Have religions done any good to humanity?

Question: BELOVED MASTER, HAVE NOT RELIGIONS DONE ANY GOOD TO HUMANITY? Corpses cannot do any good to anybody, unless you like stinking things. It is a question of preference. Religion means something dead. A roseflower alive, dancing in the sun, in the wind, surrounded by its aura of perfume, is one thing. You can find a roseflower, dry and dead, in THE HOLY BIBLE too; people keep them. The color has faded, the fragrance is gone, there is no life in it. It only reminds you of a flower, it is no longer a flower. There is no longer any juice in it, it is dead, dry. Even to call it a roseflower is not right -- it is only a corpse. Religions are corpses. Religious experience is the living rose. Religious experience is individual. Religion is an organization, and the moment truth is organized it dies.

Osho, what is the greatest harm that the so-called religions have done to humanity?

Just a single hit, and what you are -- you may be acting a Buddha, a Christ, a Krishna -- it will disappear, just by a simple hit on your head. Imitation cannot go to your being, it is going to remain just on the surface. You can practice it for thirty years, forty years.... There are monks who have been practicing for fifty years. There are monasteries, Catholic monasteries, where once a monk enters, he never comes out; and thousands of people are living in such monasteries. What are they doing? Continually trying, making an effort somehow to become a little bit like Christ; if not the whole Christ, even a partial Christ will do. But that imitation is not going to help. It may give you a pseudo, phony mask, but scratch it just a little bit and you will find your real person is still there. You…

The old religions are just corpses, stinking; still they are immensely powerful, because the whole past has given them prestige, authority. And nobody wants to leave power and authority. They go on manipulating humanity, exploiting human beings; they go on keeping you retarded. They don't want you to evolve, because the moment you evolve and you become intelligent, you will be free from the bondage which is their vested interest. Anybody who is intelligent cannot be a Hindu, cannot be a Mohammedan, cannot be a Christian, -- because all these religions have done so many ugly actions in the past, they have killed millions of people, burned people alive in the name of God, in the name of love. They have been simply destructive; they have not enhanced beauty, they have not contributed to humanity in any way. They are parasites.

It seems that never has any god-oriented religion been more anachronistic than it is today; yet curiously, christianity at least seems to be blooming. Born-again christians, jesus freaks, and fundamentalist christians are rife. Are we seeing the phenomenon you have described when something is about to die? You have compared it to a candle going out, having a last, final spurt of energy before it splutters into extinction.

I am ready for any argument with anybody, because I know their whole religious belief is absolutely unfounded. They cannot prove God, they cannot prove heaven, they cannot prove hell. They cannot prove that God created the world, because there is no witness. How have you found it? Who told you? Obviously there cannot have been any witness when God created the world. If there was a witness, the world was already there. It is intrinsically rational to accept that there cannot be any witness -- because there was no world. From where will the witness come? So God cannot have a witness; then how have these people come to know? From whom? Their whole idea is based on the lie of God. And I always strike at the very foundation, I don't bother about the branches and the leaves. I cut the very roots. And they cannot defend, because…

Beloved Osho, what is religion? What is your opinion on organized religion?

I condemn the organized religions in the same way I condemn the politicians -- they are nothing but politics. So when I said to you that religious people should be respected, honored -- the politicians should go to them for advice -- I was not talking about organized religions; I was talking only about religious individuals. And a religious individual is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. How can he be? -- God himself is not Hindu, not Mohammedan, not Christian. And the man who knows something of the divine becomes colored with his divinity, becomes fragrant with godliness. In the ancient East these religious people were our highest flowers, and even kings and emperors used to go to them to touch their feet and to be blessed -- to ask their advice on problems which they were unable to solve. If we want the world to remain alive, we…