Drop the mind that believes in superstitions

Every age has its own superstitions. Remember, superstitions have their fashion too. In every age, superstition takes on a new form. Man drops old superstitions and takes on new ones, but he never gets rid of them forever; he alters them and he changes them. But we never realise this.

All religions strive to break these chains, and every religion creates a new chain – so things remain the same. The world has seen so many religions. They were all founded to bring about reforms; they all proclaimed their intent to eradicate all prevailing superstitions, but in the process of destroying superstitions nothing ever really gets destroyed. Of course, those who are fed up with the old superstitions replace them with new ones and are very happy, feeling they have brought about change.

In fact, an intelligent man never holds on to anything—not even to any belief, let alone to superstition. He lives intelligently; he doesn’t hang on to anything. He never creates any chain because he knows there is immense joy in living in freedom. Don’t create any chains.

So the real question is to awaken enough consciousness in each individual that will create a desire in him to become free, to become intelligent, to become self-realized, to be filled with awareness. If the tendency to live blindly—to become a follower, a pursuer, a believer in somebody—could be reduced, all superstitions would crumble. But in that case, it would not be that one kind of superstition would break down and another would survive—all would collapse; they would leave all at once. Otherwise, they will remain forever.

So remember, my emphasis is not on breaking the chains, my emphasis is on doing away with the superstitious mind that creates these chains. If that mind persists, then no matter how many chains you break it will create new ones. And remember, new fetters are far more attractive, more lovable, more worth holding on to. And remember this too: the new chain is always stronger than the old one because by now our knowledge of how to make chains is also more developed, more advanced. It often occurs to me that those in the business of breaking down superstitions only succeed in providing much tougher superstitions as substitutes for the worn-out ones—they do nothing more than that.

The superstitious mind has to be discarded, or else it will keep on breeding superstition. Be cogitative, and make others cogitative also. “Be cogitative” means: think, search, be inquisitive. Speak only after you have the right experience, and still admit readily that your experience is not necessarily right. People may have other experiences tomorrow. You may even have to go through different experiences, and it is not certain that what you experienced was not a hallucination.

Abridged from And Now And Here by Osho