News Release, 30 August 2000
Yet another UN ‘Circus’ – this time dubbed as Millennium Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders – will not eliminate religious intolerance or promote spirituality, said Swami Chaitanya Keerti.
“Four major current international conflicts – Ireland, Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Kashmir – are due to religious differences which have caused wars even before the Crusades. So how can the forthcoming Declaration for World Peace exterminate them?” he asked.
“The UN has mothered many such declarations on human rights, environment, women, health and education among others and yet the global problems have multiplied in all these areas. The on-going circus is another such example of typical UN summits full of high sounding platitudes without concrete results,” he added.
For a start, the Summit focuses on religion when what is required is religiousness. Osho says, “There are three hundred religions and at least three thousand sub-sects of those religions. The world needs one universal religiousness. I don’t teach Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity; I only teach a kind of religiousness. The world is fed up with all these ‘isms’.”
The other sphere of spirituality never requires a huge gathering. According to Osho spirituality is the journey of the alone to the alone and the transformation of the individual. An individual&Mac226;s search for the ultimate
never requires a congregation or a gathering like the Olympic Games. Spirituality is a personal and individual effort as amply proven by Mahavir, Buddha or Jesus. Spirituality is not a numbers game.
Moreover, the UN summit has lost credibility by kowtowing to China and not inviting Dalai Lama who has gained more stature by being excluded from this assembly of conformists and not any rebellious spirits.
So the answer is religiousness – not religion. The answer is an individual’s inner transformation – not assembly. Finally, it is the harmony of the inner science of spirituality and the outer or physical sciences of the body. Osho emphasizes this vision with his ‘new man’ for the new millennium, said Swami
Chaitanya Keerti.
Osho explains, “I have been proclaiming the new man as Zorba the Buddha – which is a meeting of East and West, which is a meeting of science and religion, which is a meeting of logic and love, which is a meeting of the outer and the inner. Only in these meetings will you find peace; otherwise, you will remain a battlefield.”
Osho on New Man and Religiousness
Man is not going to be Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian; man is not going to be Indian, German, English; man is not going to be white or black. Not that colors will disappear – the white man will be white and the black will be black – but these will become irrelevant, trivial, meaningless; they will not be decisive. The new man will have a universal consciousness, and the foundation will be laid by the meeting of science and religion.
We need a new kind of human being who has both wings: the wings of knowledge, science, technology, and the wings of meditation, enlightenment, love, freedom. When both wings are functioning in a deep synchronicity, in a deep togetherness, in accord and harmony, then only man is complete, total.
A new vision is needed in the world – a new vision which will be as scientific as possible and as religious as possible. That I call revolution. The world is waiting for that revolution, the world is hungry for that revolution – where religion and science can disappear into each other, where East and West can become one for the first time, where the materialist and the spiritualist are no more enemies but are holding hands in deep friendship. Because that is what is happening in life itself: matter is holding hands with spirit. The materialist need not be against the spiritualist, nor need the spiritualist be against the materialist.
Osho: The Revolution
I teach you a totally different kind of religiousness. It is that of meditation. You are not to worship, you are not to pray; you have to go deep within your own self – a journey of self-discovery. It is not a question of discovering God. Why are you after God? What wrong has he done to you? Forgive him, forget him!
Osho
I teach you a new religion! Not Christianity, not Hinduism, not Jainism, not Buddhism. I teach you a new kind of religiousness – guilt-free, tabooless, non-repressive. I teach you a religion of joy, acceptance, naturalness, spontaneity.
Osho
I teach a religion which is beyond religions. I teach a religion which is religionless, because religions — Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism – have not helped. They have, on the contrary, been very great disasters to humanity. Now something is urgently needed which will not have any adjective to it, just pure religion. A kind of religiousness I teach. Prayer I teach, meditation I teach, love I teach; but no theology, no dogmas, no doctrine, no scripture.
Osho
