According to Osho, crafting a mud idol and later dissolving it is a deliberate training in learning and unlearning: use form as a temporary device, then release it to prevent clinging. Mud affirms impermanence, avoiding the false permanence of stone. Immersion symbolizes dropping all objects of worship—even gods—so only pure subjectivity remains. This unclinging culminates in moksha: conscious, non-dual awareness beyond seer and seen.
We make a statue to help us pray, then let it dissolve to remember not to cling to anything so we can rest in the quiet awareness inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you told last night about the hindu system of creating a mud idol for worship, and after the worship, about its visarjan dispersion -- into the sea or a river. This happens on the outer physical plane. What is the psychological and inner meaning of this outer ritual? What is it that must be created inwardly? What is it that should be dispersed and when should it be dispersed? Secondly, please explain whether this dispersion is a gradual process or a sudden happening and whether it is an act of awareness or just a let-go?
LIFE is a learning and an unlearning also. One has to learn many things, and then one has to unlearn them -- and both are necessary. If you do not learn, you remain ignorant. If you learn and cling to it, you become knowledgeable but you remain unwise. If you can also unlearn that which you have learned, then you become wise. Wisdom has a childlike quality, but it is just "childlike" -- not exactly the same. The child is ignorant and the sage is wise. The child has yet to know and the sage has gone beyond. The child has no knowledge, the sage also has no knowledge. But in a child it is negative, in a sage that "no knowledge" has become positive. He has crossed beyond, he has transcended. So this is one of the basic principles of spiritual explosion: to unlearn, to go on unlearning, that…
Today I would request Osho to guide us on idol worship.
A Japanese seeker from Soto Zen told me of a practice: twenty-four hours a day the disciple intones “Muuuu… muuu…” After days, the sound storms inside; thoughts drop. By three weeks, the roaring “Muuuu!” possesses him. Food, sleep fall away; guards must watch him. At the final climax, a last thunderous roar—and suddenly all is still. For days he lies in deep quiet. When he returns, the old man is dead; a new man stands—continuity with the past broken. Om is such a sound; every religion has its own. As worship deepens, sound transforms consciousness. Repetition is crucial. If you sing one hymn one day, another the next, there will be no results. Continuous blows on one point drive the nail. But beware of mechanical repetition—then it is wasted labor. If the sound becomes your very life, every cell, bone, blood crying it—then sound can open the door. And all…
Ramakrishna asked, "Can there be any rules for worship? Can there be any rules for love?" Where there are regulations, worship dies. Where there are regulations, love dies. Love is an outpouring of inner feelings which are very personal and individual. There is a universal truth in this which can be recognized. When two lovers love, though they are both loving, they love in their own individual way. The manifestations may be entirely different, but there is a similarity of experience. In both of them, within their love the same soul resides. I was telling you that though the idol can be seen, worship can't be, but still we have made the word, "idol worship," which is absolutely wrong. Worship is the method of obliterating the idol. First the devotee makes the idol and then he makes it disappear.