“I am against guilt — the guilt that has been created by the priests — but there is a different type of guilt which is not created by the priest. And that guilt is very meaningful. That guilt arises if you feel there is something more in life and you are not working hard to get to it. Then you feel a guilt. Then you feel that somehow you are creating barriers to your own growth — that you are lazy, lethargic, unconscious, asleep; that you don't have any integration; that you cannot move towards your destiny. Then a guilt arises. When you feel that you have the possibility and you are not turning it into actuality then a guilt arises. That guilt is totally different.
I am not talking about the guilt that priests have created in humanity: don't eat this otherwise you will feel guilty; don't do that otherwise you will feel guilty…. They have condemned millions of things, so if you eat, if you drink, if you do this and that, you are surrounded by guilty feelings. I am not talking about that guilt — that guilt has to be dropped. In fact, that guilt helps you to remain where you are. Those guilty feelings don't allow you to know the real guilt inside. They create so much fuss about small things: you eat in the night and the Jains create much fuss — you are guilty, you are a sinner.
Why have you eaten in the night? Or, you have divorced your wife or your husband and the Catholics create a guilty feeling in you — you have done something wrong. It was not wrong to live with the woman and continuously fight, it was not wrong to destroy the woman and destroy yourself, it was not wrong to destroy the children — just between the two of you they were being crushed, their whole life was conditioned in a wrong way…. No, that was not bad, but if you get out of that marriage, if you get out of that hell, you feel guilty.
These guilt feelings don't allow you to see the real spiritual guilt which has nothing to do with any politics, with any priesthood, with any religion or church. That guilt feeling is very natural. When you see that you can do something and you are not doing it, when you see how potential you are but you are not changing that potentiality into actuality, when you see that you are carrying tremendous treasures as seeds which could bloom, and you are not doing anything about it and you are just remaining in misery — then you feel a great responsibility towards yourself. And if you are not fulfilling that responsibility, you feel guilty. This guilt is of tremendous import.”
OSHO
The Art of Dying, Chapter #10