Saturday, August 14, 2010

Man's Past Has Been Very Stupid

Man’s Past Has Been Very Stupid… (Part 1)

Man’s past has been very stupid, and the whole stupidity has arisen out of a life-negative approach, attitude. And all the religions in the past have supported the life-negative approach. Not the Buddhas, not the Christs, not the Zarathustras, but the priests. It is the professional religious man who has been exploiting the names of the Buddhas, the Christs, the Zarathustras, who has been exploiting the masses.

The priest has found it very helpful to keep people life-negative, because the moment a person is life-negative he becomes weak. And it is easy to exploit the weak, to enslave the weak. It is easy to dominate the weak, to destroy the weak.

Hence the priest has found that two things are very essential for man’s strength, freedom, consciousness – and both have to be destroyed. One is food, the other is sex – both are basic instincts. Food is needed for the individual to survive, and sex is needed for the race to survive. Without food and sex humanity will disappear. Knowing this, that these are the essential requirements of a really alive man, priests have been against both, and they have supported fasting and they have supported celibacy. Because they have supported fasting they have made people food-obsessed. Any religion that has fasting as its orientation – for example, Jainism – is bound to create food-obsession in its followers. And any religion that is rooted in its opposition to sex is bound to create sex-obsession.

Pornography is a by-product of your so-called religions. It is a religious phenomenon – excuse me! It is because of your priests that pornography exists. And it is not a new thing, it is as ancient as man. Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri – what are they? Pornography in sculpture. And you can go to the most ancient caves and you will always find pornography of some kind or other. You can look into folk literature, folk songs, folk stories, and you will always find them pornographic.

Excerpted from Osho, The White Lotus, Chapter 10


Next article: Man’s Past Has Been Very Stupid… (Part 2)

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