One of the most controversial, intelligent, original, free-thinking and courageous spiritual leaders that lived in the last century has been Shree Rajneesh, who later changed his name to simply Osho. The name Osho has been variously translated to mean a zero sum or empty which refers to the absence of ego or as they say in Zen, the state of no-mind, a perfect state of emptiness strived for in meditation practice. Rajneesh did not present himself up as someone who was holy or who was favored by God; not as someone to be paid reverence or as someone who was a religious leader. He was against all religions.
Rajneesh would agree that man’s ego, joined together with religious belief and fear, has been responsible for history’s most egregious crimes and atrocities most often committed in the name of God and one religious belief or another. The Christian crusades are a prime example. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is a continuation.
What kind of God approves of man’s inhumanity to man? How can anyone believe that God sanctions torture and war; that God rejoices as members of one faith attempt to annihilate members of another faith? What kind of God loves one nation but not another, loves some of his children but not all? Only a God that man has created as part of a fabricated religious belief.
Shree Rajneesh argues against blind religious faith and tells us that trust will set us free; that trust opens the door for truth and enlightenment and pushes fear aside.
Rajneesh says God’s gracious gift to mankind is trust. He says trust does not mean faith. Faith is phony; faith is blind. Faith is superstitious; you haven’t known, you have simply believed. And all religious belief is out of fear; man believes because he is afraid. He clings to religious beliefs so he can feel safe, secure.
Trust, Rajneesh says, is a totally different phenomenon, diametrically opposite to belief, to faith. Trust is an experience that can only happen with the help of God. You can’t create it. You can create belief; you can become a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, etc. There are 300 different religions on the earth. You can choose any of them but that will be your belief, and your belief is not going to help. Your belief will remain a prison for you. Your belief will be a sheer waste of your life, because the more you believe the less you enquire; and there is no truth without enquiry. Then how does trust happen?
Trust comes from God. All that is needed on your part is to be a welcoming heart, to be receptive, to be open. Belief makes you closed. So this looks paradoxical but this is how it is; the believing man never comes to know what trust is. Neither does the non-believer because belief and non-belief are cousin-brothers, they are not different. Non-belief is also a kind of belief. It is anti but a kind of belief; negative but a kind of belief. Trust comes to the mind that neither believes nor disbelieves; a mind that is simply open, that has no prejudice, a mind that says, “I am available, if truth comes I will welcome it.”
And when truth comes, it comes with certainty. And when it descends on you, it transforms you, but it is nothing of your own; it is from God, it is God’s gift.
Rajneesh advises you to be loving and open and one day you will be surprised that something has happened to you; a tremendous trust will arise in you – trust in existence, in life, in everything that is. That trust is the true foundation of a religious consciousness and spiritual peace.
He further states that trust and love are partners in the dissolution of the ego; that the greatest courage in life is to dissolve yourself in love; that there is no other bravery greater than that. Everyone is a coward where the death of the ego is concerned because the death of the ego is somehow perceived to be, appears to be, our own death. It is not, but there is no way to prove it unless you personally experience it, hence courage is needed to step into the unknown.
Love is the alchemy of dissolving your ego and once the ego is gone, God is. God is completely present only when the ego is gone and trust becomes complete.
So sayeth Osho.
