According to Osho, neither misfortune, foolishness, nor downfall—it’s humanity’s habitual unconsciousness. We worship the dead to avoid the living demand for transformation. Rituals are cheap substitutes: offering flowers outside instead of blooming the inner lotus, lighting temple lamps instead of the inner flame. True religion is practice and inward pilgrimage; in a living master’s presence, the only authentic worship is to change.
Worshiping dead teachers is an easy way to avoid changing yourself, but a living master asks you to do the hard inner work.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, even with a living master present, in our country the dead are worshipped. Is this our misfortune, our foolishness, or our downfall?
Satya Prem! Neither misfortune, nor foolishness, nor downfall. It has always been so. This has been man’s way. It is built into the very mode of human being. It is an inevitable part of man’s unconsciousness. You can worship the dead; with the living you have to be transformed. Worship won’t do. Worship is a trick to avoid, a device, a politics. The most cultured way to avoid someone is to worship him. Offer a couple of flowers at his feet and be free—and remain exactly as you were. And you even take the inner pleasure of feeling you did something. In fact you did nothing. The flowers belonged to the trees; they were already dedicated to the divine. You plucked them and placed them on a stone idol or on a scripture. All flowers are already at the feet of the divine. All the birds’ songs are prayers unto…
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.…
Osho, does worship have no value at all? And if it does have value, then why oppose it?
But this is exactly your condition at the crossroads of life. From where do you come? Who are you? Where are you going? What is the purpose of your being? No—there is not even the leisure to think of such things. Worship means: to sit near someone, in someone’s presence, where these matters are pondered, contemplated, meditated upon; where life’s fundamental questions pierce your very being like arrows. Therefore worship—lest you forget! You asked: Does worship have no value at all? It has value; but what you take to be worship has no value. What is your worship? You go to the temple, hastily ring the bell, knock your head before a stone idol, and run! You have done this so many times—what has it given you? Worshipping stones, you often become stone-like. Naturally so. You become like what you worship. So choose your object of worship carefully, for the…
Beloved master, we have dropped the word "work" because of its ugly connotations. Please say something about the word "worship" and its connotations.
"So just remember that their intention was good, although they did not care about your individuality, your freedom, your choice. They had taken it for granted that you are their possession. Forgive them, they are dead. Don't be angry and don't be sad. Start." He said, "You really mean that I can start?" I said, "I really mean it. And I know a musician, I will introduce you." He lived fifteen years more and died a very contented man, although he never became a famous musician. Nobody ever heard that he is a celebrity as far as music is concerned. His music remained not very developed, because Indian music particularly needs tremendous effort: eight to ten hours' practice every day, a lifelong discipline; only then can you create those subtle nuances. It is not jazz; that, any idiot can do. It is said that if the Indian musician does not…
When a master dies, suddenly a myth springs up around him, man makes stone or wooden idols of him, the master becomes a distant god to be worshipped and becomes unattainable to ordinary man. The thought of the master being an example of what we should and can be disappears. Why does this phenomenon happen time and time again?
Jesus must have been a very human master. It is because of his great humanity that he had to suffer, that he had to be crucified -- it is because of his great humanity. If he had lived just like a god, just like a holy saint, chanting mantras, fasting, living in a cave, the same rabbis would have worshipped him. Before Jesus they had not killed anybody else. Why Jesus? This is strange. The Jewish history has no precedent for it. What was his sin? What was his crime? His crime was that he was trying to live a very ordinary life. He wanted to show you that you can live an ordinary life and yet you can be enlightened. You can move with prostitutes and gamblers and drunkards and yet you can be absolutely holy. He wanted to show you this paradox, he wanted to become an example…