According to Osho, beliefs are problematic because they replace living experience with secondhand conclusions, turning the mind prejudiced and closed. Belief springs from fear, not love, and so blocks the openness required to know the divine. Clinging to belief breeds gullibility and self-deception. Drop beliefs; cultivate an empty, unprejudiced awareness, and let God be a loving quest to be experienced, not an idea to be adopted.
Believing is like deciding what a movie is about before watching it; fear makes you accept stories, while only open, loving attention lets you truly see for yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I do not believe in anything, but I do believe in god. Why are you so much against beliefs?
Because a belief is a belief, and is not an experience. Belief is a barrier. If you believe in God you will never know God -- that's why I am against belief, because I am for God. Your very belief will never allow you to know that which is, because the belief means that before knowing it you have decided already what it is. Your decisive mind will not relax. Your mind with a conclusion is a prejudiced mind, and to know God an empty mind is needed -- unprejudiced, pure, uncontaminated by any belief, by any ideology. Because I am for God, that's why I am against all beliefs. And you say: I DO NOT BELIEVE IN ANYTHING ELSE... But if you believe in God, then what more is needed? That is enough. You have made the greatest mistake! Now every other mistake is very small. And if the…
Osho, why is it that the moment we cling to some belief—whether theism or atheism—the mind feels so reassured? Why does it seem almost impossible for it to stand in the middle, dropping both?
There is no greater courage than to stand in existence without conclusions. By “without conclusions” I mean: no belief, no superstition. It means: we will see existence as it is, without bringing our notions in between. We will neither say “God is” nor “God is not.” We will neither say “the soul is” nor “the soul is not.” We will inquire. But inquiry is hard. Inquiry means you must pay a price. Who wants that bother? So we borrow beliefs on credit. We say, Mahavira knew, Buddha knew, Krishna knew—why should we get into the mess? We’ll cling to them, hold their feet, and pass through. That is not faith; it is only weakness. And the weak do not move. It is not trust to think we can walk to freedom by holding Buddha’s feet. If you have no trust in yourself, how will you trust Buddha? No real trust…
Osho, that is what is being taught. Yes, that is being taught. That very thing is being taught, and it is precisely because of that teaching that such a corrupted world has come into being, and such corrupted human beings have been produced—because of that teaching.
What is the fruit of these five thousand years of such teaching? The people we see all around us—this very world of ours. This world has been born of that “education,” hasn’t it? So where has five thousand years of all this teaching brought you? Day by day you fall lower, and you will go on falling. The mistake is at the very foundation. The mistake is at the very foundation. There is no need for reverence, no need for belief. What is needed is inquiry, what is needed is courage. One must search, one must dare. All that—reverence, belief—are symptoms of weakness. That is why the more a community leans on faith, the more it falls behind. Look. Any community that has relied on belief has lagged. Because the very question of taking the next step does not arise. If you are sitting in a bullock cart and you…
Drop all beliefs, all disbeliefs. Let the mind become less cluttered. Remove all unnecessary luggage, become more unburdened. The more unburdened you are, the closer to truth. When you are absolutely unburdened, empty, when you are just there, with no idea surrounding you, truth happens. That is what Zen people call satori. It happens in a state of no-mind. And the beginning of no-mind is the dropping, slowly slowly, of all kinds of prejudices -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan; these are all prejudices. Communist, Catholic... these are all prejudices. And to cling to these prejudices is a very very irreverent act, very egoistic, because these beliefs are claims, and claims without any validity. You don't have any existential validity for them -- you simply believe because you have been told to believe.
Osho, there is a saying, “If you believe, it is a god; otherwise, it’s a stone.” Is it all just a matter of believing?
I tell you: do not believe in God. There is no need to believe. If you believe in God, then what will you know? To believe in God means you have declared defeat in knowing—you are tired, you have thrown down your arms. You have said, “The search is over; there is nothing to know, so let us believe.” You don’t believe in the sun or the moon; you know them. You don’t believe in this world; you know it. And you believe in God? If your believed God is repeatedly defeated before your known world, it is no surprise. God should also be known. The day God is known, this world becomes insipid—maya, a dream. Experience is wealth; empty beliefs are not. So I make a small change in the saying: “Know, and it is God; otherwise, it’s a stone.” But to know, a great journey is required. To…