Home | Articles | Features | Modern Teachers
Listings | Community Noticeboard | Chat Board
Osho on Sannyas I call him a sannyasin who has the courage to live in utter freedom, and who accepts no bondage, no organization, no discipline whatsoever. This freedom, however, does not mean license; it does not mean that a sannyasin becomes licentious. The truth is that it is always a man in bondage, a slave, who turns licentious. One who is independent and free can never be licentious; there is no way for him to be so. Therefore, sannyas has to be invested with a new meaning, a new concept. Sannyas has to live; it is the most profound, the most precious treasure that mankind has. But how to save it, preserve it, is the question. It should be our great endeavor to see that no sect is born, because nothing has harmed religion as much as these sects have. Sects have done more harm to religion than irreligion itself. In fact, a genuine coin is always harmed by its counterfeits; nothing else can harm it so much. Similarly, if ever true religion is harmed, it is harmed only by pseudo religions. And a tremendous awareness is needed to avoid this danger. A sect is not going to emerge in the wake of our efforts, because no one is my disciple and I am no one's guru or Master. And if I am offering to be a witness to some people taking sannyas, it is because, right now, they cannot connect with God directly. And I ask them to be on their own and not to disturb me any longer when they become directly connected with the supreme The Harms of Religious Organizations…
The moment a religious person is followed by a group to whom he can tell what to do and how to live, the whole thing becomes not only nonreligious but, ultimately, antireligious. This has always happened. Every religion has done this, but no religious person has ever intended it to happen. It is a necessary evil. Whenever there is someone who has something to say, something to show, this comes to our minds very easily: how people can be benefited by it. And this is good; it is done with compassion. But the very nature of things is such that the moment you begin to organize, it becomes a mission. The thing that you were trying to do dies in the process. But this is the very nature of things. You cannot do anything about it.
As I see it, religious people will be needed in the future, not religious organizations. Unless we discard organizations altogether, the spiritual explosion that you are talking about will never come. It cannot be brought, it can only come by itself. But we can help it to come by not organizing according to ideologies. Every ideology is good when it begins, but by and by it has to compromise. To compromise for the sake of the organization.