Question 1

Beloved Osho,

Are you trying to destroy all of our previous ideas about religion?

 

 

There is no other way to be religious. All that you have heard about religion, read about religion, has to be totally dropped. Unless you are clean, with no writing on your consciousness, you will never know what religion is. The so-called religions are doing just the opposite. And you can see the result.

 

The whole world is divided into religions: somebody is going to the synagogue, somebody is going to the temple, somebody else is going to the church. But do you find any religiousness anywhere?

 

Every child is brought up, conditioned, in a certain religion. It is one of the biggest crimes against humanity. Nothing can be a bigger crime than to pollute the mind of an innocent child with ideas which are going to become hindrances in his discovery of life. The moment you want to discover something, you have to be absolutely unprejudiced. You cannot discover religion as a Mohammedan, as a Christian, as a Hindu — no. These are the ways to prevent you from discovering religion.

 

Every society, until now, has been trying to indoctrinate every child. Before the child becomes capable of asking questions he is being given answers. Do you see the stupidity of it? The child has not asked the question and you are providing him with an answer. What you are in reality doing is killing the very possibility of the question arising. You have filled his mind with the answer. And unless he has his own question, how can he have his own answer? The quest has to be sincerely his. It cannot be borrowed, it cannot be inherited.

 

But this nonsense has continued for centuries. The priest is interested, the politician is interested, the parents are interested in making something of you before you can discover who you are. They are afraid that if you discover who you are you will be a rebel, you will be dangerous to the vested interests. Then you will be an individual, living in his own right, not living a borrowed life.

 

They are so afraid, that before the child becomes capable of asking, inquiring, they start stuffing his mind with all kinds of nonsense. The child is helpless. He naturally believes in the mother, in the father, and of course he believes in the priest in whom the father and mother believe. The great phenomenon of doubt has not arisen yet. And it is one of the most precious things in life, to doubt, because unless you doubt you cannot discover.

 

You have to sharpen your doubting forces so that you can cut through all rubbish and you can ask questions which nobody can answer. Only your own quest, inquiry, will help you to come to the realization of them.

 

The religious question is not something which can be answered by somebody else. Nobody else can love on your behalf. Nobody else can live on your behalf. You have to live your life, and you have to seek and search the fundamental questions of life. And unless you discover yourself there is no joy, no ecstasy. If God is just given to you, readymade, it is not worth anything, it is valueless. But that’s how it is being done.

 

What you call religious ideas are not religious, but only superstitions carried down the ages — for so long that just their ancientness has made them appear like truth.

 

Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography, My Struggle, makes many significant statements. The man was mad, but sometimes mad people say things which sane people are afraid to say. One of his most important statements is: “Any lie can become truth if repeated often, emphasized again and again, told by everybody from every corner.” You go to the school and you hear about God and prayer. In the home you hear about God and prayer. You go to the temple and you hear about God and prayer. So many people… and just a small child against this whole mob.

 

It is impossible for hima child to doubt — all these people are wrong? And these are not the only people. Their parents, and their parents, for thousands of years, have been believing in these truths. They all cannot be wrong, “And I, a small child against this whole humanity….” He cannot gather courage. He starts repressing any possibility of doubt. And everybody else helps to repress doubt, because “doubt is from the devil. Doubt is a great, perhaps the greatest, sin. Belief is virtue. Believe and you will find; doubt, and you have missed on the very first step.”

 

The truth is just the opposite. Believe and you will never find, and whatsoever you find will be nothing but the projection of your own belief — it will not be truth. What has truth to do with your believing? Doubt, and doubt totally, because doubt is a cleansing process. It takes out all junk from your mind. It makes you again innocent, again the child which has been destroyed by the parents, by the priests, by the politicians, by the pedagogues. You have to discover that child again. You have to start from that point. Hence, my whole effort here is to destroy all your so-called religious ideas.

 

It will hurt you because those religious ideas have become so intimate to you that you have forgotten they are not your discoveries, they are not your experiences. You have not lived them; you have not even loved them. Somebody else has forced you to believe in them, and whosoever has done it has committed an inhuman act against you.

 

I am not saying that those people are knowingly doing it. They are themselves victims of the same process; their parents did it to them, their teachers did it to them. So I am not saying to start feeling angry against them. They did it thinking it is good for you… but just by their thinking, anything is not going to become good — just by their thinking. They have been trying to help you, but they don’t know that there are things in which a person should be left alone; only then can he discover. If you try to help him you are crippling him.

