According to Osho, Rajneeshism as a religion is intentionally dead; what survives is only its living “fragrance”—the felt, wordless presence of freedom, love, and awareness. This cannot be codified, worshiped, or institutionalized; it can only be sensed, enjoyed, and lived. Free of priests and dogma, the fragrance touches individuals, ignites joy, and endures as an eternal, personal experience.
What’s left isn’t a religion or rules—just a sweet, living “smell” of freedom and joy you can feel inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
The religion of rajneeshism is dead. What has survived?
Every flower has to die if it is not a plastic flower. Only plastic flowers live for centuries. All the religions that have lived for centuries are plastic. The real flower may have been with Gautam Buddha, but it died; it had to die -- and what remains afterwards is the fragrance. If you have sensitivity enough you can still smell in the air all those people who have blossomed on the earth. They are still your contemporaries. The person who lives in your time may not be your contemporary, but the person you feel, experience, the person who moves your heart into a dance is a contemporary. To me Buddha is a contemporary, Lao Tzu is a contemporary, Bodhidharma is a contemporary, Zarathustra is a contemporary. I can still taste their experience because it is my own experience too. Rajneeshism is dead. I wanted it to be dead before…
Rajneeshism allows everyone into its fold, states Osho
Our religion should not be categorized with any other religion of the world because it has not tradition or dogma and it allows everybody without any discrimination into its religious fold. Rajneeshism does not ask anyone to renounce their religion and does not have any conflict with Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Lao Tzu, etc. Basically Rajneeshism has the essential core of all religiousness. The other religions are against each other's traditions and attitudes. In fact, these other religions are fanatic and each believes and fights that theirs is the true religion and others are false. This is not the case with me or Rajneeshism. A Christian can become a Rajneeshee and he is not asked to drop his love for Jesus, in fact he finds Jesus in me. The same is true for a Buddhist or a Mohammedan. Our commune consists of people from all religions who have found their religion's…
Beloved Osho, I have heard you say that you would like to sever our relationships with all "isms." does this include rajneeshism as well?
It would be easier to call it something totally new, but then nobody would understand what it is. So until we have enough people to understand, we will have to carry a wrong label on it. Once they have understood, the label will be removed. Once we have our own world around this earth, "ism" is not going to be part of our way of life. So if you think Rajneeshism is also an "ism," throw it away. You have not understood anything. Your approach is still intellectual; otherwise, such a question would not have arisen. You can see -- no dogma is preached, no belief system is given. You are not required to accept anything. The atheist can become part of my communes, the theist can become part, the communist can become part, the capitalist can become part. We don't discriminate against anybody. Our basic approach is such, that…
[NOTE: This was published in THE RAJNEESH TIMES, 19th August 1983 while Osho was in silence.] INTERVIEW WITH KIRK BRAUN Q: WHAT IS YOUR VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF RAJNEESHISM? Osho: Rajneeshism is not a religion like Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, etc. The name should not be misunderstood. It simply shows a poverty of language -- to be exactly true, Rajneeshism is a religionless religion. In other words it is a kind of religiousness, not a dogma, cult or creed but only a quality of love, silence, meditation and prayerfulness. Hence it can never end. It is not beginning with me. It has always existed and it will always exist. It is the very essence of human evolution, of culture consciousness.
That was even more troublesome to them; they had failed in that attempt. Then their only way was somehow to arrest me. But, I had not committed anything that they can arrest me. I was not on any post, I was not even a member of the commune. I had no powers. I was just a guest living outside the commune. So what they could say that goes against me. And they did not try. For two years they had been trying. Rumors were coming that they want to arrest me. I said, that's perfectly okay. Just few days before they arrested my I told my people that that's perfectly okay. If they want to arrest me, let them arrest me. With my both hands chained, the world should know what America really is. But they did not come to the commune.