Rajneesh Quotes

People don't so much believe in God as that they choose not to believe in nothing.

I think human beings are almost, by definition, religious people,in the sense that we ask questions of meaning, we anticipate future events, we deal with the issues of mortality from the first time we see a dead bird as a little child.

In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.

'Why are we here?' 'What is our purpose? 'Is there an afterlife?' 'Is there a God?' 'Is it all about science?' Those are big questions, and usually, TV is a little scared to go there.

I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them.

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one.

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.

Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.

He [God] just seems so man-made to me. There are so many theories, and not everyone can be right. It's human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don't begrudge anyone that. I just don't need one.

Man today being concerned with production and consumption as ends in themselves, has very little engergy time to devote himself to the true religious experience.

In vain do science and philosophy pose as the arbiters of the human mind, of which they are in fact only the servants. Religion has provided a conception of life, and science travels in the beaten path. Religion reveals the meaning of life, and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances.

I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion.

But I think humans are innately religious as a species, so you don't need a specific excuse for examining the perversely unholy.

I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books.

Faith is a great thing, and really religious people would like us to believe that faith and knowing are the same thing, but I don't believe that myself. Because there are too many different ideas on the subject. What we know is this: When we die, one of two things happens. Either our souls and thoughts somehow survive the experience of dying or they don't. If they do, that opens up every possibility you could think of. If they don't, it's just blotto. The end.

An atheist can be charitable but not religious. But the religious man must be charitable.

[Star Wars is] designed primarily to make young people think about the mystery. Not to say, 'Here's the answer.' It's to say, 'Think about this for a second. Is there a God? What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? How do we relate to God?'

The melancholy have the best sense of the comic, the opulent often the best sense of the rustic, the dissolute often the best sense of the moral, and the doubter often the best sense of the religious.

Atheism tells him what he isn’t, and like all of us he yearns to know what he is.

I am a nonbeliever myself. But I think there's so much about religion that is not factual in nature as to why people engage with it and what it means to them. You can debunk why you think there's no physical evidence for God and why the story of Jesus didn't really happen that way and stuff like that all the live-long day, and it's not going to make a difference to what role religion has in people's lives and how they feel about it and how it makes their lives better or worse.

Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, "What comes into your mind when you think about God?" we might predict with certainty the future of that man.

Religion--that voice of the deepest human experience.

Its a consequence of the experience of science. As you learn more and more about the universe, you find you can understand more and more without any reference to supernatural intervention, so you lose interest in that possibility. Most scientists I know dont care enough about religion even to call themselves atheists. And that, I think, is one of the great things about science-that it has made it possible for people not to be religious.

I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now. It's an old cliche, I know, but it's mine. I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural. So far, at least. Not that I wouldn't like to. I mean, I want to believe. I do pray. I pray to something ... up there. I have a God sense. It's not religious so much as superstitious. It's part of being human, I guess ... Do unto others: How much deeper into religion do we really need to go?