Is there a necessity for everyone to have a religion?

Is there any necessity for everybody to have a religion of one kind or other?

Yes, everybody ought to have a religion of one kind or another. You owe it to yourself to know what church you are staying away from. Otherwise you will feel very miserable. You will miss. I have heard.... Nurse: 'What church do you belong to?' Patient: 'None.' Nurse: 'Well, what church do you go to when you go?' Patient: 'If you must know, the church which I stay away from the most of the time when I don't go, is the Baptist.' Or.... Simpkin had been shipwrecked for twenty years on a desert island when finally he was rescued by a passing ship. 'What did you do to keep busy all those years?' asked the captain of the rescue vessel. 'I went into the building business,' replied Simpkin, whereupon he took the captain to a corner of the island and showed him a beautiful synagogue. 'That's incredible!' said the sailing…

Beloved Osho, with no god, no devil, what is religion all about? Does a sannyasin need a religion?

In my house, while my grandmother was alive, tomatoes were not allowed, because according to her the redness of the tomato looked like meat. I asked her many times, "Have you ever seen meat?" She had never seen meat, but she said, "I know meat looks like tomatoes. Don't bring tomatoes in the house." I had not eaten a tomato up to the age of seventeen. I had not eaten onions up to the age of twenty-one, because they were not allowed in the house. It was a great sin to eat onions, potatoes.... Now, have you seen more innocent people than potatoes? But Jainism is against anything that grows under the ground. Anything growing under the ground, Jainas don't allow. Because the sunrays don't reach it, it is heavy. Its heaviness they turn into something spiritual: by eating it you will be going down, it will make you heavy,…

Beloved Osho, are you against all religions? Isn't religion something essentially needed by man?

So I said to the Sufi, "Come into the house. Don't be angry. That tree is not strong enough, and that tree is very special; don't destroy it. I became enlightened under a maulshree tree, so my people have brought that tree from the original maulshree tree, as a seed. They have grown it, and it is still not strong enough for your hug. You come inside." He came inside, and he started talking in the same way he must have been talking to his disciples: "I see God everywhere, only God and nothing else." I said, "If you see only God and nothing else, then to whom are you talking? If there is only God and nothing else then to whom are you talking and for what purpose? God must know it. Keep silent!" When all his disciples had gone I told him, "I know what has happened to…

Beloved Osho, what is religion?

In anger one day the archbishop took a motorboat and went to those three people who were sitting under a tree. He looked at them and he could not believe it: what kind of saints are these? In the very beginning he introduced himself and declared, "I am the archbishop." The three saints all touched his feet. Now he felt relaxed, "These are fools... and things are not yet gone so far that they cannot be controlled." He asked them, "Are you saints?" They looked at each other, and they said, "We have never heard the word. We are uneducated, uncultured. Don't talk Greek to us; just simply say what you mean." "My God," said the archbishop, "you don't know what a saint means? Do you know the Christian prayer?" Again they looked at each other, and nudged each other as if to say, "You tell him." The archbishop now…

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…