SPIRITUALITY is not a question of morality, it is a question of vision. Spirituality is not the practising of virtues - because if you practise a virtue it is no longer a virtue. A practised virtue is a dead thing, a dead weight. Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpractised - when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding.
Ordinarily religion is thought of as a practice. It is not. That is one of the most fundamental misunderstandings about religion. You can practise non-violence but you will still remain violent, because your vision has not changed. You still carry the old eyes. A greedy person can practise sharing, but the greed will remain the same. Even the sharing will be corrupted by the greed, because you cannot practise anything against your understanding, beyond your understanding. You cannot force your life into principles unless those principles are of your own experience.
But so-called religious people try to practise virtue - that's why they are the most unvirtuous people on the earth. They try to practise love and they are the most unloving people on the earth. They have created all sorts of mischief: wars, hatred, anger, enmity, murder. They practise friendship but the friendship has not flowered on the earth. They go on talking about God but they create more and more conflict in the name of God. The Christian is against the Mohammedan, the Mohammedan is against the Hindu, the Hindu is against the Jaina, the Jaina is against the Buddhist - that's all they have been doing.
There are three hundred religions and they have all created fragments in the human mind; they have not been an integrating force, they have not healed the wounds of the human soul. Because of them humanity is ill, because of them humanity is insane - and the insanity comes out of one thing. That has to be understood as deeply as possible because you can also go in the wrong direction. The wrong direction has a tremendous appeal, otherwise so many people would not have gone in it. The appeal must be great. The magnetic force of the wrong direction has to be understood, only then can you avoid it.
You can try practising anything you like and you can remain opposite to it.
You can try practising anything you like and you can remain opposite to it. You can enforce a sort of stillness upon yourself: you can sit silently, you can learn a yoga posture, you can make the body still, as if it is without movement, you can make the body like a statue. And by repeating a mantra or by repressing the mind continuously for a long time, you can enforce a certain stillness upon your being - but it will be the silence of the cemetery, it will not be throbbing, alive, kicking. It will be a frozen thing. You can deceive others but you cannot deceive yourself and you cannot deceive God. You have got it without any understanding; you forced it upon yourself; it is a practised silence.
The real silence arises out of the understanding: 'Why am I not silent? Why do I go on creating tensions for myself? Why do I go on getting into miserable patterns? Why do I support my hell?' One starts understanding the 'why' of one's hell - and by that very understanding, by and by, without any practising on your part, you start dropping those wrong attitudes that create misery. Not that you drop them, they simply start disappearing.
- Osho, "The Art of Dying, #9"