What is the greatest harm that so-called religions have done to humanity?

Osho, what is the greatest harm that the so-called religions have done to humanity?

Just a single hit, and what you are -- you may be acting a Buddha, a Christ, a Krishna -- it will disappear, just by a simple hit on your head. Imitation cannot go to your being, it is going to remain just on the surface. You can practice it for thirty years, forty years.... There are monks who have been practicing for fifty years. There are monasteries, Catholic monasteries, where once a monk enters, he never comes out; and thousands of people are living in such monasteries. What are they doing? Continually trying, making an effort somehow to become a little bit like Christ; if not the whole Christ, even a partial Christ will do. But that imitation is not going to help. It may give you a pseudo, phony mask, but scratch it just a little bit and you will find your real person is still there. You…

Question: BELOVED MASTER, HAVE NOT RELIGIONS DONE ANY GOOD TO HUMANITY? Corpses cannot do any good to anybody, unless you like stinking things. It is a question of preference. Religion means something dead. A roseflower alive, dancing in the sun, in the wind, surrounded by its aura of perfume, is one thing. You can find a roseflower, dry and dead, in THE HOLY BIBLE too; people keep them. The color has faded, the fragrance is gone, there is no life in it. It only reminds you of a flower, it is no longer a flower. There is no longer any juice in it, it is dead, dry. Even to call it a roseflower is not right -- it is only a corpse. Religions are corpses. Religious experience is the living rose. Religious experience is individual. Religion is an organization, and the moment truth is organized it dies.

Osho, what is the relationship between meditation and patience?

If you sit to meditate to remove mental restlessness, you will keep looking back again and again: “Has it gone yet?” And the irony is that when you begin to meditate, restlessness will increase. Because what has been repressed will start surfacing; catharsis will begin. The rubbish you have kept hidden within and never allowed to express—meditation will break open those doors too. It will clean the house. Dust piled up for years, for births, will rise again; there will be gusts and storms. For a while even the little peace you had will be lost. Then you will panic: “I came for peace, and even what I had is gone.” Without patience, you could even become unhinged, because meditation brings such a great storm. The disease is not from a day or two; it’s from lifetimes. Meditation will break through all the layers to reach your innermost core. In…

Osho, are you against all the religions? What is their most fundamental mistake?

We have come very late; there was nobody present as an eyewitness. And there is no way for us to separate ourselves completely from existence and become just an observer. We live, we breathe, we exist with existence -- we cannot separate ourselves from it. The moment we are separate, we are dead. And without being separate, just a watcher, with no involvement, with no attachment, you cannot know the ultimate mystery; hence it is impossible. There will remain something always unknowable. Yes, it can be felt, but it cannot be known. Perhaps it can be experienced in different ways -- not like knowledge. You fall in love -- can you say you know love? It seems to be a totally different phenomenon. You feel it. If you try to know it, perhaps it will evaporate in your hands. You cannot reduce it to knowing. You cannot make it an…

Osho, you say the same thing in countless ways. But when I listen to you, it feels as if I am hearing it for the first time. And I feel so much joy that I don’t feel like going back home. What should I do—what can I do—so that I can just keep listening to you!

You will feel as if you have been made to rise out of season, before time—as if you were not yet to go and yet had to go. And if you go in that way, your home will become even more desolate than before. I do not want to make your home desolate; I want to make your home a temple. I want that when you go home, your home’s new form is revealed. I do not want to tear you away from home, from the world, from family life. That is the newness of my sannyas: I do not want to sever you from the world; I want to join you to the world in such a way that your connection with the world becomes a connection with the Divine. Let the world no longer be a barrier between you and the Divine; let it become a means. If…