Why do people go to the temple?

Further, one may also ask: why do you go to the temple?

Certainly one can ask—and one should tell. And one should tell what is true: that you have come out of fear of your wife; or out of fear of the neighbors; or out of fear of society; or that it has become a bad habit that won’t leave you; if you don’t come, it feels as if some special task has been left undone. Just as with smoking, so it has become with coming to the temple. Whatever is true, that is what should be said.

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…

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…

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 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…