What is religion without the concepts of God and the devil?

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,…

Osho, I was shocked to hear you say that god does not exist. Then the question arose in me: how can there be any religion without god? Isn't god the center and religion the circumference?

These are the three phases of the Hindu God: Brahma is the creative phase, he creates the world; Vishnu, the second phase, he maintains the world, and Shiva -- he destroys the world when the time comes to destroy it. In a way it is perfectly balanced; there are all the three functions that existence needs: creation, maintenance, and one day, de-creation. But if you look into the inner life of these three persons, you cannot believe it. One day, Vishnu and Brahma are quarreling about something. In the first place, the idea of a quarrel between two parts of God makes Him schizophrenic. If both your hands start fighting each other... and that's what you are doing in the mind -- one part fighting against the other part. Sometimes you become so split that you are already two persons, and sometimes you are many persons. God is already three…

The so-called religions are all rooted in a sad attitude. Their approach towards life is very serious. they don't take it as fun, they don't take it as a cosmic joke; they are very serious about it -- and that seriousness becomes a cancer in the soul. Life becomes a burden because for centuries these so-called religions have been teaching people how to renounce life, not how to live it. They have not taught the art of loving; their whole concern is how to commit slow suicide. and your so-called saints are nothing but suicidal people. to me they are all pathological, ill, they are not healthy and whole. They are lopsided; their vision is not clear. And they are not really religious. A really religious person will say yes to life joyously, dancingly. His whole being will be a celebration.

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…