According to Osho, ‘spiritual entertainment’ is religion as spectacle: rituals, sermons, and temple-going that soothe or inflate the ego yet result in no inner change. Lacking deep communion with a living, awakened master, these gatherings mimic cinema—crowds, gossip, excitement—but no transformation. Priests lost in their own unconsciousness cannot share light, so seekers come and go unchanged.
It's like going to a movie called 'church'—you watch and feel good, but nothing in you really changes.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT DOES "SPIRITUAL ENTERTAINMENT" MEAN? Unless you are in a deep communion with the master, everything else that goes on in the name of spirituality is nothing but spiritual entertainment. In your temples, in your synagogues, in your mosques, in your churches, what goes on is simply entertainment. People go to the church for their whole lives and nothing happens to them. People go to the synagogues and they remain the same. They go into the synagogue and they come out the same -- just as they go into a cinema hall and come out the same, it is just an entertainment. And it is very fulfilling to the ego. Going to the cinema hall is not fulfilling to the ego, but going to a temple, to a church, to a gurudwara is tremendously ego-fulfilling. And what are you doing there? Nothing has happened to your life.
This went on and on. I came from the university, I had been top in the whole university. I said to him, "Now it is time. I have been top in the whole university, so what about my questions?" He said, "You wait." I said, "Now this is going to be too much. I have waited too long. Be honest, do you know the answers or not?" He was an honest man. He said, "To tell the truth, I don't know. This was just a strategy that has been used for centuries. With you the difficulty is that you go on asking. Most people as they grow up become involved in other things and no longer care about these questions, they forget. And mostly they get married, their children start asking them, so they start saying, `Wait. When you become bigger you will get the answer.
Bahauddin el-shah was sitting with a number of disciples when a number of followers came into the meeting hall. El-shah asked each of them, one by one, to say why he was there.
THE FIRST SAID: YOU ARE THE GREATEST MAN ON EARTH. I GAVE HIM A POTION WHEN HE WAS ILL, SO HE THINKS I AM THE GREATEST MAN ON EARTH, SAID EL-SHAH. THE SECOND SAID: MY SPIRITUAL LIFE HAS OPENED UP SINCE I HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO VISIT YOU. HE WAS UNCERTAIN AND ILL AT EASE AND NONE WOULD LISTEN TO HIM. I SAT WITH HIM, AND THE RESULTANT SERENITY IS CALLED BY HIM HIS SPIRITUAL LIFE, SAID EL-SHAH. THE THIRD SAID: YOU UNDERSTAND ME, AND ALL I ASK IS THAT YOU ALLOW ME TO HEAR YOUR DISCOURSES FOR THE GOOD OF MY SOUL. HE NEEDS ATTENTION AND WISHED TO HAVE NOTICE PAID TO HIM EVEN IF IT IS CRITICISM, SAID EL-SHAH. THIS HE CALLS THE GOOD OF HIS SOUL. THE FOURTH SAID: I WENT FROM ONE TO ANOTHER PRACTICING WHAT THEY TAUGHT. IT WAS NOT UNTIL YOU GAVE ME A…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A SPIRITUAL SEEKER? This happens: you are not really frustrated with life, but have become greedy for religious promises. You have not known that life is divine, but you have become enchanted with religious heavens. Then everything will be difficult, because you have not gone through the first part. The second part will be very difficult. So go through the first part and the second is very easy. The second is only difficult when the first has not been traveled completely. Then you ask, "How to meditate?" Then you say, "The mind goes on working." Then you say, "The thought process is continuing. It cannot be stopped. How can it be stopped?" Desire is there, so desire will go on creating thoughts. The first part has not been fulfilled.
You can discover it only, you cannot create it. And that discovery can be helped by Gurdjieff's statement. If you are shaken, and you cannot sleep anymore, knowing that you may not have the soul at all -- because you have not encountered. One thing is certain. You are not aware, so you cannot deny him. You know your mind. You know your body, but you don't know the knower, who knows the mind, who knows the body -- but he is there. Knowing the mind, knowing the body is enough proof that there is a third entity in you, which knows these both. And it is from the very birth. In fact, if you listen to children, in the beginning all the children of all the races use third person for themselves. They don't say, "I am thirsty." They say, "The baby is thirsty.