God is DeadCommuneBuddhafieldMeditative LifeFriendlinessMaster/DiscipleDon't follow anyoneDon't try to be a Master

 There is no God 

- There is no God other than Life itself -

 God is not a 'who', He is not a person. 

You ask: DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD?

No again -- because to believe in God is not to know Him. Belief is always out of ignorance. Those who don't know, they believe. If you know, what is the point of believing in? When you know, you know!

You don't believe in the morning sun. You don't believe in the trees and in the mountains. You NEED not! You know the sun is there. You know the people are there, you know the trees are there. There is NO question of belief. Why do you believe in God? Because you don't know.

You substitute your knowledge by belief. You hide your ignorance behind the belief. The belief gives you a pretension of knowing. All beliefs are pretentious. All beliefs are deceptions. Whom are you deceiving? You yourself are deceived.

When a man says, "I believe in God," he is saying he has not been able to know God -- that's all he is saying. He is not strong enough to say it that way. He is not strong enough to see his own ignorance and accept it. Hence, he says, "I believe in God!" What is the need of believing in God if you know?

Knowledge never becomes belief. Knowledge remains knowledge. Ignorance tries to become belief. Remember always: whenever you believe, it is just to hide your ignorance. It is a cheap knowledge that belief gives.

I don't believe in God -- because any relationship of belief is a wrong relationship. I know God... but to know God the only requirement is that I should not be. The moment you disappear, God appears. Only when you are spacious enough to contain Him, when you are no more there occupying inner space -- in fact, absence of yourself is the presence of God.

Remember: you will never meet God. You cannot, because the meeting will mean you are also real and God is also real -- then there will be two realities, not one. And reality is one. If you are, God cannot be. If God is, you cannot be.

And the third thing you ask: WHO IS GOD?

God is not a 'who', He is not a person. God is the totality, the sum total of the whole existence. God is not somebody: God is 'allness'.

I am God, you are God -- everybody is God, all is God. In fact, to use the word 'God' is not right. There is godliness and no God at all. To be really true to reality, 'godliness' is the right word to use, not 'God'. The moment you say 'God', many things arise out of that word....

First: God becomes a person -- and God is not a person. God is impersonal existence; God is impersonal 'beingness'. Once you say 'God', God becomes a 'he' -- that is male chauvinistic, that is ugly. God is neither a 'he' nor a 'she'. And if you decide to use 'he' or 'she', then 'she' is far better -- because 'she' includes 'he', but the 'he' does not include 'she'. 'She' is far bigger -- naturally so. Man is born out of the woman. The woman can contain the man, the man cannot contain the woman. The man has no womb to contain anything.

But both are wrong. God is neither man nor woman, because He is not a person at all.

Then what is God? Don't ask 'who is God?' ask 'what is God?' Life is God. Love is God. Light is God. It is an existential experience. You never come across God like an object. You come across godliness -- like an inner upsurge. Something blooms in you... and you cannot even find the flower, just a fragrance. God is not a flower but a fragrance.

I cannot indicate where God is, who God is. I can simply relate my experience of fragrance to you.

Existence is full of godliness. Everything is divine -- the flowers, the birds, the rocks, the rivers.... Not that you have to create a temple for God and a church for God -- that is stupid, because God is everywhere! For whom are you creating the temple and the church and the mosque? If you want to pray, you can pray anywhere. Wherever you bow down you bow down to God, because none else exists.

You will have to understand MY language. 'Belief' is a dirty word here. And by belief you are prevented from knowing; you are not helped. And it is because of belief that man is divided. It has not helped man's spiritual growth; it has been one of the greatest barriers. It is belief that divides you as a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan. It is belief that divides the earth. It is belief that creates wars.

The MOMENT YOU believe, you are no more one with humanity: you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. You have gone ugly, you are poisoned! And now you will be continuously fighting for your belief. And all these people fighting for their beliefs are blind people fighting for their belief in light -- and nobody knows what light is. [....]

