According to Osho, intolerance toward other religions arises from childhood conditioning that hypnotizes you into a fixed religious identity. Others’ beliefs awaken your repressed doubts, threatening borrowed certainties, so you resist or try to convert them. The mind fears difference and clings to conformity; becoming aware of this hypnosis and dropping labels to be simply human dissolves the hostility.
You were taught only your team is right, so other teams stir hidden doubts and fear—let go of the label and just be human.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho why can't I tolerate people who belong to other religions?
IT IS BECAUSE OF YOUR UPBRINGING. You have been brought up as a fascist, as a fanatic -- as Christians, Hindus, Jainas, Mohammedans; you have not been brought up as human beings. You are hypnotized from your very childhood; you are living in a kind of hypnosis. To live as a Christian or as a Mohammedan is to live in a hypnosis, is not to live really. That's why you cannot tolerate people who belong to other religions, because deep down you know they are wrong, they are stupid, they are committing a great crime. They have to be put right, they have to be brought under your flag, into your flock -- because only Jesus saves or only Buddha saves. You cannot tolerate them because they look like pretenders. To a Christian, a Buddhist is a pretender, because God has only one son. It is very strange -- why…
Osho, I always believed that an american, a chinese, an african, a swede, an indian, could be happy and content and communicate with one another despite their varying colours, habits, beliefs, etcetera, just as long as they were natural and honest with themselves and each other. Why is mankind making this impossible for mankind?
Their experience is the same, their ultimate experience is the same, but their choice of how life should be lived, how that ultimate experience should be approached, is totally different. Their paths are different, their goal may be the same -- but the goal will be known only when you have arrived, not before that. Before the goal you will have to follow the path. MAHATMA GANDHI WAS TRYING somehow to prove that the Mohammedan and the Hindu and the Jaina are all saying the same thing. It was a forgery, because he was choosing from the Koran only sentences which are harmonious with the Gita, and not choosing sentences which are disharmonious with the Gita. The Gita is his criterion. He calls the Gita his mother, but he does not call the Koran his father. The Gita is his mother; he remains a Hindu, basically a Hindu. And according…
Why are people missing you? Since I took sannyas I can see their stupidity very clearly. Why can't they see it?
But that is the problem. Mohammedans think that you can only come through Mohammed -- Mohammed is the latest prophet; Jesus is out of date already. God has sent another message, more improved; a new edition has come. So why bother about Jesus when Mohammed has come? Certainly, the latest one should be the best, so you have to come through Mohammed. Now there is only one God and there is only one prophet of God, and that is Mohammed. And if you don't listen, they are ready to kill you -- just out of love -- for your own good. And listen to the Hindus. They say that this is all nonsense. The first edition is the best: the Vedas. Why? Because God cannot commit any errors, so he cannot improve. The first is the best! He cannot commit any errors, so how can he improve? The first is…
Osho, these days in the country, what do you have to say about the communal conflicts taking place in the name of religion?
So, Bansal, don’t bring up the word “these days.” This has always been so. Quarrels in the name of religion have been continuous. Quarrels have been only in the name of religion. The reason is clear: we harbor a fundamental misconception about religion. As with a lamp—when it burns there is light; when it goes out, the light ends—so when a Buddha, a Mahavira, a Lao Tzu, a Jesus-like person ignites, there is light; and when that person departs, the light departs. But the lamp goes out and we get busy worshiping the darkness. Once the lamp is extinguished, only darkness remains. Granted there was a lamp there once and there once was light—but now there is only darkness. When the lamp burns, there is religion; when the worship of darkness begins, there is a sect. And what will sects do if not fight? What will the blind do if…
Osho, why are people so fanatically committed to groups and organizations of all kinds: religious, social, and political?
It is good that these people don't participate in your Olympic races; otherwise your great runners will just look silly. You cannot move like monkeys from one tree to another tree. They go on jumping from one tree to another tree for miles; they need not touch the ground. You cannot fight even with a monkey. This has to be accepted: that man is the weakest animal on the earth. And this is the foundation of his whole behavior, his commitments, his groupings. He has to be part of something bigger than himself; only then does he feel safe. He had to invent all kinds of weapons. No animal has bothered to invent weapons. There is no need; their hands, their teeth, their nails, are enough. From the earliest days man had to invent weapons -- first made of stones, rocks, then slowly slowly with metals. Then he had to…