Dogma

What do you teach and what is your doctrine ?

I am not teaching a doctrine. Teaching a doctrine is rather meaningless. I am not a philosopher; my mind is antiphilosophical. Philosophy has led nowhere and cannot lead anywhere. The mind that thinks, that questions, cannot know. There are so many doctrines. But a doctrine is a fiction, a human fiction. It is not a discovery but an invention. The human mind is capable of creating infinite systems and doctrines, but to know the truth through theories is impossible. A mind that is stuffed with knowledge is a mind that is bound to remain ignorant. Revelation comes the moment knowledge ceases. There are two possibilities: either we can think about something, or we can go into it existentially. The more a person thinks, the more he moves away from what is here and now. To think about something is to lose contact with it. So what I teach is an…

Rajneeshism allows everyone into its fold, states Osho

Our religion should not be categorized with any other religion of the world because it has not tradition or dogma and it allows everybody without any discrimination into its religious fold. Rajneeshism does not ask anyone to renounce their religion and does not have any conflict with Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Lao Tzu, etc. Basically Rajneeshism has the essential core of all religiousness. The other religions are against each other's traditions and attitudes. In fact, these other religions are fanatic and each believes and fights that theirs is the true religion and others are false. This is not the case with me or Rajneeshism. A Christian can become a Rajneeshee and he is not asked to drop his love for Jesus, in fact he finds Jesus in me. The same is true for a Buddhist or a Mohammedan. Our commune consists of people from all religions who have found their religion's…

[NOTE: This discourse will be in the book "India Coming Back Home", which has not been published, as of August 1992. INTERVIEW BY THE SIMLA TIMES WOULD YOU KINDLY EXPLAIN YOUR IDEOLOGY? I have no ideology. That is one of the problems for people. If I had an ideology, a fixed catechism like the Christians' ten commandments, then it would have been easier for people to understand or argue or oppose or support. I don't have an ideology. I have only a way of life. Ideologies are strategies to make people slaves. Ideologies want organizations -- Hindu ideology, Mohammedan ideology, communist ideology. They all want more and more people to become members of their ideology. They all stop people from thinking, because they say, "We give you a ready-made ideology. You need not think." They impose. They say, "God exists because Mohammed says so.

There are Christians, Hindus and Mohammedans and Buddhists and almost everybody belongs to some religion, to some political ideology -- communist, socialist, fascist. These are people who know nothing, but they believe because belief gives them the idea that they know -- and everybody wants to be in the know. Belief is the cheapest way, at no cost. And the person who believes in end... look at him when he comes across a person who does not believe in god, see how superior he feels, that 'I believe in god and you don't believe in god.' He really feels great sympathy for you, pity for you that you will fall in hell, that you will not be saved. Deep down he says 'poor fellow.' He himself is in the same state, but the belief hides his ignorance.