 

Don’t try to force anybody to take your help while he can manage on his own. Don’t force anybody to see through your eyes when he has eyes. And at least, please, don’t place your specs on anybody’s eyes; your numbers are different. You will drive that person blind, you will distort his vision. But not only specs are being put on you, people are putting their eyes on top of your eyes… and they are all doing it for your good, for your sake. And after twenty years, thirty years of continuous conditioning, you start forgetting that you had never asked the question in the first place.

 

I am reminded of a very creative person, Gertrude Stein. She was dying; her friends were around her. Suddenly she opened her eyes and asked, “What is the answer?” And the friends looked puzzled. Had she gone mad just before death? Had she lost her reason? What kind of thing was she asking — “What is the answer?”

 

One of them said, “But you have not asked the question, so how can we say what the answer is?”

So she said, “Okay then: tell me, what is the question?” And she died.

 

To me it is of tremendous significance. It relates to almost every human being. You have forgotten that you had not asked the question, and the answer has already been forced into you. And of course it is a simple process of conditioning: go on telling the person, go on telling the person the same thing again and again. Soon the person starts repeating it like a gramophone record. And the person has forgotten that he had not asked the question.

 

Perhaps at the very end Stein discovered her fresh childhood. It happens to many people when they are dying. The circle completes, they come to the same point from where they had begun. So she is asking, “What is the answer?” because only answers were given. And nobody had bothered about the question. And when now, at this last moment, somebody asked, “But first tell us what the question is” — she becomes aware… but now it is too late. And the answers have been so much, so heavy, such a load on the being, that now to ask an authentic question also has become impossible. So she asks, “Okay, if a question is needed, then I ask you, ‘What is the question?'”

 

To me, this small incident is immensely significant. It is everybody’s life. You talk about God, you talk about the soul, you talk about heaven, hell, but have you ever thought — are these questions? Are you really interested in God? What interest can you have in God? On what grounds can you have God become your quest?

 

I was born in a Jaina family. In Jainism God is not believed in; there is no God, as creator. Because the conditioning of Jainism does not enforce the idea of God on its children, no Jaina child, or old Jaina ever asks, “Who created the world?” … Because they have been conditioned, from the very beginning, that the world exists from eternity to eternity; there is nobody who is a creator, and there is no need. Hence the question does not arise.

 

The Buddhist never asks the question, “What is God, where is God?” because Buddhism does not believe in God — so the child has been conditioned in that way. When you ask about God you think that it is your question — it is not. You may have been born in a Hindu family, in a Christian family, in a Jewish family, and they have conditioned your mind that there is a God. They have given a certain image of God, certain ideas about God. And they have created you with such fear that to doubt is dangerous.

 

A small, tiny kid is being made afraid of the eternal hell where you will be thrown into fire, alive, and you will burn but you will not die. Naturally the doubt does not seem to be so significant to take such risk. And you are motivated that if you believe, simply believe, all pleasures, all joys of life are yours. Believe, and you are on the side of God; doubt, and you are on the side of the devil.

 

The small child is bound to buy whatsoever crap you are giving him. He is afraid. He is afraid to be alone in the night, in the house, and you are talking about eternal hell: “You go on falling and falling into darkness and deeper darkness, and there is no end to it, and you can never come out of it.” Naturally the child simply shrinks from doubting, becomes so afraid that it is not worth it. And belief is so simple. Nothing is expected of you — just to believe in God, the son, the holy ghost… just to believe that Jesus is the son of God, and the messiah… and he has come to redeem the whole of humanity… and he will redeem you too.

 

Why not be redeemed so cheaply? You are not asked much. Just believe, and everything will be settled in your favor. So why should you choose doubt? You should naturally choose belief. And this happens at such a small age — and then you go on growing, and the belief and the conditioning and the ideas and the philosophy all go on top of it — that it is very difficult to dig and find out that there was a day when you were also full of doubt. But the doubt has been crushed, put out of sight. There was a day when you were reluctant to believe, but you have been persuaded. All kinds of rewards have been placed before you.

