Come Follow To You, Vol 1 - Oshorajneesh.com

aware you become aware of the austere beauty of aloneness. You become awareof the music that is continuously happening within your soul... but you havenever allowed yourself to be alone to hear it, to be in rapport with it, to be onewith it.Religion is not conformity because all conformity is mechanical. You do certainthings because you are expected to do them. You do them because you have tolive with people and you have to follow their rules; you do them because youhave been conditioned to do them. You go to church, you go to temple, you pray,you follow rituals, but everything is empty. Unless your heart is in it, everythingis dead and mechanical. You may do everything exactly as it is prescribed, withno error -- it may be perfect -- but then, too, it is dead.I have heard that President Kennedy had to sign so many letters, autographs andpersonalized pictures that a small mechanism was invented for him. Themachine used to sign for him, and the signature was so perfect that no expertwas able to say which was mechanical and which was true -- not even PresidentKennedy himself was able to say which was false and which was true. MalcolmMuggeridge reports that when Kennedy was killed they forgot to turn themachine off, so it continued. The President continued to sign personalized letterseven when he was dead. A mechanism is a mechanism.You become a Christian: then you become a mechanism. You go on behaving asif you really loved Christ, but that 'as if' has to be remembered. You become aBuddhist: you go on behaving as if you follow Buddha, but that 'as if' should notbe forgotten. Your signature may be perfect, but it is coming out of a deadmechanism.Religion is not conformity. Conformity is between the individual and the past,and religion is something between the individual and the present -- poetry issomething between the individual and the future. Conformity means to conformwith those people who are no more, the dead -- to conform with Moses, withMahavir. Now to conform with jesus is a dead thing; you are conforming withthe past. If you relate to the present, it is totally different. It revolutionizes you; itgives you a rebirth.Conformity is between the individual and the society. Religion is somethingbetween the individual and existence itself. Society is our creation: God createdAdam -- not humanity; God created Eve -- not humanity. God createsindividuals; humanity is our fiction.But the fiction can take possession of you and you can forget the real and cling tothe fiction. I know persons who want to love humanity and they cannot loveanother human being. Where is humanity and how are you going to lovehumanity? You can only make empty gestures in the air.Humanity is nowhere. Wherever you come across it, you will come across real,concrete human beings. Humanity is an abstraction, a mere word. It has noreality in it -- a soapbubble, nothing more. You can only come across real humanbeings. To love a real human being is very difficult, but to love humanity is veryCome Follow To You Vol 1Osho