Osho,
When I came to Pune ten years ago I was a fifteen year-old teenage girl with a heart full of trust and a longing for truth. During those few months that I could stay with you undisturbed I experienced the most beautiful time of my life. When I was forced back to Germany by the legal authorities and my parents, who are not your sannyasins, something broke inside and left a wound which never healed.
Now, being with you in India again, the moment I walked through the ashram gate in Pune something slid into place, and a door opened. Walking through your garden, just sitting silent, under the trees, your fragrance is still in the air. My being vibrates, my heart sings, “Home, home, this is the place where I was born.” There is so much joy that it is almost painful, and just beyond that, the silence.
Osho, what is happening with me? And why couldn’t it happen anywhere else?

The parents represent the establishment. They love you, they have no intention to harm you, but they are unconscious beings – with all good intentions.

They have joined hands with the vested interests not to allow their children to become intelligent, to become courageous, to become self-respectful, to have a certain pride that existence has chosen you to be. They have done this to their children instead of making them feel at home in existence, helping them to be more and more in tune with the seasons, with the trees, with the clouds, so that by the time they are mature enough they can have a religion….

The word religion originates from a root which means “that which joins you” – joins you with what? “That which connects you” – connects you with what?

If you are not being conditioned, if your mind has not been filled with superstitions of all kinds, if your search has not been killed, if your parents have really loved you – and the first requirement of real love is to allow absolute freedom, unconditional freedom to the other – then one day you will find your religion.

Religion is not a commodity. You cannot purchase it in the marketplace and you cannot have it just by believing in certain scriptures, rituals. You cannot get it so cheap – just by believing in Jesus Christ, in Gautam Buddha, in Mohammed, in Krishna.

Religion has to be earned. It is the greatest learning on the earth; it needs tremendous awareness, so that you are not influenced by others. And this must be the duty of the parents, to see that their children are not influenced by others, because all influences create a spiritual slavery. If you remain fresh, clean, open, searching, you will find it.

There has never been any exception. Anybody who has been open to reality, available to existence, immediately gets connected with the whole. And to be connected with the whole is the greatest experience that life can provide to you.

When you are born, you are disconnected from the womb, from the mother. You had lived in the womb for nine months as one with the mother’s body, mind, soul. There was no separation. You were not in any way different from your mother. Her heartbeats were your heartbeats, her breathing was your breathing, her blood was your blood.

The disconnection from the mother is the most traumatic experience in life, the most painful, the most agonizing. Just think of the small child who is being taken away from his home, who is being taken away from his very world, the only world he knows; he is being taken away from love and warmth. The shock is great.