Growing up, my family simply didn’t enforce or discuss any religion. I took this to mean I was atheist, and since a very young age, would always present that as my stance when religion was brought up. This brought about questions from my primarily Catholic peers that, frankly, none of us could have possibly claimed to have the answers to. As I got older, I realized claiming to believe that there was no god at all, was not much different from what all of my god-fearing friends believed. I soon discovered that my uncertainty about souls, a higher being, and the after-life could be more accurately categorized as agnostic.
Until recently, I would say I was agnostic as my way of displaying deference to all the religions that I could honestly say I knew nothing about. I certainly never knew enough to say that any religion was incorrect, just that I thought adhering to one was more or less a waste of my time. And in the interest of finding answers about the divine, I could wait until they simply presented themselves.
After reading “Returning to the Source” by Osho, I have found that there is an even better way to understand religion without claiming to know or firmly believe any one truth. Prior to reading the book, I would have associated the teachings of Zen and enlightenment strictly with eastern religions such as Buddhism. After reading a few chapters, it seems as though Osho himself leaned more towards a Catholic religion, often referencing Jesus and the cross. For instance, he discussed the enlightened art of vertical thinking. While we tend to think horizontally, jumping from thought to thought, only scraping the surface of our ideas, there is a whole other dimension of thought that Osho claims may be attained by being more aware and attentive to each particular thought. Vertical and horizontal thought, Osho says, are both represented in the image of the cross upon which Jesus was infamously hung.
As I proceeded with the book, it became clear that enlightenment was not a teaching of religion, but of attaining the most natural mindset in a very unnatural world. I even thought at many points that perhaps Osho was promoting some sort of nature religion. However, he stated towards the middle of the book that zen is not an art of believing, it is an art of suspending belief along with the mind itself in order to attain true happiness and fulfillment.
Osho talked a lot about the ego and self-consciousness. His main points surrounding these two seemingly inescapable aspects of the naturally occurring human mind, is that they can be suspended through simple observation. When one observes the ways in which ego, and the importance we place on how others perceive us, causes great joy but also the greatest of our miseries, it becomes something that we may drop altogether. This dropping of the ego is essentially the core of enlightenment, and ironically goes hand in hand with suspension of all the things we assume we “know”.
Osho uses teachings from all of the various religions and anecdotes from many of the holy books, to display his points of true selflessness and oneness with a greater being. It isn’t difficult to conceive that nature and Earth itself is the greater being of which humans are only a mere fraction. However, this is not nature religion. This is a fulfillment that does not require one higher power to write a code of morals and guide each individual action. It does not deny that there may be something greater beyond, but simply acknowledges that strictly believing in any one of the possibilities is to wrongfully assume ourselves righteous enough to have access to these truths, and suspend the countless other possibilities.
