“If you are really spontaneous, people will think you are mad. If you go to a tree and start talking, or to a flower, a rose, people will think you are mad. If you go to the church and talk to the cross or to an image, nobody will think you are mad, they will think you are religious. You are talking to a stone in the temple and everybody thinks you are religious because this is the authorized form.
If you talk to a rose, which is more alive than any stone image, which is more divine than any stone image… if you talk to a tree, which is more deeply rooted in God than any cross because no cross has roots, it is a dead thing - that’s why it kills… a tree is alive, with roots deep into the earth, branches high into the sky, connected with the whole, with the rays of the sun, with the stars - talk to the trees! That can be a contact point with the divine.
But if you talk that way people will think you are mad. Spontaneousness is thought to be madness. Formalities are thought to be sanity. Just the opposite is the reality. When you go into the temple and you simply repeat some memorized prayer, you are simply foolish. Have a heart-to-heart talk! And prayer is beautiful, you will start flowering through it.”
— Osho