Is the kitchen sabotaging our possibilities of enlightenment?

So many dishes in the ashram kitchen contain onions. Remembering that raman maharshi said to avoid chillies, excess of salt, onions, etc, I am struck with the question: is the kitchen sabotaging our possibilities of enlightenment?

Remember, anything that prevents you from becoming enlightened is your knowing, your thought-process, nothing else. And there is the real task -- how to drop the thought-process. And because you feel impotent there, you create small problems: how to eat only once a day, how to eat without salt, how to eat without ghee, how to eat this way or that way. Jaina monks eat standing. If you eat sitting, enlightenment is sabotaged. Jaina monks eat only once a day. If you eat twice, enlightenment is sabotaged. One Jaina monk come to see me and he said 'Eating twice is not good.' I said 'Eating once?' He said 'Eating once is okay.' I told him 'Half the enlightenment is sabotaged.' And enlightenment does not come in parts. Either it comes whole or it doesn't come. If twice a day is dangerous then once a day is fifty percent dangerous. You…

Osho, does diet have an effect on the mind?

Some foods are stimulating; they create excitement. All of them are obstacles in spiritual life. Some foods are non-stimulating; they do not arouse excitement. They support spiritual life. Some foods are intoxicating, giving a kind of inebriation; some are non-intoxicating. Intoxicating and stimulating foods are obstacles in spiritual life. But our craving for intoxicating, stimulating foods—the taste for them, the urge within to take them—will dissolve through meditation. As the mind begins to grow quiet, the diet will begin to change accordingly. Recently such incidents have occurred around me. Some friends were meat-eaters. When they first came to me they immediately asked, “We eat meat; you won’t make it a condition of meditation that we must give it up? We can’t give it up.” I told them, I don’t talk about diet at all. Eat whatever you like, enjoy it; I have nothing to do with it. But begin meditation.…

Question: ABANDON POISONED FOOD. DON'T BE CONSISTENT. DON'T MAKE WICKED JOKES. DON'T WAIT FOR AN OPPORTUNITY. DON'T STRIKE AT THE HEART. DON'T TRANSFER THE COW'S LOAD TO THE BULL. DON'T BACK THE FAVORITE. DON'T HAVE WRONG VIEWS. DON'T FALL FOR THE CELESTIAL DEMON. The first sutra: According to the mystic traditions of the East, all that you think you are is nothing but food. Your body is food, your mind is food, your soul is food. Beyond the soul there is certainly something which is not food. That something is known as anatta, no-self. It is utter emptiness. Buddha calls it shunya, the void. It is pure space. It contains nothing but itself; it is contentless consciousness. While the content persists, the food persists. By "food" is meant that which is ingested from the outside. The body needs physical food; without it, it will start withering away.

Osho, please shed some light on dietary chemistry—the alchemy of food—in relation to the conservation and upward transformation of sexual energy.

The word aahar is vast—far vaster than “diet.” First understand aahar; then we can talk a little. Aahar means: whatever we take in from outside to inside is food. When the eyes look at a beautiful flower, you are taking in food—the eyes are feeding on beauty. When the ears hear music, that too is food—the ears are feeding on sound. When you touch someone’s body, the hands are taking in food. When a fragrance touches the nostrils, the nose is feeding. The whole body is feeding; every hair breathes and receives touch. The entire body is our food-instrument. All our senses carry the outer world within. But we think only of edible food as aahar—and that is a mistake. For the upward movement of sexual energy, one must understand aahar in its totality. It may be that the food you eat supports the energy’s ascent, but your eyes may…

Osho, you said that the Hindu genius was once supremely intelligent and succeeded in touching the ultimate heights of religion. As a result there came into being devas, dvijas, gurus and gnanis; the Upanishads, the Gita, the Dhammapada and the Jina-vani. Then what is the reason that the same people have fallen into the great abyss of decline for a thousand years, with no sign of rising?

The West too produces, once in a while, an Einstein—knower of the outer. But even that does not solve anything. The masses remain full of tension and anxiety. Is it not possible to accept the outer and the inner together? Both are; your acceptance or rejection makes no difference—only you get into trouble. Take breathing: it goes out and it comes in. If you insist, “I will only draw it in; I will not let it go out,” you will die. Another insists, “I will not let it go in; I will hold it out here”—he too will die. The East died; the West died—because both embraced only half. I call courageous the one who accepts both together, who says, “I will keep both pans of the scale in balance.” The East has lost; the West has lost. And the danger is: when you lose one thing, a craving arises…