 

You can persuade a little child just by giving him a toy — and you have given him the whole paradise. If you have succeeded in persuading him to believe, you have not done a great miracle. It is very simple exploitation. Perhaps you are doing it unknowingly; you have also been passed through the same process. And once you close the doors of doubt you have closed the doors of reason, thinking, asking, inquiring. You are no more really a human being. The doors of doubt closed you are just a zombie, hypnotized, conditioned; persuaded out of fear, out of greed, to believe in things which no normal child is going to believe if all these things are not arranged. And once you stop doubting and thinking, then you can believe anything whatsoever. Then there is no question.

 

The politician wants it, because if you are a believer in a certain religion you are gullible. That shows your gullibility. It is enough indication. If you go to the church, it is enough indication that you are not a man who thinks, who questions, who argues, who will not take anything unless it is proved logically, rationally, scientifically. You go to the synagogue, you go to the mosque -- the politician is happy. He wants everybody to go to the synagogue, to the mosque, to the church... it does not matter where you go, but go -- because they all do the same.

The basic structure, the strategy, is not different. Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jew, it does not matter, because the basic strategy is exactly the same: close the doors of doubt completely, don't take any chances, don't leave any question marks in the person, and fill his mind with all kinds of beliefs. If you look at beliefs you will be surprised. People have believed any nonsense.

If you are a Jaina you will believe all Jaina nonsense -- the questions simply will not arise in you. My grandfather loved me very much for the simple reason that I was mischievous. Even in his old age he was mischievous, so we had a good friendship. He used to take me to Jaina monks just to create a disturbance there. He enjoyed it very much. He would not say anything because he was an old man, a respected citizen, but he knew that if I was there, it would be enough. He would sit as if he was for the monk, but he gave me indications, "You can start... this is a good time."

Now, Jainas don't believe in a creator God, so you cannot ask any question about God. There is no question, there is no God. But then they have to believe in other things. They believe in souls. I used to ask them, "How many souls are there in the world? Are they increasing, decreasing or remaining the same?"

Now, the Jaina monk cannot say they are increasing, because from where...? Who is creating them? There is no creator. No creation is happening. They cannot decrease because where will they go? They cannot go out of the universe because wherever they go it will be the universe. And he could not say that they remain the same, although that was the answer given in Jaina scriptures, that the number of souls remains the same.

But it was not easy with me, because then the question was, "How many? If you know that it remains the same, you must know the exact number; otherwise on what grounds do you say it remains exactly the same? One may have popped up; one may have popped out. You have to give me the exact number." Now, the number is not given in any scripture, and they cannot give the number for the simple reason that on the earth the population has been increasing. There are more and more people, more and more people. And Jainas believe everything has a soul: a tree, a bird, a fish -- all have souls. "When you know so much about souls, why don't you know the number? And you say Mahavira was omniscient: he knew everything. Could he not have told you the exact number? The problem would have been solved forever."

The monk would become restless, would like me to be shut up. But I said, "Nobody can shut me up. Either you answer or you recognize the fact that you don't know the answer. Either you satisfy my question or you simply say, 'I'm sorry, I don't know the answer.' Then be true to yourself at least. You preach truth. Can't you say, 'I don't know the numbers exactly'?" That too they cannot say because that disturbs the omniscience of Mahavira... that why did he miss this point, which is significant?

Now, Jainas believe in the eternal journey of a soul. If you do good karmas you go on becoming better -- that is, you go on reaching higher stages. So they have divided things: the tree has only a one-dimensional life, the spider has a two-dimensional life, the bird has a three-dimensional life, the tiger has a four-dimensional life, man has a five-dimensional life. And man is the highest evolution of consciousness.

I used to ask them, "When a man dies, is he born again as a man or can he also be born as a woman? Is he always born into the human world or can he be born as a tree, as a bird, as a horse, or anything?" Now, Jainas believe that if your karmas are very bad you can slip back: you can become a dog, you can become a fish, you can become a cat, you can become a tree.

I used to ask these monks, "Have you come across any factual evidence of somebody remembering that in his past life he was a tree, a tiger, a dog? Do you remember yourself what you were in your past life? And be true, because you are sitting in the temple of Mahavira, in the temple of truth. If you say anything untrue, remember -- eternal hell. So if you don't know, simply say, 'I don't know.'"

And that is the most difficult thing in India for a monk, a mahatma, who is worshipped by thousands and thousands of people: to say about anything, "I don't know." And I would make it clear: "If you lie, then remember, you will fall back. The statue of Mahavira is there behind you, a witness. And this temple...." And these people, of course they have sacrificed everything, so they have closed the doors of doubt completely. They believe that to lie in the temple, before Mahavira... it is dangerous. So they cannot lie, and they cannot say that they have experienced anything, or they have met anybody. And they would be just dumb.

