Osho - I have not stopped the sannyas movement; I have stopped it becoming a religion.

Question - Beloved Master, Is it just a coincidence that you started the Neo-Sannyas movement on September 26 and stopped it on the same day after fifteen years?

Osho - I have not stopped the sannyas movement; I have stopped it becoming a religion. A movement is a flux; that's the meaning of movement -- it is moving, it is growing. But a religion is dead -- it has stopped moving, it has stopped growing. It is dead. The only place for it is in the crematorium. That's where we had to take it. And we have celebrated the death of the religion -- a religion which was not my idea.

I trust in sannyasins remaining individuals, I trust in their growth and movement; but I don't like the idea of them becoming like Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists. That's what was done while I was in isolation. In my absence, Sheela gathered around herself a fascist group and managed to cripple the sannyas movement, to make it dead, to make it a religion.

We have burned the religion -- that does not mean we have burned our religiousness. That is a totally different thing. Religiousness is like love -- invisible, yet so tangible. You cannot explain it, but you can experience it. Religiousness has been freed from a dead structure, a bondage that Sheela and her criminal group have put around it. Now you are not Rajneeshees. And I would like the press, the media to be kind enough not to refer to my people as Rajneeshees. They need some kind of reference -- they can call them friends of Rajneesh, and that will be absolutely right and appropriate.

Sheela wanted a dead religion. Every priest or priestess wants a dead religion, because it is predictable. Everything is just a catechism. There is no opinion, no evolution, no growth. Just look at Christianity: two thousand years have passed -- have they gone even an inch farther than Jesus Christ? Twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha -- have Buddhists gone a single step ahead? This is destroying growth, destroying evolution.

Now I want my people to remain open, alive, growing, always fresh and new. It remains a new kind of phenomenon, religiousness: no label attached to it, because every label is a full stop. And I don't like full stops, I don't like even semi-colons: Life is always ongoing....

One journalist was very much worried; he said, "You have destroyed Rajneeshism, the religion. Now you will be in great trouble on two counts: first, Rajneesh Foundation International will lose its tax-exempt status."

I told the man, "Don't you worry about it. We have burned religion but not religiousness; and we will fight so that a man can have a growing experience of religiousness without being part of a mob psychology, without being a member of a collectivity. That is perfectly good for the sheep, but not for lions. And I want my sannyasins to be lions, not sheep.

"Nobody can take away the tax-exempt status. We are more religious than any Christian, any Hindu, any Mohammedan. We have just buried the dead structure and freed the soul of religion. That freedom is religiousness."

He was also worried that it would be difficult now for me in reference to my immigration, on the same grounds. It is not going to be difficult for me at all. If you don't have a category for religiousness, that is your fault. Make a category for religiousness.

Even in my interview with the INS I had made it clear that this is no ordinary religion; it is simply a way of life, a quality of religiousness.

The INS officer said, "But it is difficult, because we don't have any category for that. We have a category for religion."

"Then," I said, "you can write that it is a religionless religion." And that is on record.

What does "religionless religion" mean?

It simply means a religiousness.

And I love fights. It is so exciting. I am all for fighting -- of course, nonviolent fighting, not with guns. Guns are used only by retarded people. I have enough intelligence to fight, to argue. And I will argue my case up to the Supreme Court.

I would like the Supreme Court to give me special permission to fight my case myself. An advocate can be an assistant to me, but I do not want to be lost in legal jargon. I am a straightforward, simple man. And what is the need for truth to have any advocate to defend it? Truth is not defensive; its presence is enough, and its victory is absolutely certain.

So there is no question. The movement of sannyas has been freed, it has not been stopped. It was being stopped. I used to have another corporation just like Rajneesh Foundation International: Neo-Sannyas International. Sheela dropped it. I came to know only when I came out of silence, that now Neo-Sannyas International does not exist -- and that has been my whole life's work!

I am going to revive Neo-Sannyas International. That is a movement; anybody can join it, and I have made it wider, I have given it a wide base. There are millions of people who love me, who love my insights, but cannot become sannyasins because they have to change their clothes -- that creates trouble in their family, in their job, with their friends, in the society. I have withdrawn it.

I have withdrawn the mala. It has significance in India, because in India the red clothes and mala have been used for thousands of years by all the religions as symbolic of a sannyasin. I wanted to destroy that traditional idea of sannyas, because the sannyasin has to be celibate, the sannyasin has not to touch a woman, not to talk to a woman. The sannyasin cannot stay in a household, he has to stay in a temple. He has to eat only once a day, he has to fast continuously again and again. He has to torture himself. This is sick.

I wanted to destroy this image, that's why I had chosen the red color. And I had almost three hundred thousand sannyasins in India. My sannyasins created tremendous trouble amongst the traditional sannyasins, because there was no way to know who is who. My sannyasins would be walking on the road and people would touch their feet, not knowing that these are not celibates; they have their girlfriends. They eat two times a day, they eat everything that is the best -- whether it is Italian or Chinese or Japanese, it does not matter. These people belong to the twenty-first century, and old sannyasins were very angry because I have destroyed their image.

With our coming to the West, now red clothes and the mala are no longer needed, because in the West they have never been symbolic of religion. They have done their work in India. They have made their point, that a sannyasin can be with a wife, with children; that he need not be a parasite on the society, he can work, he can create, he can earn; that he need not be worshipped.

But in the West there is no need. I was going to withdraw the mala and the color anyway, but Sheela made it more urgent; you have to be grateful to her. All her crimes made it absolutely necessary that now sannyasins should be absolutely normal human beings, so you can live in the society without creating any kind of hostility or embarrassment for yourself, for your family, or difficulties in your job.

And, more specifically, you are now completely devoid of all outer symbols. All that is left is the essential core of religiousness, the inward journey, which only you can do. I cannot do it for you, nobody can do it for you. So now there is left only the essential quality, the most fundamental quality of religiousness. That is meditation. You have to go inwards.

I have been teaching you all the methods of meditation. You can choose any method that suits you. There are only one hundred and twelve methods; there is no possibility of adding more. It is exhaustive. All the methods possible have been explored. The simplest is witnessing.

So now that you no longer have any outer symbols, it is good, if you want to be a sannyasin, for you to remember only one thing: how to go into the discipline of witnessing; otherwise there is a possibility that wearing red clothes and the mala you are completely satisfied that you are a sannyasin. You are not. Clothes don't make anybody change, neither does the mala make anybody go through a transformation. But you can deceive yourself.

Now I am taking all that away from you, and leaving only one simple thing. You cannot deceive: either you do it or you don't do it. Without doing it, you are not a sannyasin. So the movement has come to its purest state, the most essential stage; it has not been dropped.

But it is a good coincidence that on the same date I had started the sannyas movement, and on the same date I have made it absolutely purified of all unnecessary, nonessential things. But it is purely a coincidence, because I am not good about dates, days, years. Forgive me for that.

I live in a timeless space. I don't know what day it is, I don't know what date it is. I use the watch only for you -- in the morning discourse, in the evening interviews for the press -- otherwise, the whole day I don't use it. I don't have any need to know what the time is. What am I going to do with the time?

Just for your sake... because I am such a crazy man that I may go on speaking and speaking -- three hours, four hours, five hours -- the watch prevents me. It is simply for your sake, a compassionate gesture.

Source – from Osho book “From Bondage to Freedom”

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