Why are temples and mosques opposed in teachings while building a temple?

Osho, you are so opposed to temples and mosques—then why are you yourself building this vast temple?

We are not building a temple. We are awakening those consciousnesses whose very presence carries the fragrance of the temple by itself. Wherever they are, it will be. If they stand in the marketplace, there a temple will be. This is something altogether different; hence the trouble. That is why the people of temples, mosques, and gurdwaras are angry. They feel I am cutting their roots, pulling down their temples. And you ask, “You are building a grand temple here!” No temple is being built here. What is gathering here are the intoxicated. What is being shared here is ecstasy. A divine madness is rising—a madness that belongs to God. Had there been no tavern outside the cloister and the Kaaba, God knows where the rejected ones would have gone. Good that our own madness came in handy; else where would we have gone to convince the world? Those who…

Another friend has asked: Osho, what is the relationship between the method of meditation and jati-smaran (recollection of past lives)?

But the one who becomes skilled in this—who can fully awaken any day’s memory up to the age of five—will find that the memories begin to awaken completely. And you should test it. As today passes, note down some events and lock them up. After two years, try to recall today. Most of it will have been forgotten. Then remember—and after remembering, break the lock and compare whether what you recalled matches what you had written. You will be amazed—astonished—that besides what you wrote, many more details have come back which you did not even note at the time. They will all be there in memory. Buddha called this alaya-vijnana. There is a corner of the human mind he called the storehouse of consciousness. Like a junk room in the house where we keep all the odds and ends, there is a storehouse that collects memories—where everything from birth after…

Question: Third question: Osho, why do you call your ashram a tavern? They fear truth—for truth is fiery. Come close and you will burn, be reduced to ashes. But from that very ash a new life is born. Under compulsion I had to forbid disrobing—not because in such a moment it is wrong to be naked; to stop someone then is inhuman, indecorous—but because spectators gather; they bring cameras; they will photograph someone—and that picture becomes “important.” A German magazine, Stern, printed two or three nude photographs. Such is people’s curiosity! Those pictures then appeared in papers all over the world. There is hardly a language they didn’t reach—Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish—everywhere. A year has passed since that magazine printed them, and still they keep appearing in new languages. No one asks in what inner moment these people were nude, in what state this bareness happened.

Osho, why is it that all enlightened ones teach the central transformation of awareness and awakening, yet the religions founded on them shrink into conduct codes and rituals? Aren’t all organized religions merely parts of society?

But the wife would not agree. She said, “I don’t get into talk of mistakes and corrections. Some ill omen might occur! What harm is it to us?” Lines remain: “It happened this way, it was done that way, it was said so.” Then our meanings, our blindness, are added to them. Religion becomes superstition; truth loses its peaks and becomes the falsehood of the valleys. And around that falsehood, crowds gather. Those who reached the Buddha in the beginning reached through their own awakening. Then they had children; those children had nothing to take from the Buddha, nothing to give. For them, religion is only a rite. Born in a Buddhist home—Buddhist; had they been born in a Hindu home—Hindu; in a Muslim home—Muslim. It is a matter of accident. Being born in a Hindu home is as accidental as a white cat sitting by a pot of curd.…

Another friend has asked: if meditation leads to samadhi and samadhi leads to god, then what need is there to go to the temples? Shouldn't we do away with them?

Those who see God in temples and those who destroy temples -- both are wrong. One who only sees God in the temple is mistaken. His mistake is: who else does he see outside the temple? Obviously, his mistake is that he does not see God except in the temple. Your temple is very puny; God is very vast -- you cannot confine God to your puny little temples. The other person's error is: he wants to get into doing away with temples, into destroying them -- only then, he thinks, can he see God. Your temples are too small to serve as dwelling places of God or to prevent anyone from seeing God. Remember, your temples are so ridiculously small they cannot become God's residence, nor can they become his prison, which, when destroyed, would supposedly make him free. You need to understand exactly what I am saying. What…