How does religion become rational?

How is it that religion becomes rational?

This happens not because of the religion itself, but whenever religion has to be systematized, the phenomenon happens. A Buddha or a Jesus is not after any ideal. They live spontaneous lives; they grow in their own way. They grow like wild trees, but then the wild trees become ideals for their followers. The followers begin to have patterns, preferences, truths, condemnations. Religion has two parts. One, a deeply religious personality who is spontaneous, and two, the followers who create the creed, the dogma, the discipline according to the ideal. Then an ideal exists for Buddhists -- "One must be like Buddha" -- and suppressions are created. You have to destroy yourself in many ways, because only then can you become the ideal. You have to become an imitation. To me, this is criminal. A religious personality is beautiful, but a religious creed is just a rational thing. It is…

What is the path of religion all about?

Reason is not the path of religion because reason is only partial. Then, too, it is a superficial part of the human personality. Religion needs your whole being, you must be totally involved in it. Reason creates division. With reason, you can never be total in anything. Religion demands a total involvement, nothing must be left out of it. You must take a jump, with ,your total being, into the existence. This looks irrational but it is not. Reason is a part of rational thinking, but religion is neither reason nor nonreason. It is the totality of your existential being. How to be total? That only means: how to be religious bow to act as an organic totality? How can a being be religious? Religion is not a ritual; ritual is again a fragment. And you cannot differentiate: if you want to be total you cannot be Hindus, you cannot…

Osho, you say the same thing in countless ways. But when I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time. And I feel so much joy that I don’t feel like going back home. What should I do—what can I do—so that I can just keep listening to you!

You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means. If…

Osho, what is the definition of God?

Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…

Osho, why is it that all enlightened ones teach the central transformation of awareness and awakening, yet the religions founded on them shrink into conduct codes and rituals? Aren’t all organized religions merely parts of society?

But the wife would not agree. She said, “I don’t get into talk of mistakes and corrections. Some ill omen might occur! What harm is it to us?” Lines remain: “It happened this way, it was done that way, it was said so.” Then our meanings, our blindness, are added to them. Religion becomes superstition; truth loses its peaks and becomes the falsehood of the valleys. And around that falsehood, crowds gather. Those who reached the Buddha in the beginning reached through their own awakening. Then they had children; those children had nothing to take from the Buddha, nothing to give. For them, religion is only a rite. Born in a Buddhist home—Buddhist; had they been born in a Hindu home—Hindu; in a Muslim home—Muslim. It is a matter of accident. Being born in a Hindu home is as accidental as a white cat sitting by a pot of curd.…