Sin and Guilt

 

 

Question 1

Osho,

In your religion is there such a thing as sin?

 

 

Sin is a technique of the pseudo-religions. A true religion has no need of the concept at all. The pseudo-religion cannot live without the concept of sin, because sin is the technique of creating guilt in people.

 

You will have to understand the whole strategy of sin and guilt. Unless you make a person feel guilty, you cannot enslave him psychologically. It is impossible to imprison him in a certain ideology, a certain belief system. But once you have created guilt in his mind, you have taken all that is courageous in him. You have destroyed all that is adventurous in him. You have repressed all possibility of his ever being an individual in his own right. With the idea of guilt, you have almost murdered the human potential in him. He can never be independent. The guilt will force him to be dependent on a messiah, on a religious teaching, on God, on the concepts of heaven and hell, and the whole lot.

 

To create guilt, all that you need is a very simple thing: start calling mistakes, errors - sins. They are simply mistakes, human. Now, if somebody commits a mistake in mathematics - two plus two, and he concludes it makes five - you don't say he has committed a sin. He is unalert, he is not paying attention to what he is doing. He is unprepared, he has not done his homework. He is certainly committing a mistake, but a mistake is not a sin. It can be corrected. A mistake does not make him feel guilty. At the most it makes him feel foolish.

 

What the pseudo-religions have done - and all the religions of the world have been pseudo-religions up to now - is to have exploited mistakes, errors, which are absolutely human, and condemned them as sin. Sin means it is not a simple mistake: you have gone against God; that's the meaning of the word sin. Adam and Eve committed the original sin: they disobeyed God. Whenever somebody condemns you as committing a sin, he is saying in some way or other you are disobeying God.

 

Now, nobody knows who this God is, what is for him and what is against him. There are three hundred pseudo-religions on the earth. Just think of three hundred sciences upon the earth, three hundred schools of physics, condemning each other, finding fault with each other, declaring, 'Only our school is the true school, and all the other schools are misleading humanity.' What will be the situation of the earth if there are three hundred schools of physics, three hundred schools of chemistry, three hundred schools of medicine, three hundred schools of mathematics - what will be the situation? The whole earth will go mad. And that is what has happened as far as religion is concerned.

 

And when I say three hundred, I am not counting sects within religions. For example, I am counting Christianity as one religion, not Catholics, Protestants - in fact they are two religions. And then there are subsects. If you counted them all, then three hundred would be a very small number; there might be three thousand. Everybody is giving you the word of God, and all these religions are giving contradictory statements.

 

If you listen to all religions, you cannot even breathe for a single moment, because whatever you do is a sin. Fortunately you are conditioned by only one pseudo-religion, so you don't become aware that there are other idiots also - you are not alone - who are doing the same thing. Their rules are different, but they are playing the same game. [....]

 

Sin is a strategy to destroy you, to demolish you, to slaughter you as an individual. And then you are in the hands of the priest. Then whatsoever he says, you have to follow. You cannot argue because it is written in the scriptures. And to argue against the scriptures is again a sin. The scripture has to be treated like a person. [....]

 

Five hundred years ago, certainly, Binaca toothpaste...? And made in Switzerland - when you give to the guru, you give something imported. Binaca is made in India also, the same company makes the paste, but when you offer it to the guru, then you offer the imported Binaca toothpaste. If you don't do it, then you will feel guilty, because all the Sikhs are doing it. At breakfast time, you will bring breakfast - and you know that this is a book.... You know, you are not blind. Lunchtime, lunch... and every time you carry everything back. The book eats nothing, but that is beside the point. If your society conditions your mind for any stupidity and you don't want to do it, your conscience will prick you.

 

You have to understand these two words: conscience and consciousness. Consciousness is yours.

 

Conscience is given by the society. It is an imposition over your consciousness. Different societies impose different ideas over your consciousness, but they all impose something or other. And once something is imposed over your consciousness, you cannot hear your consciousness, it is far away.

 

Between your consciousness and you stands a thick wall of conscience that the society has imposed on you from your very childhood - and it works.

 

Up to the age of sixteen I had never eaten anything in the night. It is impossible in a Jaina house.

 

You cannot find anything to eat because everything, as the sun sets, is finished. If something is left, it is given to the beggars; in the house you cannot find a single thing to eat. So there is no question even of stealing or, when your parents have gone to sleep, going to the kitchen. There is nothing, you cannot find anything.

 

You cannot go out in a small village - everybody knows everybody. You cannot go to a restaurant because they will immediately say, 'What...!' They may not be Jainas but they know you are a Jaina.

 

They will say, 'Okay. Tomorrow, let your father pass by.... So you have started eating in the night?'

