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Religionless Religion

Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Mohammedanism — these are only ideologies, dogmas, creeds; they are only cults. The true religion has no name, it cannot have any name. Buddha lived it, Jesus lived it — but remember, Jesus was not a Christian and Buddha was not a Buddhist, he had never heard of the word. The truly religious people have been simply religious, they have not been dogmatic. There are three hundred religions in the world — this is such an absurdity! If truth is one, how can there be three hundred religions? There is only one science, and three hundred religions?

If the science that is concerned with the objective truth is one, then religion is also one because it is concerned with the subjective truth, the other side of the truth. But that religion cannot have any name, it cannot have any ideology.

I teach only that religion. Hence if somebody asks you what my teaching is, in short, you will not be able to say — because I don't teach principles, ideologies, dogmas, doctrines. I teach you a religionless religion, I teach you the taste of it. I give you the method to become receptive to the divine. I don't say anything about the divine, I simply tell you "This is the window — open it and you will see the starry night."

Now, that starry night is indefinable. Once you see it through the open window you will know it. Seeing is knowing — and seeing should be being, too. There should be no other belief.

So my whole effort is existential, not intellectual at all. And the true religion is existential. It has always happened to only a few people and then it disappears from the earth because the intellectuals immediately grab it and they start making beautiful ideologies out of it — neat and clean, logical. In that very effort they destroy its beauty. They create philosophies, and religion disappears. The pundit, the scholar, the theologian, is the enemy of religion.

So remember it: you are not getting initiated into a certain religion; you are getting initiated into just religiousness. It is vast, immense, unbounded — it is like the whole sky.

Even the sky is not the limit, so open your wings without any fear. This whole existence belongs to us; this is our temple, this is our scripture. Less than that is manmade, manufactured by man. Where it is manufactured does not matter much — beware of manufactured religions so that you can know the true, which is not manmade. And it is available in the trees, in the mountains, in the rivers, in the stars — in you, in people that surround you — it is available everywhere.

Science is the search for truth in the objective world and religion is the search for the truth in the subjective world. In fact, they are two wings of one bird, of one inquiry — two sides. Ultimately there is no need to have two names. My own suggestion is that "science" is a perfectly beautiful name, because it means "knowing." So science has two sides, just like every coin has two sides. Knowing in the dimension of matter you can call objective science, and knowing in the dimension of your interiority — of your inner being, of your consciousness — you can call subjective science. There is no need for the word religion.

Science is perfectly good — and it is the same search, just the directions are different. And it will be good that we make one supreme science, which is a synthesis, a synchronicity of the outer science and the inner science. There will be no need of so many religions then, and there will be no need then even for somebody to be an atheist. When theists are gone, then there is no need for atheists — they are only reactions. There are believers in God so there are disbelievers in God. When the believers are gone, what is the need of disbelievers?

There is no need to believe in anything — that is the fundamental of science. That is the scientific approach to reality: do not believe, inquire. The moment you believe, inquiry stops. Keep your mind open — neither believe nor disbelieve. Just remain alert and search and doubt everything until you come to a point which is indubitable — that's what truth is. You cannot doubt it. It is not a question of believing in it, it is a totally different phenomenon. It is so much a certainty, overwhelming you so much, that there is no way to doubt it.

This is knowing. And this knowing transforms a man into a buddha, into an enlightened one. This is the goal of all human growth.

This article was excerpted with permission from Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic by Osho. Published by St. Martin's Press. ©2000. http://www.stmartins.com.
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About The Author

OSHO is one of the most provocative spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1931, Osho first became known as a rebellious philosophy professor in the 1960s and traveled extensively throughout India, giving talks, debating with traditional religious leaders, and introducing his revolutionary active meditation technique, Dynamic Meditation. In 1974 he established a center for meditation and self-discovery in Pune, India. His work there, he said, was an experiment to create the conditions for the birth of a "new man" -- one who is free of all outdated ideologies and doctrines of the past and whose vision encompasses both the spiritual wisdom of the East and the scientific understandings of the West. He departed the body in 1990.

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