What is the path of religion all about?

What is the path of religion all about?

Reason is not the path of religion because reason is only partial. Then, too, it is a superficial part of the human personality. Religion needs your whole being, you must be totally involved in it. Reason creates division. With reason, you can never be total in anything. Religion demands a total involvement, nothing must be left out of it. You must take a jump, with ,your total being, into the existence. This looks irrational but it is not. Reason is a part of rational thinking, but religion is neither reason nor nonreason. It is the totality of your existential being. How to be total? That only means: how to be religious bow to act as an organic totality? How can a being be religious? Religion is not a ritual; ritual is again a fragment. And you cannot differentiate: if you want to be total you cannot be Hindus, you cannot…

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.

A friend has asked, Osho, is it not possible to develop intelligence and feeling together? Can a healthy person not practice meditation and devotion at the same time? A person is whole—intelligence, feeling, and action—then why should the path of practice be one-sided?

A person is indeed whole—but that person is an ideal. That is not you who are already whole. When a person’s wholeness is revealed, attained, then everything in them becomes complete. Their intelligence is as sharp as their feeling is deep. Their action, their intelligence, their heart, all come together—like a threefold confluence. But that is the final goal. You are not yet like that. You have a journey to make. So you will only be able to travel from the side toward which you lean more, the dimension for which you have greater interest and inclination. Right now you are fragmented, incomplete. One person has abundant feeling but little intelligence. Another is skilled and attached to action, with little intelligence or feeling by comparison. Another has deep intelligence but a barren heart and no bent for action. In this way we are incomplete, each in our own way. Wholeness…

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…

Please will you explain to me what "the way of religion" means? I have always been so strongly against religion that I cannot imagine what it means. But, anyhow, I suppose it is the way of total aloneness. And this makes me a little uneasy. Since you gave me sannyas, I feel like I am in an abyss. Other people are not reachable for me; I am only fixed up to the fire of your eyes -- a tremendous poona fiction story.

Or you say, "I was after political power." God will not be able to understand. It will be very difficult to explain it to him, that you wanted to become a minister or a prime minister or a president. He will ask, "For what? Why in the first place should one ever be mad after power? And I have given you all the power that you need. And I have given you all the possibilities to be blissful that you need. For what were you wasting these opportunities, life?... and sacrificing everything for some foolish, stupid thing -- that you would like to sit on a throne?" Just think of your great emperors. How stupid and foolish. But man has created his idiocies. "The way of religion" means not to be idiotic -- don't have any private goal. The universal goal is enough. Be in tune with it, be together…