From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 16. LET’S NOT FACE IT – YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY ALONE
So those people who don’t want you to be rebels – because your being rebellious goes against
their interests – go on enforcing, conditioning your mind with Christianity, with Judaism, with
Mohammedanism, with Hinduism, and they keep you trembling deep inside.
That is their power, so anybody who is interested in power, whose whole life is nothing but a will-topower,
has tremendous use for the hypothesis of God.
If you are afraid of God – and if you believe in God you have to be afraid – you have to follow His
orders and commandments, His holy book, His messiah, His incarnation; you have to follow Him
and His agents. In fact He does not exist, only the agent exists. This is a very strange business.
Religion is the most strange business of all. There is no boss, but there are mediators: the priest,
the bishop, the cardinal, the pope, the messiah, the whole hierarchy – and on top there is nobody.
But Jesus derives his authority and power from God – His only begotten son. The pope derives his
authority from Jesus – His only true representative, infallible. And it goes on and on to the lowest
priest... but there is no God; it is your fear
You asked for God to be invented because you could not live alone.
You were incapable of facing life, its beauties, its joys, its sufferings, its anguishes. You were not
ready to experience them on your own without anybody protecting you, without somebody being an
umbrella to you. You asked for God out of fear. And certainly there are con men everywhere. You
ask and they will do it for you. You asked and they said, ”We know God is, and you have just to do
this prayer....”
Tolstoy has a beautiful story. It became a great trouble for the highest priest in the Russian orthodox
church, because three men who lived beyond a lake under a tree became very famous; so famous
that instead of people coming to the high priest they started going to those three saints.
Now, in Christianity ”saint” is a very strange word. In any other language saint and the equivalent of
saint are very respectful words, but not in Christianity, because saint means only: sanctified by the
pope, certified by the pope.
Joan of Arc was made a saint after three hundred years. One infallible pope burned her alive.
After three hundred years they changed their mind, because people were becoming more and more
favorable to loan of Arc; then the pope thought it was a good time to declare her a saint. She
had been declared a witch and was burned alive – and this was done by one infallible pope. Then
another infallible pope, after three hundred years, declared Joan of Arc to be a saint. Her grave
was dug up again and whatsoever was there – a few bones may have remained – was brought out,
worshipped, sanctified. She has become a saint.
”Saint” in the Christian reference is ugly. The Sanskrit word is sant, equivalent to saint. If you derive
it from sant, if you write sant, you can read it saint; but sant means one who has arrived, one who
has known satya. Sat means the ultimate truth, and one who has realized it is called a saint – not
somebody certified! It is not a degree or a title that somebody can give to you.
From Ignorance to Innocence 224 Osho