real religion destroys fear. It is not based in fear

Sheela has asked why I call my religion the first and perhaps the last religion.

Yes, I call it the first religion because religion is the highest flowering of consciousness. Up to now man was not capable of conceiving it. Even now, only one percent of humanity is barely able to conceive it. The masses are still living in the past, burdened with the past, conditioned with the past. Barely one percent of mankind is in a state now to conceive religion. All the old religions are based in fear. Now, a real religion destroys fear. It is not based in fear.

The concept of God in all the old religions is nothing but out of fear, a consolation; otherwise there is no validity, no evidence, no proof for the existence of God. The people who believe in God are really people who cannot trust in themselves. They need a father figure, a big daddy. They are still childish. Their mental age is just nearabout twelve years, not more than that. They need somebody to give them courage, to guide them, to protect them. They are simply afraid to be left alone. They are afraid of death which is coming closer every day. They need somebody to protect them from death. It is a projection of your fear. The moment your fear disappears you will find there is no God. The moment you are able to trust in yourself, to be yourself, there will be no God. You will laugh at the whole concept of God.

Now, Jesus is praying to God, continually raising his hands towards the sky, as if God is there above in the heaven. And not only is he praying, he is receiving answers too – he is hearing voices! Now, these are symptoms of neurosis. To tell you the truth, Jesus is a mental case. He is a nice fellow, he is a good person, but the way he behaves proves many things. He is a fanatic. He carries the same kind of mind as Adolf Hitler. He is a fascist. He thinks that only those who follow him will be saved; anybody else who does not follow him is going to fall into eternal hell. Now, only a simpleton can say such a thing. Who is he to save anybody? But he says he is the only begotten son of God. And he truly believes it. It is not only that he says it, he truly believes it.

Until the crucifixion, he truly believes it. It is only the crucifixion which brings a little sense to this insane man. Only at the crucifixion he cries, ”Why have you forsaken me?” He was certainly waiting for a miracle to happen. He is the only son of God, and God is not coming. And if he is not coming at the crucifixion, then when? And if even Jesus is not being saved, what is the guarantee that those who are going to follow Jesus will be saved? And the fools are still believing that they will be saved if they follow Jesus. Even Jesus is not saved, and he knew it. He waited for a time for the miracle to happen – but it didn’t happen.

Miracles don’t happen at all. They have never happened. They are only wish fulfillments of people who are dreaming and hallucinating. They are not realities. If you believe in them, they may appear to you almost real, perhaps more than real. It is your belief that creates the hallucination; otherwise there is nothing – no miracle. But Jesus himself believed that he was doing miracles; and he was waiting for the miracle. These are all very childish qualities.

He is a little bit schizophrenic, too. He goes on saying, ”Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God.” But he is not a meek person. He is very arrogant. If you are burdened with Christian conditioning you may not be able to see that he is very arrogant. But once you are clean you can see it clearly. He enters the temple, the great temple of the Jews, and throws out the moneychangers, turns over their tables, hits them, beats them... and he is talking of meekness, humbleness!

He and his followers are hungry and they have been refused food in a village. He is very angry. They come to a fig tree; it is not the season for figs, so of course there are no figs on the tree. And he becomes so mad at the fig tree and curses it: ”You are also against us; you will not provide figs for us.” Now, a person cursing a fig tree out of season – what do you call such a person? And it is not only me, his own master... Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was imprisoned, and when he heard these things about Jesus, even he became doubtful about whether he was worthy to be accepted as a disciple or not. He sent a message from the jail to Jesus: ”Do you think you are really the messiah for whom the Jews have been waiting?” Because he became suspicious – the things that Jesus is saying and doing are contradictory, and the way he is behaving is not the way of a religious man. He is behaving very irreligiously.

A religious man cannot take the standpoint that, ”I am special, the only begotten son of God.” A religious man comes to know that he is as ordinary as every ordinary thing. He is just like the blades of grass or the stars or the mountains. He is not special in any way. The idea of specialness, of being extra-ordinary, superior, is nothing but the game of the ego which creates all kinds of arrogance.

The same was the situation with other religions. I have spoken on Mahavira, but I cannot agree with the man’s behavior, nor can I agree with the ideology and the guidelines that he gives to his disciples. They are absolutely against nature.

Mahavira lived naked. Now, it is not accidental that man has invented clothes. It is absolutely a natural need... because other animals grow hair all over the body and they are protected from winter and cold. Man has not that capacity. Even if he grows hair, it is not as thick as on an animal who lives in the snows. He will not survive, he will die. He has to protect his body. He is not cold blooded, like cold blooded fishes which live in the Arctic. Their blood is cold, ice cold, and it has a certain chemical that keeps it from freezing. The outside, to us, is freezing cold; for those fishes it is not. Man is a hot blooded animal. He needs protection. Now, to make him go naked is absolutely idiotic. And Mahavira prescribes that you should not use any kinds of instruments – even simple instruments like a razor blade, which is not a big machine or big technology. If you want to cut your hair you have to pull your hair out. So Jaina monks every year pull out their hair. This is so stupid, so ugly, so unnatural... and for what?

The whole reasoning is that if you do these things you earn virtue and you will be in heaven. On the one hand he says, ”Don’t be greedy, greed is sin.” And on the other hand, he is teaching nothing but greed, greed in the other world. That seems to be far more greedy even than the ordinary greed of this world: having money or a good house seems to be nothing compared to eternal pleasures in heaven. And Jainas have seven heavens, so the more you torture yourself the higher you reach. So it seems there is certainly an element of masochism in Mahavira. But I could not say this to the Jainas.

So I have been carrying a heavy weight on me, on my heart. My health has been destroyed for many reasons; the most important is this, that I have been speaking on people with whom I do not agree at all. I disagree – not only disagree, but I find them basically psychotic, neurotic, schizophrenic, anti-life. All these religions in the past are anti-life. Nobody is for life, nobody is for living, nobody is for laughter. No religion has accepted a sense of humor as a quality of religiousness.

Hence, I say my religion is the first religion which takes man in his totality, in his naturalness, accepts man’s whole, as he is. And that’s what holy means to me – not something sacred, but something accepted in its wholeness. Perhaps things are a little bit upside down and you have to put them in place; just like a jigsaw puzzle, you have to put them in place. And then out of that wholeness arises religious consciousness

I have spoken more on Buddha than on anybody else. But he is as much anti-life as anyone else: ”This life has to be used just to reach the real life which is after death.” Now, nobody has returned after death. Not a single proof exists of anybody returning after death and telling you that there is life there. And all these religions are based on this assumption, that there is a life after death; sacrifice this for that. And I am saying, ”Sacrifice that for this!” – because this is all that you have got: herenow. And if there is any life after death, you will be there and then it will be ”here and now.”

Once you know how to live here and now, you will be able to live there too. So I teach you how to live here and now.

This is the first religion which does not reject anything from your life. It accepts you totally, as you are, and finds methods and ways of how to make a more harmonious whole. You have all the ingredients, everything that is needed is within you – perhaps not in the right place. It has to be put in its right place. And once everything is put in its right place, that I call virtue. Then the man of character, the man whom I can call a moral man, a religious man, arises out of you.

Osho- From Unconciousness to Consciousness
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