Do you really know who God is? You don't know even who you are -- how can you know who God is? You have not even become acquainted with the closest reality -- that is beating in your heart, that is breathing in you, that is alive in you -- and you are thinking to become acquainted with the totality of existence? the infinite, the vast, the eternal? And you have not even been able to have a taste of your OWN being. You have not even tasted a single drop of the sea, and you want to taste the whole sea?

And you NEVER go to the sea! You go to the scriptures. You never go to the sea -- you go to the priests. And then you create belief, and the belief comes out of your fear, not out of your love, not out of your knowing, not out of your experience -- it simply comes out of your fear. You believe because alone you feel afraid; because you are childish, you want somebody to hang on to, to cling to. You need a father-figure! so that you can always look up to him, so that you can always throw the responsibility, so that you can always cry and weep and remain helpless.

It is out of your fear that you have created God. And a God created out of fear is ill, it is pathological. It will not bring you well-being: it will make you more and more pathological.

The so-called religious man is almost pathological; he is neurotic. Go to the monasteries, look around with open eyes, and you will be simply surprised that in the name of religion a thousand and one kinds of pathologies are practised. People don't become healthy and whole -- they become more and more helpless, more and more frightened, more and more eccentric. Of course, their neurosis is such that it is respected.

Freud is right when he says that religion is a collective neurosis. I agree with him. The so-called religious ARE neurotic. If a single person behaves in that way, you will think he is mad; but if a big crowd behaves in that same way, you think it is religious. [....]

religion need not be based on belief. Religion has to be based on experience -- not on fear but on love; not on negation of life but on affirmation of life. Religion has not to be a belief -- it has to be a knowing, an experiencing. That's why I say 'belief' is a dirty word here. 'Knowing', 'loving', 'being' -- these are real words.

And, belief hinders them: you cannot know if you believe, you cannot love if you believe, you cannot see if you believe. And remember: I am not saying that you have to disbelieve, because disbelief is again belief. The atheist and the theist are not different -- they are in the same boat, they are fellow-travellers. The theist believes God is, the atheist believes God is not -- but BOTH believe. Their beliefs are antagonistic, but as far as belief is concerned both are believers. There is not much difference.

What I am saying is: neither belief nor disbelief is needed -- because you don't know, so how can you believe? and you don't know, so how can you disbelieve? When belief and disbelief are both dropped, there is silence. When belief and disbelief have both disappeared, you are open to truth; then you don't have any prejudice, then your mind is no more projecting. Then you become receptive.

Neither believe nor disbelieve. Just be watchful, receptive, open! -- and you will know.

And what you call that knowing does not matter -- whether you call it God, or you call it enlightenment, or you call it nirvana, does not matter! These words are just words. Any word will do: X,Y,Z will do. But first you have to get rid of belief and disbelief.

Getting rid of belief and disbelief, you get rid of the mind. And only a state of no-mind comes to know. The state of no-mind is blissful....

-Osho, “Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, #1, Q1”

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Ordinarily people understand God to be some person that they will meet face-to-face. This is a false notion. God is not a person that you will meet and you will interview. God is a state. As you approach nearer to that state you will go on becoming more and more godly. The day you become totally absorbed by that state you will be God. There is no one else there to meet, you yourself will become godly.

To see God means to become godly because it is a state. It is the ultimate peak of consciousness. It is the ultimate flowering of the seed that is hidden within you. It is the manifestation of the one that was hidden.

Godliness is a state. This is why it is a better word than God because godliness is a state, not a person. It is divine. Instead of calling the ultimate state God or bhagwan or the brahman, call it godliness or divinity. But man has a great difficulty: his languages change everything into symbols or analogies, and he does that with everything.

When we were fighting for independence in India a photo of “Mother India” was hanging in every house. There is no Mother India, but the photographs showed Mother India bound in chains with an Indian flag in her hand. Shouting “Long live Mother India!” most people forgot that there was no such thing as Mother India, it was just a symbol. The symbol is poetic and sweet but it is not a fact. God is also a symbol: there is no one sitting somewhere as God. Hence the real search for God is the search to become godly. As long as you do not become godly your search will continue because that is the ultimate search and the ultimate thirst.