Jainas have a theory... because they had to explain, Mahavira himself had to explain because the population was continuously growing -- from where are these souls coming? Animals are growing, life in all forms is growing, so from where are these souls coming? So Mahavira had a hypothesis. He called it nigod. Nigod means that there is a dark womb of the universe, infinite, full of infinite potential souls. So whenever a soul comes to the point from where it can grow, it comes out from nigod.

 

Now, look at the cunningness of the whole thing. He makes it infinite because if you make if finite then soon it will be empty. Then the problem will arise again, from where? Now the womb is empty -- so he makes it infinite.

But he forgets that there can always be people like me. Of course I was not in front of him; otherwise things would have been clear, then and there -- because in existence, two things cannot be infinite. It is such a simple mathematical thing. In existence, only one thing can be infinite: the universe. If it is infinite then no other thing can be infinite, because two infinites will make each other finite; their boundaries will meet. Somewhere they will come together and there will be a boundary, and that boundary will be the finiteness.

I was not there but I could torture these Jaina monks: "If nigod is infinite and you say the universe is infinite -- so you believe in two infinites? Is it possible mathematically? geometrically?" It was difficult. Two infinites are not possible. Any person who has any sense of mathematics can understand that two finites are perfectly okay, a hundred finites are perfectly okay, but two infinites? -- impossible! Only one can be infinite. The other is bound to become the boundary. Somewhere millions of light years away... but it doesn't matter; the boundary is the boundary.

And I used to ask these Jaina monks, "From where did these souls come into nigod? Suddenly they are there, for no reason. Why? How did they manage to enter it?" Every religion, basically, is bound to be in the same difficulties. When fundamental questions are there every religion is idiotic. If you don't ask the fundamentals, then they are very clever in answering your questions. But when the fundamentals come they are all invented.

From where did this nigod come, this universal, infinite womb? And from where have these souls come into it? And they would say, "They are just there." But that is not an answer. What evil action have they committed? They have never been out, so there has been no possibility to commit any action, good or bad. So why are they suffering in nigod? And what more suffering can there be than in that dark hole? For millions and millions of years they are there. Why are they suffering?

They have not committed... they cannot accept that they have committed any bad thing, any evil doing -- because to do, first you have to be in the universe. To act, you have to be. They are only potentially there. They are not really there, they are only seeds. So how can there be bitter fruits, or sweet fruits, from the seeds which have never sprouted? And you don't show us the reason why they have not sprouted.

And then suddenly a few souls become mature... what is the arithmetic of it? Who becomes mature first, and why? There must be some reason that these souls A,B,C, become mature today, and tomorrow X,Y,Z, will become mature -- but why today ABC, not M? They are all similar. Or do you recognize any differences between them? They cannot recognize any differences, because for difference a thing has to be actual. Just a potential -- there cannot be any differences.

Those Jaina monks would perspire and they would say, "Whenever you come...! You are a strange type of boy. These questions nobody asks. I have been traveling all over India, but whenever I come to your village I feel a certain fear... that you are bound to come. And I have told your grandfather, 'Don't bring this boy.' But he is also a strange man; he never comes alone, he always brings you."

One monk then tried a trick. He would deliver his talks in the schooltime, when I would be away in school. But my grandfather was not to be cheated. He would come to the school and he would ask the headmaster, "I need him urgently today."

I would be there, and the monk would say, "Is the school closed so soon today?"

I would say, "It is not closed, my grandfather has brought me here -- for your blessing. He never leaves me. He is so religious that he wants me to be blessed by you. So can we start now?"

If you give freedom to every child, they can make your popes and your imams and your monks just look absolutely idiotic. They can put them in the category of idiots. Just your children... nothing is needed, if you allow them to doubt. But they are not allowed to doubt. And once you become accustomed to a belief, it slowly slowly poisons your whole being. Then if somebody is attacking it, it feels as if he is attacking you.

That has been my trouble. My whole life I have been attacking. Unless I attack your belief system, your ideology, I cannot be of any help to you; I cannot share myself with you. There is a wall, a thick wall. I can go on shouting; you will not hear me. I have to hit the wall continuously, hammer it, at least make a hole in it, so I can see you, you can see me -- face to face. And I can revive what has been taken away from you. I can give you back your innocent childhood, and only from there a real inquiry into truth begins. Only from there religion is possible; otherwise you can only talk about religion.

