Corporate houses: The Temples of the Modern Age

An excerpt of an interview with Osho

Q: Can corporate houses be the temples of the modern age?

Not only the corporate houses but every place where man dwells has much to learn from the temples. First, you are always moving on holy ground. Not only in the temple are you in a holy place, but even in the marketplace, you are moving on the same holy ground. You are not to be just prayerful in the temple, in the mosque, in the church. Your prayerfulness has to become just your breathing. You have not to create only in your temple a beautiful world of incense, of flowers, of music, of chanting, of beautiful architecture, of sculptures – the temple should simply be the model for every house. Not only corporate houses, but every house should also be a temple because everybody is a temple.

God dwells in you, and wherever you are, you should create the aroma, the fragrance of godliness.

The authentically religious person is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian, nor Jaina, nor Buddhist. An authentic religious person is simply a prayerful person, a loving person, a creative person – a man who has the golden touch; whatever he touches becomes beautiful and valuable.

It is not possible that our houses remain in hell and once in a while, for an hour, we can enter a temple and find heaven – that is not possible. Unless you are twenty-four hours in heaven, you cannot enter into a temple and suddenly change – suddenly drop your jealousies, your anger, your hatred, your competitiveness, your ambitions, your politics. You cannot simply drop all your ugliness.

You can pretend, you can be a hypocrite …and in fact all the people who are visiting temples of any religion are hypocrites because their other twenty-three hours show their reality. For only one hour, they cannot become a different being.

A religious person has to understand that it is not a question of believing in a certain theology; it is not a question of believing in a certain tradition. It is a question of transforming yourself in such a way that compassion becomes your very heartbeat, that gratitude becomes your very breathing, that wherever you are, your eyes can see the divine – in the trees, in the mountains, in people, in animals, in birds. Unless you can make the whole existence of your temple, you are not religious.

Wherever you move, you are always in a temple, because you are always surrounded by that mysterious energy that people have called “God

I would like all corporate houses to be temples – but not only corporate houses; I would like every house, every kitchen, every bedroom, to be a temple. And I would like you to behave with everybody…. He may be your enemy, but still, he has deep in his being the same source of life you have.  

For a commercial organization, marketing is the ultimate life source; however, some marketing professionals suffer from an element of contradiction in their personal lives. Vis-à-vis professional objectives, are we selling things to people that they don't need?

The question is a little complex – complex because in a way you are selling people what they need…but whether their need is sick or healthy is a totally different matter.

You are fulfilling people's sick needs. And that should be felt like a responsibility. Needs have to be fulfilled, but you have to learn great discrimination: what are the sick needs, and what are the healthy needs?

For example, pornography is a need. And millions of people are providing pornographic literature, photography, all kinds of pornographic films, blue films. They certainly are fulfilling a need – people have been so repressed sexually for centuries that they are hungry to see the naked woman. Certainly, your business prospers, but you are depending on very ugly exploitation of people.

  Journalism has to become aware of the complexity of the situation. For example, now there is a great disease spreading all over the world – AIDS. It has come out of homosexuality. And the Catholic pope and other heads of religions are condemning homosexuality, but homosexuality is only a symptom. The real disease is the teaching of celibacy – because homosexuality was born in the monasteries, in soldier's camps, in boy scouts living together, in the hostels of boys and girls, which we have separated. Wherever we have separated man and woman, some kind of perversion arises.

Don't fulfill sick needs. Expose the fact that those sick needs are arising from a certain source. And create a protest in the minds of people so that the sources can be stopped. You cannot fight with the sick needs if the sources are not dropped. On the one hand, you go on supporting the sources, and on the other hand, you want people to drop their sick needs, which is impossible.

Journalism should not be only a business; it should also be a great responsibility toward humanity. It is no ordinary business, it cannot look only for profits. You have many other businesses for profit – at least don't corrupt journalism for the sake of profit. Journalism should be ready to sacrifice its profits; only then can it avoid fulfilling people's sick needs, and expose their original and basic causes – which can be removed.

Journalism should be a revolution, not just a profession. A journalist is basically a rebellious person – who wants the world to be a little better, who is basically a fighter – and he has to fight for the right causes. I never look at journalism as just another profession. For-profit, you have so many professions available; at least something should be left uncorrupted by the profit motive. Only then is there a possibility that you can educate people: educate them for a rebellious attitude against all that is wrong, educate them against anything that causes perversions.

 Abridged from The New Dawn/Osho Times International/ Courtesy Osho Interntional Foundation/www.osho.com