What is the relationship between spiritualism and materialism in society?

Osho, please understand one thing: in any country, if the society happens to be spiritualist, then those who don’t get a chance in it are pulled toward materialism; and in other countries, those who are materialists—when they don’t get a chance—are pulled the other way. So it is the chance-less who have erected the opposite cult. What do you say about this?

And remember, this small path that takes us from sleep into awakening is religion in the fundamental sense—this small path! Neither temples, nor rituals, nor sacrifices have anything to do with it. All this is meaningless. These are the devices of sleeping people. Temples, prayers, fire rituals, chanting mantras, repeating “Ram, Ram”—these are the creations of the sleeping. A sleeping man also manufactures a kind of religion—and then it becomes the cause of quarrels: Hindu, Muslim, Christian. These are differences of ritual, not of religion. One sleeping man builds one kind of temple—he doesn’t know what a temple is; he is building it himself. Ten other sleeping men build a mosque; ten more build a church. Then the three fight: ours is the true temple; whoever does not come to our temple will go to hell. Sleeping men also coin doctrines, create systems. They try to explain. But the explanations…

Osho, a few months ago in the west I read a book by lama trungpa, entitled "cutting through spiritual materialism", and I got the impression that everything that could be done wrong, I was doing. Then I tried to be more alert, but by voiding one pitfall I was constantly stepping into another, and so on. Now my question is: would you be so kind as to speak about this subject of avoiding spiritual materialism?

Epicurus, Charvakas, Karl Marx, have a certain truth in what they are saying, but it is half-truth. The other half has been told by the so-called spiritualists. The other half is that matter is illusory, that it does not exist at all, it is maya. The real existence is of the soul; matter has to be avoided. What Lama Trungpa is saying is an ancient, very ancient and rotten ideology. He's a Tibetan, and Tibet is the most primitive country in the world, the most rotten -- even more rotten than India. If India is two thousand years rotten, Tibet is five thousand years rotten. It is stinking. He represents that stinking tradition. These so-called spiritualists have been saying the same thing as the materialists. The materialists say, "The soul does not exist, only matter exists." The spiritualists say, "The matter does not exist, only the soul exists." And my…

Osho, you say, “As He wills, let us become mere instruments; whatever role in life we have been given, let us fulfill it.” But letting what happens happen—i.e., flowing along with the body, mind, and ego—gives rise to suffering. So should we keep applying the principle of instrumentality even in relation to the body, mind, and ego, and go on suffering? How do we solve the riddle between the principle of instrumentality and the continuous reality of suffering?

That supreme bliss is beyond both pleasure and pain. It is neither like night nor like day. It is twilight. The sun has set, night has not yet come; the light remains—very gentle, sweet, non-aggressive—that is twilight. Morning has come, the sun is not yet risen, the night has gone—such is the twilight. One who abides in that twilight—that is what we call prayer. That is why Hindus call their prayer sandhya. Sandhya means one who has stopped in between the dualities, who has found the truce between the two. Between pleasure and pain, love and hate, victory and defeat, night and day, life and death—one who has found the pact and stands in that concord. Seek that interval of conjunction. Krishna says, it is simple to find. If you cease to be the doer, you will find it instantly. It is only through your doer-ship that you keep missing.…

So, Osho, you seem to be placing more emphasis on material prosperity rather than on spiritual growth coming first!

Spiritual growth is a stage that comes after material development; it cannot come first. Individually it may be possible—one or two people can do it—but they will have to pass through great austerities. Austerity is required precisely because such a person is trying to act against the very laws of nature. In my understanding, the body comes first; the soul follows. The material comes first; the spiritual follows. One whose body is still unsatisfied, troubled, and tormented cannot even think about the soul. And for someone in whose life we have not yet been able to make ordinary arrangements for material comfort, talk of spirituality is opium. Marx said that rightly. He is speaking of spirituality only to forget his misery. Therefore my view, my emphasis, is that there should be a complete and well-ordered provision of the material. But do not think my goal is materiality. My emphasis is…

Yes and no!

Those who settle and choose one against the other become stale, become dead. The materialist becomes superficial, and your so-called spiritualist also becomes phony. Your so-called materialist lives with shallow pleasures, and your so-called spiritualist lives in imagination, in fantasy. Both are missing life and its life-giving tensions. Man has to live with both, and in such a way that neither is denied and yet both become complementary to each other. Yes need not be against no; there is no necessity that the no should be against the yes. They can define each other, they can nourish each other. That's my whole effort here. I bring you a new dispensation, that the earth and the sky have to be accepted together. Body and soul, the world and God, have to be accepted together. Nothing is wrong in the lower, the lower has to become the base for the higher. The…