Religiousness

Beloved Osho, how can the master help the disciple to live religiousness without religion?

It is the most simple thing in the world. The reverse is the most difficult -- to be religious and to be part of an organized religion is almost impossible. But just to be religious, without being part of any religion, is the simplest thing. You have to understand what I mean by religiousness: by religiousness I mean a gratitude towards existence. It has given so much to you, and you cannot pay it back. I have heard, a man was going to commit suicide and a master was sitting on the river bank from where this man was going to take the jump. He said, "Wait just a moment! Wait! Are you going to commit suicide?" The man said, "But who are you to prevent me?" The master said, "I am not preventing you. In fact, I would love for you to commit suicide, but before committing it, if…

Beloved Osho, according to my dictionary, a cult is "a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious" -- "spurious" meaning "of illegitimate birth, bastard." is it not true to say that the real spirit of religiousness can never be anything but unorthodox; and will always be inspired by a love union, rather than born out of a legalized contract?

Maneesha, I am not a man of language, not a linguist, not a man of words. My experience is of the wordless. Although I use words, I am not confined by them. To me there is only one dictionary and that is of existence, of experience. All other dictionaries are for mundane, ordinary affairs -- not for this extraordinary love affair. In the first place there is no such thing as religion. Just as there is no such thing as love, no such thing as beauty -- these are not things. There is a certain phenomenon you can describe as religiousness, but you cannot confine it to the word `religion'. Religion is a limitation; it has a boundary line, it is an imprisonment. Religiousness is open to the whole sky. It can contain the all. It has no doors, no windows, no walls. The moment the experience of religiousness is…

Beloved Osho, what is religion?

In anger one day the archbishop took a motorboat and went to those three people who were sitting under a tree. He looked at them and he could not believe it: what kind of saints are these? In the very beginning he introduced himself and declared, "I am the archbishop." The three saints all touched his feet. Now he felt relaxed, "These are fools... and things are not yet gone so far that they cannot be controlled." He asked them, "Are you saints?" They looked at each other, and they said, "We have never heard the word. We are uneducated, uncultured. Don't talk Greek to us; just simply say what you mean." "My God," said the archbishop, "you don't know what a saint means? Do you know the Christian prayer?" Again they looked at each other, and nudged each other as if to say, "You tell him." The archbishop now…

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.] Sannyas is to be true to your original face. Then all your fragments start melting into each other and they create a centre, they create integrity, they create individuality. And that's what religion is all about. Religion has nothing to do with god or heaven and hell and all kinds of theories and philosophies. The basic concern of religion is truth. And one has to live it, only then can one know it. Truth is god. Truth does not mean a conclusion arrived at by thinking. It means experience arrived at through living. Truth is not a hypothesis; hence philosophy has no truth in it. Philosophy goes round and round, it moves in circles, but it never reaches the target.