What can corporate houses learn from the sensory experiences in temples?

Beloved Osho, when a person enters a temple, one feels a sense of sensory appeasement -- music, chanting, incense, prasad, the visual beauty of the architecture, etc. Can corporate houses, the temples of the modern age, have anything to learn from this?

Sameer, not only the corporate houses but every place where man dwells has much to learn from the temples. First, you are always moving on holy ground. Not only in the temple are you in a holy place, but even in the marketplace you are moving on the same holy ground. You are not to be just prayerful in the temple, in the mosque, in the church. Your prayerfulness has to become just your breathing. You have not to create only in your temple a beautiful world of incense, of flowers, of music, of chanting, of beautiful architecture, of sculptures -- the temple should simply be the model for every house. Not only corporate houses, every house should be a temple, because every body is a temple. God dwells in you, and wherever you are, you should create the aroma, the fragrance of godliness. The authentically religious person is neither…

Osho, temples, pilgrimages, tilak and forehead marks, image-worship, rosaries, mantra–tantra, scriptures and Puranas, fire-offerings and Vedic sacrifices, rites, shraddha, planets and constellations, astrological calculations, omens and portents—these once had meaning, but now seem futile. Please explain them and tell us: were they merely outer instruments of sadhana? Merely external arrangements for remembering, which time’s swift pace uprooted? Or did they also have inner interrelations? Will time consent to take them up again?

In the life of Moses it is said: he went up the mountain and saw a divine fire—a bush aflame, fire all around, yet flowers blooming and leaves green within. Seeking God, Moses rushed forward, and a voice cried from the bush, “Fool, leave your shoes beyond the boundary!” There was no boundary—open wilderness. He looked, “Where is the boundary?” He experienced: “Here it is—up to where Moses is Moses; a step further, and something changes.” He left his shoes and sought forgiveness: “Pardon me; I entered holy ground with shoes.” That is the magnetic field. The temple has a circle—an enchanted domain—with a very living use for the village. And it bore fruit. For thousands of years, the innocence and purity of Indian village life owed less to the villagers than to the charged temple. The poorest village was wretched without a temple. However poor, a temple it must…

Another friend has asked: Osho, what is the relationship between the method of meditation and jati-smaran (recollection of past lives)?

But the one who becomes skilled in this—who can fully awaken any day’s memory up to the age of five—will find that the memories begin to awaken completely. And you should test it. As today passes, note down some events and lock them up. After two years, try to recall today. Most of it will have been forgotten. Then remember—and after remembering, break the lock and compare whether what you recalled matches what you had written. You will be amazed—astonished—that besides what you wrote, many more details have come back which you did not even note at the time. They will all be there in memory. Buddha called this alaya-vijnana. There is a corner of the human mind he called the storehouse of consciousness. Like a junk room in the house where we keep all the odds and ends, there is a storehouse that collects memories—where everything from birth after…

You may wonder if temples can be used today in these changed times. Yes, it is possible, but the conventional orthodox priest who is in the temple today will not be able to explain what was happening and how, in temples in ancient times. He still has the key but he does not have any idea of the hidden secrets behind it. The whole philosophy and science of temples can still be of use today. And we can create better temples now because we have better building materials. We can set up a whole sound system in such a way that sound can be magnified a thousandfold. Walls can be made that are so sensitive that if you chant the mantra "Aum" once, the walls will echo it thousands of times. Today we have better instruments, but we should know the key which unlocks the secrets of our being.

Osho, you are so opposed to temples and mosques—then why are you yourself building this vast temple?

We are not building a temple. We are awakening those consciousnesses whose very presence carries the fragrance of the temple by itself. Wherever they are, it will be. If they stand in the marketplace, there a temple will be. This is something altogether different; hence the trouble. That is why the people of temples, mosques, and gurdwaras are angry. They feel I am cutting their roots, pulling down their temples. And you ask, “You are building a grand temple here!” No temple is being built here. What is gathering here are the intoxicated. What is being shared here is ecstasy. A divine madness is rising—a madness that belongs to God. Had there been no tavern outside the cloister and the Kaaba, God knows where the rejected ones would have gone. Good that our own madness came in handy; else where would we have gone to convince the world? Those who…