According to Osho, so‑called holy books are human tools for control: by claiming divine authorship they end questioning and dictate conduct. Within that scheme, the devil is invented to terrify people into obedience, offload responsibility for human impulses onto an external foe, and safeguard a perfect God-image. Seeing this illusion, he says, lets you drop fear, reclaim responsibility, and trust your own awareness over secondhand authority.
People made up the devil to scare you into obeying their book instead of trusting your own sense and heart.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DID THE HOLY BOOKS HAVE TO INVENT THE IDEA OF THE DEVIL? To be a Mohammedan is just to believe in three things: one God, one prophet Mohammed, one holy book, the Koran. That's all -- these three beliefs and you are saved. If you are not willing to be saved by these three beliefs, then the sword is going to save you immediately. But they won't allow you to live a wrong life. They know what a right life is; and other than their life, all lives are wrong. These are the holy books. All these holy books are a heavy burden on the human soul. So first I want to say, there are no holy books -- including mine. All books are human. Yes, there are well written books and there are not-so-well written books, but there are no categories of holy and unholy.
Osho, the devil seems to be as popular as mao tse tung these days. Why? Why is the devil so attractive?
THE DEVIL IS NOTHING BUT THE OTHER SIDE OF God. The religions have been praising God and condemning the Devil, and the Devil is the other side of God. The word 'devil' is beautiful; it comes from a Sanskrit root which means divine. 'Divine' and 'devil' both come from the same root, DEV: in Sanskrit it becomes DEVADATA -- gods. The Devil and the Divine, both are the same -- but if you repress one part of God, one aspect of his being, sooner or later it is going to assert itself. Now there are churches, in the West particularly, churches devoted to the Devil. Disciples of the Devil are growing, mushrooming all over the world. The First Church of Satan is there in America, where people gather and worship Satan. Satan means 'devil', that is Arabic for 'devil'. All kinds of bizarre things are going on in the world,…
Beloved Osho, where did the devil come from when he appeared to adam and eve as a serpent?
Not only were ordinary women forced to confess and burned alive, once a woman accepted that she was a witch and has had a sexual relationship with the devil, then certainly she could not be allowed to remain alive even for a single moment. She was bringing the devil into human blood, she would pollute the whole of humanity: she had to be burned alive. And it was not ordinary women only -- even nuns, mother superiors, they managed, and forced them to confess. Anybody could raise the suspicion, just that was enough. Anybody, any man, could raise the suspicion to the pope, to the bishop, to the high priest, that this woman, this nun, seems to be a witch. That was enough for the investigation to begin. And there was a special court arranged by the pope, the Inquisition, with a big office and hundreds of people working for…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, IS THE DEVIL REALLY MALE? Man is crushed between the devil and God, between good and evil. I want man not to be crushed, not to be enslaved, but to be an individual in his own right, free. And out of his freedom, and out of his awareness, he should act -- not according to what God wants. I have told you the story of the ten commandments. When God made the world, he went to the Babylonians and said, "Would you like to have a commandment?" They said, "First we would like to see what it is." And he said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The Babylonians said, "What would we do? We don't want any commandment, please forgive us." He went to the Egyptians, and he went to other races. Nobody was willing, because everybody asked, "What is the commandment?