It is like a seed in the earth struggling to sprout, waiting for the rain. If there are pebbles and stones in its way, that delicate seed will move them away or will try to find its way around them to the light, to come out of the earth and rise upward. And as long as the flowering does not happen, its journey will continue.

Man is a seed. You can say that he is a seed of existence or of divinity, of godliness, and as long as he does not blossom into a flower of godliness, his restlessness will continue. This restlessness is creative. Without it you will go astray. That is why those who are full of spiritual discontent are fortunate and those who are not discontented at all and are saying, “We don’t need anything,” are the most unfortunate.

-Osho, “The Message beyond Words, #7”

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The first thing to be understood: God is not a person. But all the religions have talked about it in such a way that people get a false impression that God is a person, a personality. If you believe that God is a person then naturally you will want to see him, to know him, to recognize him; you will want to be near him. But God is not a person. The idea that God is a person is only a poetic symbol. God is an energy, not a person. This is why you will not find him anywhere; there will never be a moment when you will meet with him face-to-face. So this sutra is saying that there is no way to see God directly because it is only people or things that can be seen directly.

This also needs to be understood: that when I say God is an energy, that energy is also unique. Electricity is also an energy, gravitation is also an energy – energy is all around. It is not enough just to say that God, godliness is an energy. Godliness is a subjective energy, it is not objective. There is an energy which can be seen and there is another energy which is hidden within the seer. It is not in the seen but in the seer. One is objective energy like electricity, which can be seen. And there is a subjective energy, the energy of the inner being, which can never be seen because it is within the seer. Or it will be better to say that we ourselves are that energy and that energy is everywhere. It is also outside, but to see it on the outside first you will have to experience it within yourself.

And to the person who has experienced that energy within himself, it becomes manifest everywhere. This whole universe becomes nothing but the manifestation of this light to one who sees this light within. But the first experience of it, the first realization, will be within. It is the innermost energy.

Hence the search for godliness is not an outer search. In this search it is not necessary to go to the Himalayas or to wander in the mountains of Tibet; Kashi and Prayag will not help either, nor will Girnar or Jerusalem. No outer search has anything to do with godliness; hence you will not find it in any temple or place of pilgrimage. And because of this, a difficulty arises: if it were in some temple, in some holy place on Mount Everest or on Kailash, you could easily go there. That would be very easy because the outer journey is not difficult at all, you can travel anywhere you want.

But in the search for godliness, the difficulty is that it is not at the end of the journey – it is present within the seeker from the very beginning. It is not a goal to be reached, it is the innermost core of the traveler. If you are searching for it on the outside you will not find it, exactly because of your outside searching. You are looking in the wrong place. If you want to search for it you will have to look within. If you want to search you will have to stop wandering to holy places and look within.

To seek godliness all the doors of the senses need to be closed because the more you search on the outside the farther away you will go from it. The more you think that it is outside you the more you will forget that it is within you.

Godliness is not a person, so there is no way to see it on the outside. Godliness is an energy. But that energy also is not material: it is subjective, it is your innermost energy. This is why the first realization of it happens only when you look within yourself.

You never remember to look within yourself. You wander everywhere, you search everywhere; your eyes, your ears, your hands don’t leave any place unexplored. And everyone is not searching for godliness exactly: someone is searching for bliss, someone is searching for peace, someone else is searching for liberation. You may give it different names, but all these names are for the same search, the search for godliness. One thing is certain: everyone is searching, though the names for their search are different.

And there are only two alternatives: you can either search within yourself or you can search on the outside. These are the two dimensions. And the one who searches on the outside will go on wandering because even the first small glimpses will be happening from within. First it must be known within your innermost core of being. Because how can someone who cannot realize godliness within himself see it on the outside? If your inner flame is unlit, you can go on searching everywhere, and wherever you will go you will find only darkness because you are carrying it within yourself. You will not find the light. But if your inner flame is lit, you can go into deep darkness and there will be light because you carry your light within you. The search for godliness is a search into the depths of your own interiority, your own subjectivity.