 

So even if you are feeling hungry, there is no way.... Up to the age of sixteen I had never eaten during the night.

 

When I was sixteen, the whole school was going for a picnic to a nearby castle, a very beautiful mountain covered with jungle, so I went with them. All the students in my class except me were Hindus or Mohammedans. I was the only Jaina. They were not interested... the day was so beautiful, and there was so much to see and wander around, that they were not interested in preparing food in the day. They said, 'Food we will take in the night.' It was going to be a full moon night, and a beautiful river was at the side of the castle, so 'we will take food in the night.' Just for me they were not going to prepare it earlier, and I could not say to them, 'I cannot eat in the night.' I thought it was better to starve rather than to become a laughingstock, because they would all laugh and say, 'Then you can make it!' and I had never made anything, not even a cup of tea, in my life.

 

Even today I cannot manage a cup of tea. In fact I don't know where the kitchen is. I cannot find it unless somebody leads me. I don't know where the kitchen is in this house. And in my own house, of course, I was not allowed in the kitchen at all. That's why I cannot even prepare a cup of tea.

 

Because I was mixing with Mohammedans and Hindus and untouchables I was not allowed in the kitchen. My family said, 'Unless you change your ways....'

 

The whole house used to eat inside the kitchen, I used to eat outside the kitchen. I was just an outcast, because they could not rely on me, from where I was coming, with whom I had been talking, whom I had touched; they had no idea. 'Either you take a bath right now, and then you can enter....' Now, how many times would I have to take a bath? So I settled it, I said, 'It is good; also, no quarrel every day. I will eat outside, and I am perfectly happy outside.‘

 

Those boys on the picnic prepared really beautiful food, and it was more beautiful because I was so hungry... and the smell of it... and they started persuading me: 'Nobody is going to tell your parents, we promise that nobody will talk about it at all.' I was hungry, on the one hand, and their food was really delicious, the way they were making it. They were persuading and they were promising, and I thought, 'If all these people are going to hell, why worry? I can also go to hell. In fact, without all my friends, what am I going to do in heaven? With those Jaina monks it is not going to be good company. I don't like them and they are not going to like me either. The people I like are these, and these are all going to hell, that is certain.' That had been told to me from the very beginning - that eating in the night is the greatest sin.

 

Now it's strange... but in Mahavira's time perhaps there was some point in it because there was no light in most of the people's houses. People were so poor that they used to eat in darkness, so they could eat any insect, anything. Mahavira's concern was not the night, his concern was that people not eat insects, ants, any living thing. And that was his trouble: if you eat any living thing, you have committed a sin. So to keep the question completely closed, he declared, 'To eat in the night is a sin.' He cut the whole situation from the very roots. But now more light is available than there is in the day, now there is no problem. But the scriptures were written twenty-five centuries ago, and Mahavira has closed the door. Nothing can be added, nothing can be deleted. The final word is there.

 

So I thought that at the most I would be going to hell, but all my friends would be there and they were good cooks - it would be worth it. So I said, 'Okay.' But I was not aware of the phenomenon of conscience, up to that moment. I ate with them. It was delicious, and I was hungry. The whole day moving around for miles on the mountain had made me even more hungry. But somewhere deep down there was a revolt. I started feeling nauseous, and as I finished I started vomiting. There was nothing wrong with their food because nobody else had the nausea, nobody was vomiting; it was not food poisoning or anything. Until I had thrown all the food out, I could not sleep. It took me almost half the night to be clean of that food, and then I could go to sleep.

 

That day I discovered that nausea was not because of the food, but because of those sixteen years' conditioning, the continual hammering of the idea that eating in the night is a sin. Now, it was absolutely psychological poisoning, not food poisoning, and it had been done by the priest, by the monks, by my parents, by my society.

 

The conscience is the constable inserted within you by the society. The society tries to control you and your behavior in two ways: a constable outside, a court outside, a judge outside, a jail outside; and a conscience inside, fear of punishment, fear of hell, God the judge, his court... before him you cannot hide anything. You will be standing naked, with all your sins written all over you. There is no possibility of hiding.

 

So society up to now has used a very subtle technology: create conscience by repeating that certain things are sin, certain things are virtue. Virtue is going to be rewarded a thousandfold. Here you give just one rupee as a donation, and in heaven you will get one thousand rupees reward. Now, they are playing on your greed. This is good business.

 

This is almost a lottery - and sure and certain. It is not a question that your number may come, may not come. You give one rupee here to the brahmin - remember, don't make any mistake: 'The brahmin,' the scripture says: 'Give it to the brahmin, not to anybody else' - brahmins are writing the scripture! Give to the brahmin, and whatsoever you give, one thousandfold you will receive from God in heaven. That is a promise from God. And the brahmin will stand as a witness to you.

