Osho – To me spirituality is living totally, intensely

Question – Bhagwan, What is Spirituality?

Osho – The old concept has been, that spirituality is something against materialism. To renounce the pleasures of matter, of body, of mind has been defined as spirituality. To me it is nonsense.

Spirituality is to be disidentified with everything that you can see, that can be an object to you — so that finally you remain only the subject. Pure subjectivity is spirituality. It has nothing to do with renouncing anything. In fact, the spiritual being will be able to enjoy everything more intensely, more totally than the materialist. The materialist is very poor. All the religions have condemned the poor materialist. He has nothing worth condemning. His life is superficial.

Spirituality is life in depth, in ultimate depth. You are centered at your very being. But you can go on living on the circumference, moving freely anywhere — still remaining at the center. Your identity is at the center. You know who you are. Then there is no problem, if you enjoy food, if you enjoy clothes, if you enjoy a beautiful house, if you enjoy music, painting. There is no problem. There is no need to renounce it.

Old spirituality has killed so much of creativity in man, that some day if man becomes aware of what the old spirituality has done, all your saints will be condemned as the greatest criminals — for the simple reason because they have prevented all creativity. Condemned it as materialism. They tried to live a juiceless life, and they enforced on other people also to live in the same way. Spirituality was something like living in a corpse.

To me spirituality is living totally, intensely, burning your torch on both the ends. Still remaining aware of your center, never losing for a single moment the awareness of who you are. Then it doesn’t matter where you are. If you remember who you are, it does not matter where you are. You will be in absolute bliss.

Source – Osho Book “Last Testament, Vol 6″