A real church is the living link started by a Master’s initiation, not a man-made institution or doctrine.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Have your simon peter, pauls, etc. Already started establishing a church for non-smelling camels?
They need not. I won't allow that. I am doing that myself -- because the last time the Pauls and the Peters were allowed to create the church, they messed it up completely. This time I am to create my church myself. Peters and Pauls won't be allowed to create it. That will be far better. Christ was not unaware of the Eastern ways. He HAD been in the East, he had learned the wisdom of the East, he had known truth here, on this soil -- in India. Christianity has not got the whole story about Jesus. It starts when he is thirty and ends when he is thirty-three -- only a three year record. And what happened to the thirty years? Where was Jesus? He was travelling in Egypt, in India, in Tibet. He was working hard, he was finding ways and means to enter into his own…
Osho, what made a loving disciple like peter, who started from innocence, turn into the cunning first pope and become the founder of christianity? Is it possible to lose one's innocence once the love relationship with the master is established?
You cannot lose the earned innocence, but you are bound to lose the unearned. It is part of life's game that everything that you have got from nature will be lost and you will have to reclaim it. Only when you reclaim it, it will be yours, and it will be yours forever. Anand Nado, you ask me: WHAT MADE A LOVING DISCIPLE LIKE PETER, WHO STARTED FROM INNOCENCE...? He started from ignorance, not from innocence. Of course, a part of ignorance is innocent, but it is unearned. Peter has not earned it; he was not enlightened, he was not awakened. It is so clear. Jesus is one of the most unfortunate Masters in the whole history of humanity: he could not help any of his disciples to become enlightened. It is not his fault, just he was working in adverse conditions. The Judaic tradition has known prophets, it has…
Osho, the dutch television has asked me to participate in a program. One of the questions on which they want me to speak is as follows: what is lacking in the christian churches that is attracting so many young people to the new religious movements?
Again he felt for a moment very hesitant: "But if everybody is seeing the clothes, then there is no fear really. Only I am not seeing, but that is not the point. I already know," he thought, "that I am naked. I know my nakedness and everybody is seeing so there is no fear." He went into the chariot. Everybody, millions of people, saw he was naked, but just before the chariot it was continuously announced that these clothes are divine and can be seen only by those who are born of their own others. So everybody was shouting, clapping, dancing... it was such a rejoicing,. Just a small child sitting on his father's shoulders told the father, "Daddy, the king seems to be naked." The father said, "Shut up! When you will grow then you will see. You are just a child, you don't understand." But again and again…
Osho, a question has arisen about institutions and the sangha. Souls like Mahavira attained themselves by seeking themselves, not by following anyone else. This seems entirely true; and yet, by creating the fourfold sangha of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen, did Mahavira not in fact create an organization? Did this formation of a sangha not become, in a direct sense, imitation? What might Mahavira have meant by having people follow after him? And isn’t a body of sannyasins and an organization forming around you exactly like Mahavira’s? Please clarify briefly.
Everything deteriorates in human hands. There is only one remedy: if only we could say to those who loved Moses, Please, do not worship the flute—learn to play it. If those around Moses learned to play—even if they could not play as Moses did—if they at least learned to play, one thing would be certain: no one would plate the flute with gold or stud it with jewels. Because then they could say: the worship of the flute is not of the flute, but of the music that arises from it. And that music arises only when the flute is hollow. Fill it with gold and no music will arise. Do not worship Mahavira and Buddha; rather, what happened in their lives—the heights that manifested, the summits they touched—if we too set out, even for smaller hills, perhaps there will be no distortion. But we get busy worshiping. Worship itself…
Beloved Osho, often my fellow sannyasins ask what I think about a particular event that took place near you, or how I feel about the organization around you. Being here with you, I find myself more interested in that emptiness which you speak around, that space from where you come. Osho, will you speak to my friends about the crazy events and actions that always surround your presence?
I have seen people changing so dramatically, so unbelievably -- one could never have thought before that this man can become so peaceful, so loving; that so many flowers can grow in his consciousness, so that he becomes almost fragrant; that his life becomes a song, a dance, a celebration. It is simply a question of resonance. Great musicians know it. A great musician can play on his sitar, and can keep another sitar in an empty room far away in another corner. And there comes a moment when he is really lost in playing his sitar that the other sitar -- which is simply sitting there, nobody is playing it -- starts resonating the same tune, vibrating. In the old days that was one of the most important things before a man was called a master musician -- if he could create resonance, only then was he a master;…