What is the significance of rituals in spirituality?

Osho, is it really true that even the devil cannot deceive the Marwaris?

Sahajanand! After hearing yesterday’s discourse, even Nasruddin got riled. I had said that even the devil cannot deceive a Marwari. So the mulla thought to himself: To hell with the Marwaris! Today I’ll trick a Marwari in such a way that her seven generations will remember it. It was dusk; the sun had set, and because of a power failure the street was dark. Nasruddin saw that the neighbor, the Marwari Seth Dhannalal’s new daughter-in-law, was coming along with a long veil drawn, a beautiful bag dangling from her hand. The mulla thought, A good chance—let me give this Marwari woman a taste today. He quickly got up and fell into step with her. Half past seven in the evening, the darkness, and then that long veil! The woman thought, My husband has come. She said, Listen, dear, I feel like having a Coca-Cola. The mulla understood she was taking…

Osho, temples, pilgrimages, tilak and forehead marks, image-worship, rosaries, mantra–tantra, scriptures and Puranas, fire-offerings and Vedic sacrifices, rites, shraddha, planets and constellations, astrological calculations, omens and portents—these once had meaning, but now seem futile. Please explain them and tell us: were they merely outer instruments of sadhana? Merely external arrangements for remembering, which time’s swift pace uprooted? Or did they also have inner interrelations? Will time consent to take them up again?

In the life of Moses it is said: he went up the mountain and saw a divine fire—a bush aflame, fire all around, yet flowers blooming and leaves green within. Seeking God, Moses rushed forward, and a voice cried from the bush, “Fool, leave your shoes beyond the boundary!” There was no boundary—open wilderness. He looked, “Where is the boundary?” He experienced: “Here it is—up to where Moses is Moses; a step further, and something changes.” He left his shoes and sought forgiveness: “Pardon me; I entered holy ground with shoes.” That is the magnetic field. The temple has a circle—an enchanted domain—with a very living use for the village. And it bore fruit. For thousands of years, the innocence and purity of Indian village life owed less to the villagers than to the charged temple. The poorest village was wretched without a temple. However poor, a temple it must…

Osho, you said religion is sadhana, not ritual. But many of the very things Saraha would call ritual—such as bhajan and kirtan—have become parts of practice in your ashram and elsewhere. Kindly explain.

And that priest who blows the conch in the temple, and the adhan that rises from the mosque—there is no real difference. If there is soul in the conch’s sound and soul in the adhan, they are two styles of the same call. The priest’s way of calling in the temple is to ring the bell and blow the conch; in the mosque, instead of bells there is the adhan. It is the same call. The essential question is: from whom does the call arise? Is it truly his, or is he parroting someone else? Does the voice issue from him, is it his own? Are his life-breath and being in it? If not, it is all futile. Then you can buy plastic flowers in the market, place them in the window; perhaps the neighbors will be fooled. Mulla Nasruddin watered the flowers in his window every day. The neighbors…

Osho, please explain the occult and spiritual meaning and significance, in the context of kundalini energy, of these practices: full prostration, placing one’s forehead at the feet of the divine or touching the feet with the hands, bowing one’s head in sacred places, the divine touching a seeker’s head or back in blessing, and the Sikh and Muslim custom of covering the head when entering a gurdwara or a mosque.

A promise kept after a buddha’s death In Tibet—though that place has since fallen into difficulty—there was a spot where Buddha’s promise has been fulfilled continuously for twenty-five hundred years. There is a small council of five hundred lamas. When one lama dies, only with great difficulty does another gain entry; their number cannot exceed five hundred, nor be less. Only when one dies does a place become vacant. And when one dies and another is to be admitted, it must be with the unanimous consent of all the rest—even a single dissent prevents admission. This council gathers on Buddha Purnima on a particular mountain. At the appointed time—which is part of the pact—Buddha’s voice begins to be heard. But this will not happen on just any mountain, nor before just anyone; it happens in exact accord with the agreement. It is like this: you go to sleep in the…

Please explain the significance and meaning of the following with respect to the energy of kundalini: prostrating on the ground in obeisance to a holy person, touching his feet with the head or hands, offering worship at holy places, the blessings of a divine person given by touching the head or back of a seeker, the covering of the head by sikhs and mohammedans on entering the gurudwara or mosque.

But usually temples are not living ones because there are great difficulties in keeping them alive. A temple becoming alive is a great miracle. It is a part of a very profound science. Today, however, there is no one alive who knows this science and who can carry out its various requirements. Nowadays the class of people who run temples as shops has become so large that if there is someone who knows this science he will not be allowed even on the premises of the temple. Temples are now run along business lines, and it is in the interest of the priests that the temple remains dead. Living temples are not beneficial for a purohit, a priest. He wants a dead god in the temple whom he can lock up, and then he wants to keep the key himself. If the temple is connected with higher powers it will…