Let me summarize what I am saying. I am saying: religions should not be mixed with the state because there is no religion yet. And whatever exists in the name of religion is not religion. That brings me to a totally different understanding.

Religion is in the process of birth.

Just as it took three hundred years for science to come of age, if humanity survives, then religion will also come of age. That day it will be sheer stupidity to say that state and religion should remain separate, because it will mean that all which is valuable in life and all that is great in existence should remain separate from the state - that the state should not be benefited by the enlightened ones, that the state should continue to exist in its dark world of politics, dirty in every possible way, that it should never see the light.

-Rajneesh

Whenever there has been a religious person, soon the pseudo-religious people, politicians with religious masks, gathered around. It is not Jesus who created Christianity. It is not Buddha who created Buddhism. It is not Mahavira who created Jainism.

Very strange, almost unbelievable .... Jesus was crucified by the Romans because Judea was a slave country under the Roman empire and what a strange fate, that Rome became the citadel of Christianity! It still remains the citadel of Christianity.

-Rajneesh

Organized religion is nothing but politics in the name of religion. And the people who organize it are not religious, cannot be. The popes, the shankaracharyas, the imams, the rabbis - these people are not religious at all for the simple reason that they are full of knowledgeability, while a religious man knows he knows nothing. He knows that existence is so mysterious, there is no way to reduce it into knowledge. He is mystified by existence.

A truly religious person is a mystic.

He is a poet - not writing poetry, but living poetry.

He is a painter - not painting on the canvas but painting on his own consciousness continuously.

He is a musician; he may have never touched any instrument but he is continuously playing on his own inner being a music which cannot be translated in any way, cannot be brought from those higher realms of being to the lower, darker valleys of our life.

He is a dancer; he may not move from one posture but his being is in a continual dance.

A religious person cannot be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. To be religious is to be so vast you cannot confine it in such small prisons - churches, sects, creeds, dogmas.

-Rajneesh

Religion has not been a blessing yet.

It has been a curse.

But remember, it is not religion.

It is pseudo-religion.

Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Mohammedanism - these are all cults. These are all exploiting humanity in the name of religion. They are not religions at all. They are superstitions.

-Rajneesh

Western science should take over the whole world as far as science is concerned.

Eastern religiousness should take over the whole world as far as religion is concerned.

And that's what I mean when I say science and religion are two aspects of one thing.

The West has worked on the objective truth.

The East has worked on the subjective truth.

The East has poured its whole energy into that dimension, just as the West has poured its energy into the objective direction. Now, both have found great treasures. It is good that they should share their treasures. In that sharing the world will become one; and of course in that sharing much will be destroyed - in the East and in the West. But it needs to be destroyed. It has no right to exist. If it cannot face the truth then why go on clinging to it because it is Eastern or because it is Western?

-Rajneesh