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Chapter 8 - The taste of your being
is now Christianity, and to pay respect to the pope means all the votes of the Christians will be yours.
Organized religions -- whether it is Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism -- have not been seekers of truth. In two thousand years, what truth has organized Christianity added to the statements of Jesus? So what is the need of this organization? It is not increasing religiousness in the world, it is simply repeating what Jesus has said -- which is available in books for anybody to read. In twenty-five centuries, how many Buddhists have searched for the truth, or have found the truth? -- just a long line of parrots repeating what Gautam Buddha has found.
And you should be reminded that Gautam Buddha was not part of any organized religion; neither was Mahavira part of any organized religion, nor was Jesus part of any organized religion -- they were individual seekers.
Truth has always been found by individuals. That is the privilege of the individual, and his dignity.
Organized religions have created wars -- just like politicians have done. Their names may be different... politicians fight for socialism, for communism, for fascism, for nazism, and organized religions have been fighting for God, for love, for their concept of what truth is.
And millions of people have been killed in the clashes between Christians and Mohammedans, between Christians and Jews, between Mohammedans and Hindus, between Hindus and Buddhists. Religion has nothing to do with war; it is a search for peace. But organized religions are not interested in peace, they are interested in becoming more and more powerful and dominant.
I condemn the organized religions in the same way I condemn the politicians -- they are nothing but politics. So when I said to you that religious people should be respected, honored
-- the politicians should go to them for advice -- I was not talking about organized religions; I was talking only about religious individuals. And a
religious individual is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. How can he be? -- God himself is not Hindu, not Mohammedan, not Christian. And the man who knows something of the divine becomes colored with his divinity, becomes fragrant with godliness.
In the ancient East these religious people were our highest flowers, and even kings and emperors used to go to them to touch their feet and to be blessed -- to ask their advice on problems which they were unable to solve.
If we want the world to remain alive, we have to bring back our ancient childhood days when the religious person had no interest of his own. That's why his eyes were clear, his heart was pure love, his being was nothing but a blessing. Whomsoever came to him was healed, his problems were solved; he was given new insights into rotten old problems.
Organized religions should disappear from the world -- they should drop this mask of being religious. They are simply politicians, wolves hiding themselves in the skin of sheep.
They should come into their true colors; they should be politicians -- there is no harm in that.
And all the time they are politicians, but they are playing the game in the name of religion.
Organized religions don't have any future.
They should drop their disguise and come truly out in front as politicians, and be part of the political world so that we can find the authentic religious individual -- who will be very Osho - The Hidden Splendor
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