suffers greatly. And then when life faces him with a challenge, the type of challenge that could be a doorway to the discovery of truth, he will repeat what he has memorized and be quite satisfied with it. "Your teaching techniques are murdering their sense of inquiry," I said.

Religion is your nature, your own self. Conditioning comes from outside; it is an outsider. Just as dust covers the mirror, conditioning covers consciousness. To cover the mirror of consciousness with traditions, conditionings, orthodoxies, beliefs and ideals in the name of religion is not to be allowed: it has to remain free of them. The real education and search for religion makes one proceed in the direction of freedom. Religion is the only means that frees the mind of all complexes, but the religion that is sold in the market cannot do that work. So before religion enters education, it will have to give up its old clothes and abode. It can become the soul of new generations only by itself acquiring a new soul. Religion is certainly to be brought into our lives. Without it our life is very handicapped, incomplete and unbalanced.

Does education lead to meditation? Please explain education and religion.

Ordinarily that which is called education is almost against meditation. It should not be so but it is so. The original meaning of the word 'education' is not against meditation. The original meaning is: to draw out. To educate means to draw out; whatsoever is hidden in the individual has to be drawn out. The individual has to flower -- that is the original meaning of education. That is what meditation is too: you have to flower in your own being. You don't know what you are going to be, you don't know what flowers will come to you, what will be their color and what will be their perfume -- you don't know. You move into the unknown. You simply trust life-energy. It has given birth to you, it is your foundation, it is your being. You trust it. You know that you are a child of this universe,…

Osho, what is your idea of true eduction?

Education has to serve revolution. But ordinarily it serves the government and the priest and the church. In a very subtle way, it prepares slaves -- slaves for the state, slaves for the church. The real purpose of education should be to subvert outmoded attitudes, beliefs and assumptions which no more serve growth and man, and are positively harmful and suicidal. An interviewer once asked Ernest Hemingway, "Isn't there any one essential ingredient you can identify which makes a great writer?" Hemingway replied, "Yes, there is. In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in shockproof, crap detector." And that's what my idea of true education is. The children should be trained, disciplined, so that they can detect crap. A really intelligent person is a crap detector. He immediately knows, the moment he says something, whether it is significant or just holy cowdung. The evolution of…