 

In brahmin books it is said, 'When you donate to a brahmin, never donate an old cow which does not give milk any more.' Great! - because that's what people do in India. When a cow becomes very old, what to do with the cow? It does not give you any milk any more, it does not give you any more calves which can be used in farming as cows or bulls. It is too old and an unnecessary burden on you. Either you give it to a butcher - that means you are a partner in the slaughter of the cow. In fact, you are the major partner: if you had not given it to the butcher, he could not have killed it. You gave it to the butcher; you will have to suffer the responsibility.

 

And do you know what brahmin scriptures say? To kill a cow is almost equivalent to killing ten brahmins. To kill one brahmin is equivalent to killing ten human beings. So who is going to sell it to a butcher? And you cannot get much money from the butcher either. The best way is to donate it to a brahmin. So people used to donate them.

 

Brahmins knew that this was what was happening. Brahmins were in difficulty: they cannot refuse the donation; a donation has to be accepted gratefully. Now, what to do with this old cow? The brahmin cannot sell it to the butcher. Now, the brahmin himself is poor. And these old cows of the village will start gathering around him. So he has to write in his scripture - it is not God's word, because why should God be bothered? - that a brahmin should not be given an old cow as a donation: the emphasis is on 'an old cow.' You should give the brahmin a young cow who is giving enough milk, then you will be rewarded.

 

So these people who function as mediators between you and God, between you and heaven, are really the most cunning people. They have destroyed what is most precious in you, your consciousness. They have covered it layer upon layer. Your consciousness has gone down deep; on top of it are layers of conditioning.

 

You ask: in my religion is there a place for sin? Impossible. Sin is an invention of the priest, and I am not a priest. Sin is the technique of the pseudo-religion, and I am not a messiah or an avatara or a paigambara. I am not creating a pseudo-religion. Pseudo-religion absolutely needs the concept of sin, because through sin he will make you guilty. Through guilt he will make you tremble inside.

 

Now, somehow you have to be cleaned of guilt.

 

Brahmin scriptures say, 'Don't be afraid. You donate to the brahmin and your guilt will be forgiven.'

 

But donate to the brahmin - and according to the guilt of course. If your guilt is big, your sin is big, then you have to donate more. Then make temples.... [....]

 

And in India, the people who have houses... you cannot conceive what kind of houses they are.

 

Those who have not, in a way their position is clear. But those who have houses - they are not worth calling houses at all. I have been traveling in villages... not a single house will have a bathroom, not a single house will have an outhouse, a latrine. No, you have to go out by the side of the river or the tank, or wherever water is available you go there. People are doing everything there - and people are drinking the same water. I had to stop going into villages, it was so ugly, so inhuman.

 

And what is a house in India? Just a shed which you would not make even for a cow. They are living with their cows and their bulls and their other animals in the same house. And the families are joined, so in one house you may have thirty people, forty people, with all the animals. Every house is Noah's ark. All the species... and such a smell! So much stink that even thinking of it I feel immensely sorry for people.

 

But that is not the case only in India, it is all over the third world. In Africa, in China - it is all over the third world. And you are making temples for God! God can live very easily in the open sky; there is no trouble for him. He is all-powerful. The cold will not give him pneumonia or double pneumonia, rains will not make him wet, hot sun will not burn him, so why bother making houses for God?

 

But the problem is greed. Hinduism has been telling Hindus, 'Make houses for God - then you will be rewarded.' Christians are saying, 'Make houses for the poor, hospitals for the poor, schools for the poor, orphans, old people, sick people, then you will be rewarded.' But the desire of both is to be rewarded. Only one motive is dominating all the religions.

 

In my vision, a truly religious person can have the idea of mistakes, errors, but cannot have the idea of sin. A true religious person cannot create in somebody else the wound of guilt, because that is for a specific reason: if you want to be a messiah then you have to create sin, then you have to create guilt.

 

The man who initiated Jesus into disciplehood, John the Baptist - his only message his whole life was, 'Repent, repent, repent, because the messiah is coming. So get ready. Repent for your sins and get ready.' But how do you repent? First, guilt is needed - you have to feel guilty. So feel guilty, repent, and the messiah will come to save you. [....]

 

Your consciousness arises in silence, and it arises only in silence, because your whole energy is not going anywhere else, is not involved in action. So when the whole energy is not involved in action, where is it going to go? It starts collecting at your very center of being, like a pillar, a solid pillar of energy, which throws off the conscience and all the ideas of sin and all the ideas of guilt.

 

But remember, with that also goes the messiah, the rabbi, the priest. With that goes God, the devil, heaven, hell - the whole nonsense that has been thought of, up to now, as religion. That is not religion.