So, Sheela, it is true. I absolutely want you to become completely free of all jargon that has been given to you by others. And I am not giving you any jargon. So try to understand my different position.

That's why I say this is the first religion of the world.

If you change your religion from Hindu to Christian, or from Christian to Mohammedan, or from Mohammedan to Hindu, nothing will be changing. You will only be changing superficial words, clothes perhaps, at the most; not even your skin will be touched. You will remain the same person. Of course you will have a new set of beliefs instead of the old set of beliefs. You must have got tired of that old set of beliefs. They were not taking you anywhere. Perhaps... if Christianity does not work, perhaps Hinduism may work, or Mohammedanism may work.

No, I am not giving you a new set of dogmas, beliefs, creeds, ideologies -- not at all. My function is totally different. My function is to take away whatever you have got and not to give you anything in its place... because if I take one stone and put another stone in its place, I am even more dangerous than the man who has put the first stone, because the first stone was getting old and you were getting tired of it, and it was not giving you any nourishment. It was a stone, what nourishment can it give to you? You were carrying the burden, and slowly you may have become aware that it is better to throw this stone. But with the new stone a new honeymoon starts. You start thinking perhaps this stone is the right one.

I am not substituting another belief system in you. I am simply destructive. You will be surprised that I am simply destructive -- I want to destroy all that has been forced upon you. And there is no need to substitute it with anything. Creativity is your intrinsic potential -- I don't have to create it.

Once hindrances are removed you will start growing and flowing. You will start searching on your own, and soon you will gain strength and a new power, because even a small discovery on your own will give you such immense happiness that you cannot conceive it. Just a small discovery on your own and you are a different being, because now truth is born in you. It may be just a seed, but the beginning has begun. You will feel a new thrill, which is not possible if I give you a belief, a readymade dogma, an ideology. So I don't give you anything, I only take away all that you have.

My sole function is to leave you alone to yourself. You have not been left alone by your parents, by your teachers, by your rabbis, by your monks, by your priests... you have not been left alone. Nobody trusted you. I trust you. They all wanted to make something of you, in their own image. I don't want to make you something in my image. want you simply to blossom into your own authenticity. I don't know what it will be, you don't know what it will be. And it is good that we don't know what it will be, because then it is so much of a surprise -- as if suddenly you have found an infinite treasure.

I said, I trust you. So I will not give you any belief, because I know you have the absolute capacity to discover life, love, laughter.

Just all the rocks that have been put upon you have to be removed. Don't cling to those rocks. They are your enemies. If you are a Jew, Judaism is your enemy. If you are a Christian, Christianity is your enemy. If you are a Hindu, Hinduism is your enemy. Whoever you are, if you have accepted something without searching, seeking, it is your enemy. Say, "Goodbye to you." Say to the enemy, "I am finished with you. Now I want to be alone. I want to be absolutely clean, unburdened." And you will be amazed: the moment you are unburdened, you can open your wings into the vast existence that has been awaiting and awaiting you.

But you are not coming because the synagogue is holding you, the temple is holding you, the church is holding you; the padre, the priest, the minister won't let you go. The crowd around you is hanging round your neck. They will not let you go out of their fold. To them it is a question of politics, politics of numbers. They are afraid that if people start going on their own, they will lose their power, their numbers. They want you there, to be used as a number, used as a means. And remember, to use any human being as a means for any end whatsoever is one of the greatest sins possible. Every human being is an end unto himself.

My work here is to help you discover your intrinsic possibility, potentiality, your ultimate goal -- which is not far away, which is just within you. All that you have to leave is that crap that others have forced upon you.

People think that I am doing the same work as Jesus was doing or Buddha was doing, or Mohammed was doing, or Mahavira was doing; they are absolutely wrong. My work, work as such, is simply mine. What they were doing was just against me, and what I am doing is against them. And it has to be clear to you that I will be hammering on all these people's heads.

Be alert. Don't get hurt unnecessarily, because I have to do it; there is no other way. It is surgical. I have to put you on the operation table and cut out a few things which do not belong to you. But you have accepted them as if they are your limbs, and they are not. They are crippling you. They are killing you.

I want to take away everything that is not authentically yours. Everything... and then the explosion.

 

-Osho, "From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, #13, Q1"