From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 7. SHAME IS THE NAME OF THEIR GAME
Religion condemned sex, condemned your love for food – condemned everything that you can enjoy
– condemned music, condemned art, condemned singing, dancing.
If you look around the world, and collect together all the condemnations from all the religions, you
will see: they have condemned the whole of man. They have not left a single inch uncondemned.
Yes, each religion has done its bit – because if you condemn the whole of man completely, he may
simply freak out. You have to do it proportionately so that he becomes condemned, feels guilty,
wants to be freed from guilt and is ready to take your help. You should not condemn him too much
so that he simply escapes from you or jumps into the ocean and finishes himself That will not be
good business.
It is just like the slaves in the old days. They were given food – not enough that they become too
strong and revolt, and not too little either so that they die; otherwise you make a loss. You give them
a certain percentage so they are just hanging in the middle between life and death, and they go on
living and working for you. Only that much food is given, not more than that; otherwise there will be
energy left after work, and that energy can become revolution. They can start revolting, they can
start joining together, because they can start seeing what is being done to them.
The same has been done by the religions. Every religion has taken a different segment of man and
condemned it, and through it made him feel guilty.
Once guilt is created in you, you are in the clutches of the priest.
You cannot escape now because he is the only one who can clean all the shameful parts of you,
who can make you capable of standing before God without being ashamed.
He creates the fiction of God.
He creates the fiction of guilt.
He creates the fiction that one day you will have to stand before God: so be clean and be pure, and
be in such a state that you can stand before Him without any fear, and without any shame.
The whole thing is fictitious. But this has to be remembered: it is true about the pseudo-religions.
And whenever I say all religions, I mean pseudo-religions; the plural is indicative of the pseudo.
When religion becomes scientific, it is not going to be plural: then it will be simply religion, and its
function will be just the opposite of the pseudo-religions.
Its function will be to make you free from God...
To make you free from heaven and hell...
To make you free from the concept of original sin...
To make you free from the very idea that you and nature are separate...
From Ignorance to Innocence 97 Osho