 

I don't have any need of the concept of sin. In my commune you cannot commit sin. For three, four years you have been here; has anybody committed a sin? Now, four thousand people are living here for four years and not a single sin has been committed; can you think of this happening in a Catholic monastery? Four thousand of you living in a Catholic monastery, twenty-four hours a day... sin and sin and sin, and nothing else will be happening. Anything you do... you will smoke a cigarette and you are committing a sin. You may be loving towards a woman and you are committing a sin. You may enjoy one day to sleep a little longer and you are committing a sin. You may love to read a book which the Vatican has put on the black list.... My books are on the black list. Even the books in which I have spoken on Jesus, and spoken very considerately so that nobody is offended - even those books!

 

By mistake, one Christian press in England, Sheldon, which is owned by a Christian association, published my books. First they published The Mustard Seed, then they became interested in me. Then they published other books, and the Sheldon Press people became involved with me. They forgot they are part of the Christian association, they are owned by the Christians, and they are publishing the books which the Vatican has put on the black list! Eight books they published. Then it was made clear to them that there had been some mistake. Now they have dropped all the eight books, they have returned all the copyrights.

 

Every year, the Vatican goes on putting together the black list, which books you should read, which books you should not read. Right now they cannot do what they used to do in the past: in the past they used to burn the books. In the basement of the Vatican, just in the basement of St. Peter's church, there is an immense library of all the books that they have burned in the past. One copy they have saved, but thousands... that means they have burned thousands of books, completely removed them from the whole earth. Wherever those books were found, they were burned. And whosoever resisted was killed or he was also burned with the books.

 

In the library of the Vatican they don't allow anybody. That library should be taken over by UNO, immediately. It is not the property of the Vatican. And that library may reveal thousands of truths, inventions, discoveries which the popes down the ages have prevented from happening by burning the books. Now they cannot do that, but at least they can do one thing: they can publish, secretly, a black list. And they can put any book on that black list; then no Catholic is allowed to read it. If you read it you are committing a sin, a great sin - disobeying the pope, who is infallible.

 

I don't see there is any need of sin. Yes, you are human beings and you will live like human beings, and sometimes you may commit a mistake. For example, if you are smoking a cigarette it may be a mistake, it may be a fault, but you are doing enough harm to yourself, you need not be punished in hell for it. You are punishing yourself enough. That cigarette may give you tuberculosis or may give you cancer, or at least will reduce your life by a few years. The cigarette will do it itself, there is no need for any devil to come and take you to hell and burn you there. You are doing it yourself, and paying for it. It is nobody else's business; you pay for it, and you burn yourself - perfectly good.

 

But if you become conscious, cigarettes will disappear. So I don't say don't smoke -- that will become a commandment. I say become more conscious. And if, in your consciousness, the cigarette disappears.... It is bound to disappear, because a conscious man cannot be so stupid that he will take the smoke inside, and then throw it out, and take it in again, and throw it out... poisoning himself, poisoning the atmosphere -- and paying for it, on top of it all.

 

Your actions are not my concern; your consciousness is.

 

If your consciousness allows you to do something, it is right - do it. Don't be worried by any holy scriptures, by any prophets. And if your consciousness does not allow you to do something, then don't do it. Even if God says to you, 'Do it!' there is no way - you cannot do it.

 

So it is not a question of your actions. I don't decide about your actions. I am giving you the master key, rather than deciding each simple, single action, whether it is right or wrong - that is a very impossible job.

 

I told you Buddhist monks have thirty-three thousand rules. That's how they came about, because they would go to Buddha with each single thing and ask whether it was right or wrong. And he would make a rule that this was right and that was wrong. One man made thirty-three thousand rules! It is good that for twenty-five centuries this has not continued, otherwise.... You are doing millions of things: I am not going to bother about each single small thing that you do.

 

My concern is very fundamental, very foundational: your consciousness.

 

I am not concerned with your doing, I am concerned with your doer. And once that doer is awake, it is impossible to do anything wrong. Then whatsoever you do is right. So if you ask me what is right, what is wrong, I will say: anything that you do consciously is right, anything that you do unconsciously is wrong. But I am not using the word sin at all. Even if you are doing something wrong, it is just an ordinary, human mistake, for which nobody needs to invent hell, nobody needs to invent heaven, nobody needs to come and redeem you and liberate you. You are the only one who has allowed himself to be fettered by others.

 

Now, please remember one thing: others can fetter you, but nobody can redeem you.

 

Only you can redeem yourself, and that is by stopping others fettering you, putting more and more heavy chains on you, making bigger and bigger walls around you.

 

You are your own messiah, your own salvation.

 

-Osho, "From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #26"