“Why have religions put you against your natural instincts? For the simple reason, to make you feel guilty. Once guilt is created … their work is done,” says Osho.
Why have religions put you against your natural instincts? For the simple reason, to make you feel guilty. Let me repeat this word guilt. This is their focus of destroying you, exploiting you, molding you, humiliating you, creating disrespect about yourself. Once guilt is created, once you start feeling, “I am a guilty person, a sinner,” their work is done. Then who can save you? Then the savior is needed. But first create the disease.
I have heard about two young men.
Their business was: one young man would enter a town at night and throw coal tar on people’s doors, windows, and then leave the town. In the morning everybody was puzzled: their doors and their windows were destroyed. Now, how to clean it up? And then suddenly the second man would appear – they were partners in the business – and he would announce, “I clean coal tar off things.”
So everybody was rushing to him: “Please come to my house and clean my windows.” The other man was doing the work on the next town. By the time this one had finished cleaning this town, the other man had prepared the next town for him to clean. One went on making people’s houses dirty, the other went on cleaning them. They were partners – fifty-fifty was the game.
The priest first creates guilt – that is throwing coal tar on your face.
Now somebody is needed to clean it off. And it is not the visible face; it is your invisible reality that he goes on throwing coal tar on. You cannot find any way to clean it on your own, because you don’t know what this reality is. All that you know is, the priest has convinced you that you are guilty. And he has absolute explanations for it: that you think about sex, that you think about food when you are fasting, that in the night you should not drink water – nothing should go in your mouth in the night.
But in summer, in India, it is so difficult not to drink water. Even small children are not allowed to by their parents. Even small children will steal water in the night. From the very beginning you are making them thieves, and making them feel guilty because they know they have done something wrong.
Osho, From Unconsciousness to Consciousness, Ch 25, Q 1 (excerpt)
Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
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