From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. SHAME IS THE NAME OF THEIR GAME
Magical religion is the most primitive religion, but fragments of it remain in the second phase; there is
not a very clear-cut demarcation. The second phase is the pseudo-religion: Hinduism, Christianity,
Mohammedanism, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism – and there are three hundred ”isms” in
all. These are pseudo-religions. They have come a little further than magical religion.
Magical religion is simply ritualistic.
It is an effort to persuade God to help you. The enemy is going to invade the country; the rain is not
coming, or too much rains have come and the rivers are flooded, your crops are being destroyed....
So whenever you find these difficulties, you ask the help of God. But the magical religion is not a
discipline for you. Hence magical religions are not repressive: they are not concerned yet with your
transformation, your change.
The pseudo-religions shift the attention from God to you.
God remains in the center, but fades far away. For the magical-religious person God is very close
by; he can talk to Him, he can persuade Him. Pseudo-religions still carry the idea of God, but now
God is far away, far, far away. Now the only way to reach Him is not through rituals but through a
significant change in your lifestyle. They start molding and changing you.
The magical religions leave people as they are, so the people who believe in magical religions are
more natural, less phony, but more primitive, more unsophisticated, more uncultured. The people
who belong to pseudo-religions are more sophisticated, more cultured, more educated. Religion to
them is not just ritual, it is their whole life’s philosophy.
Your question comes here, at the second phase of religion. You ask why all the religions have used
repression as a basic strategy, for what? The phenomenon of repression is tremendously significant
to understand, because all the religions differ in every other way from each other, are against all
other religions in every other aspect.
No two religions agree on anything – except repression.
So repression seems to be the greatest tool in their hands. What are they doing with it?
Repression is the mechanism of enslaving man, of putting humanity into psychological and spiritual
slavery.
Long before Sigmund Freud discovered the phenomenon of repression, religions had already used
it for five thousand years, and successfully.
The methodology is simple – the methodology is to turn you against yourself – but it does miracles.
Once you are turned against yourself, many things are bound to happen.
First: you will be weakened. You will never be the same strong person you were before. Before, you
were one; now you are not only two, but many. Before, you were a single whole entity, now you are
a crowd. Your father’s voice is speaking in you from one fragment, your mother’s voice is speaking
from another fragment; and within you they are still fighting with each other – although they may both
From Ignorance to Innocence 87 Osho