From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 12. FAITH: THE SUICIDE OF INTELLIGENCE
know your face through the mirror, you are acquainted with yourself through other people’s opinion;
you don’t know yourself directly. And the opinions that you depend on are of those people who are
in a similar position: they don’t know themselves.
These religions have created a society of blind people, and they go on telling you that you don’t
need eyes. Jesus had eyes; what is the need for Christians to have eyes? All that you have to do is
to believe in Jesus; he will lead the way to paradise, you have simply to follow. You are not allowed
to think, because thinking may take you astray. It is bound to take you on different paths than they
want you to take, because thinking means sharpening your doubt, your intellect. And that is very
dangerous for the so-called religions.
The so-called religions want you dull, dead, somehow dragging; they want you without intelligence.
But they are clever in giving good names: they call it faith. It is nothing but the suicide of your
intelligence.
A true religion will not require faith from you. A true religion will require experience.
It will not ask you to drop your doubt, it will help you to sharpen your doubt so that you can enquire
to the very end.
The true religion will help you to find your truth.
And remember, my truth can never be your truth because there is no way of transferring truth from
one person to another.
Mohammed’s truth is Mohammed’s truth; it cannot be yours just by your becoming a Mohammedan.
To you it will remain only a belief And who knows whether Mohammed knows or not? Who knows,
jesus may be simply a fanatic, neurotic. That’s what modern psychiatrists, psychologists and
psychoanalysts agree upon, that Jesus is a mental case.
To declare oneself to be the only begotten son of God, to declare, ”I am the messiah who has come
to redeem the whole world from suffering and sin” – do you think it is normal? And how many people
has he redeemed? I don’t think that he was able to redeem even a single person from suffering and
sin. He was certainly a megalomaniac.
How can you have faith? Even if a Gautam Buddha knows the truth, there is no way for you to know
whether he knows it or not. Yes, you can recognize somebody knowing the truth, if you also know it;
then you will have the capacity to smell it. Otherwise you are simply believing in public opinion: you
are believing in mass psychology, which is the lowest.
Truth comes to the highest intelligence.
But if from the very beginning you are taught to believe, then you are crippled, you are destroyed.
If from the very beginning you are conditioned to have faith, you have lost your soul.
Then you will vegetate, you will not live. And that’s what millions of people around the world are
doing: vegetating.
From Ignorance to Innocence 154 Osho