Why is Osho critical of the Roman Catholic religion?

Beloved Osho, you are against the pope so much -- is that because the roman catholic religion is the most organized religion?

Religion is something so high, and politics is so low that one thing has to be remembered: whenever there is a mixture of something lower with something higher, it is always the higher which becomes polluted -- not the lower. It is always the higher which loses its quality of being higher. The lower has nothing to lose; it cannot fall any more -- it has already fallen to its uttermost. Religion and politics should be separate. And the moment religion becomes organized, it becomes politics. Hence religion should not be organized at all; it should be everybody's private, personal, intimate search. At least some area of life should be left to the individual where he is totally free, without anybody else deciding for him, where he can open his wings like an eagle and fly across the sun -- no chains, no bondages, no hindrances. Religion blossoms only in…

Question: OSHO, ARE YOU ESPECIALLY AGAINST CHRISTIANITY? I hate to favor Christianity with any special attention but unfortunately it deserves it. It is the ugliest manifestation of religion on the earth, for many reasons. The first: Christianity is the only well-organized religion. The more a religion is well-organized, the less is the possibility of its being a religion. Truth, by its very nature, cannot be organized. To organize truth, or to kill it, mean the same thing. Truth is alive when organization is only functional, loose. Christianity's organization is very tight, bureaucratic, hierarchical. Because of this kind of organization, it has become more a game of power politics than the flowering of religious qualities. In the past two thousand years Christianity has done more harm to humanity than any other religion. Mohammedanism has tried to compete with it but has not been successful.

In italy we have the vatican, the citadel of the pope. You are against him and the catholic religion. Why?

It is a question, a quest, and you will have to go a long way to find it. To avoid this long journey you easily become gullible. You easily become victims of anybody who is ready to exploit you. And naturally it feels cozy in a crowd. There are six hundred million Catholics; it feels cozy, and you feel that six hundred million people cannot be wrong. You may be wrong, but six hundred million people cannot be wrong. But everybody in those six hundred million people is thinking the same. Four hundred million Hindus feel that they are right; otherwise, why should four hundred million believe in their truth? The same is true about Mohammedans, Buddhists and other religions. The search for truth is a flight of the alone to the alone. All these religions have made you parts of crowds, dependent on the crowds. They have taken away…

Osho, are you against all the religions? What is their most fundamental mistake?

We have come very late; there was nobody present as an eyewitness. And there is no way for us to separate ourselves completely from existence and become just an observer. We live, we breathe, we exist with existence -- we cannot separate ourselves from it. The moment we are separate, we are dead. And without being separate, just a watcher, with no involvement, with no attachment, you cannot know the ultimate mystery; hence it is impossible. There will remain something always unknowable. Yes, it can be felt, but it cannot be known. Perhaps it can be experienced in different ways -- not like knowledge. You fall in love -- can you say you know love? It seems to be a totally different phenomenon. You feel it. If you try to know it, perhaps it will evaporate in your hands. You cannot reduce it to knowing. You cannot make it an…

Beloved Osho, you said that italians are the most pagan among the european people. Do you think the catholic religion destroys the pagan soul less than other religions?

The virgin birth of Jesus Christ... there is no way to prove it; it is so unscientific. The concept of God as a trinity: God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost... and this "holy ghost" made the poor girl Mary, Jesus' mother, pregnant -- without any license -- and still he is holy? Then what is unholy? And in this trinity there is no place for any woman? A strange family, three men. It is just to humiliate womankind. Even Jesus' mother -- although they put up her statues, they worship her statues -- she is not part of their ultimate trinity. Their ultimate trinity is a gay group -- and I have every suspicion that the disease AIDS has come from the trinity. Everything has arisen from God -- why not AIDS? I know so many Italians that I feel perfectly at ease that they will be…