-Osho, “The Message beyond Words, #15”

 The very idea of God is 

 because our mind cannot comprehend eternity. 

Question 1

God is dead, but that creates the question: who began this universe?

There is no need for anybody to begin it, because there is no beginning to this universe, and there is no end.

This question has been exploited by all the religions, because everybody wants to know who began the universe, because your minds are so small they cannot conceive a beginningless universe, an endless universe, just eternity to eternity. Because you cannot conceive that vastness, your question arises, "Who created the universe? Who began it?" But if there was somebody already to begin it, there was a universe. Do you see the simple arithmetic? If there was somebody already to begin it, then you cannot call it the beginning, somebody was already there.

If you think that God is a necessary thing... it gives you consolation that God created the world, so you have a beginning. But who created God? Again you fall into the same problem.

And all the religions have said that God exists eternally, there is no creator of God. If that is true for God, why is it not true for existence itself? It is autonomous, it exists on its own. There is no need of any creator because that creator will require another creator, and you will fall into an absurd regress. You can go from A to Z. But who created Z? The question remains standing, you simply go on pushing. But the question is not solved because you have asked a wrong question.

The universe has no beginning, it is not a creation by anybody. It has no end. And remember, if it had any beginning, then there would certainly be an end. Every beginning is a beginning of an end. Every birth is the beginning of death. So it is good. Get rid of God, because if he can create the world he can destroy the world. And any world that is created is bound to be destroyed sooner or later. If there is birth, there is death. Only a beginningless universe can be endless.

So your problem is just because the capacity of the mind is very limited. That's why I want you to go beyond mind. Only no-mind can conceive the beginningless, the endless; the incomprehensible becomes absolutely clear. There is no problem at all. Those who have risen beyond mind have also risen beyond God simultaneously. God is a need for the mind, because the mind cannot conceive infinite, eternal things. It can only conceive very limited things. The question arises because of your mind's incapacity, its impotence.

You ask, "God is dead, but that creates the question, `Who began this universe?'"

But have you ever thought that God will not solve the question? On the contrary, the question will be pushed a step back: who created God? Any hypothesis that does not destroy the question is absolutely useless. Any answer that keeps on pushing the question further back but does not touch it at all, is not the answer.

The only answer you will find is in your own experience of eternity. Then you will know nobody has created it. It has no beginning, no end. You don't have any beginning, you don't have any end. When you experience it within your own self, you know existence is autonomous, it is not created.

A created thing cannot be more than a mechanism; it cannot be an organic reality. A car is created, man is not created. If man is also created he becomes a mechanism, a robot. You can dismantle a car, take all the parts apart -- the wheels and everything -- and you can put them back and the car will be perfectly okay. But cut a man into pieces and then join them together -- with German glue! -- still the man will not be back. An organic phenomenon cannot be dissected. The moment you dissect it, its very mystery disappears. Then you can join those parts, but you will have only a corpse, not a living human being.

It is the dignity of existence that it is not created. It is the dignity of man that he is not created. God is an insult to existence, to man, to consciousness, to everything! God is a humiliation. God is not a solution for any problem. In fact, he creates more problems in the world and he does not solve anything.

There are three hundred religions in the world and all are fighting with each other. These are all created because of the concept of God, because they have all invented their own concepts.

The Hindu god has three heads. Just think of the poor fellow. Imagine you have three heads. I don't think you will be able to stand up. One head will be falling this side, one head will be falling that side, this head will be falling this side, the very weight... I have seen the statues and the pictures of the Hindu god. His whole body seems to be just like a man; it cannot manage three heads.

I have seen children in circuses who are freaks of nature. I have seen children with two heads, but they cannot even sit; they are just lying down. The circus is enjoying their tragedy, earning money...

One man had gone to see a circus, and there was a three-headed child in the circus. The man was very much concerned because all his children -- he had twenty children, four wives, he was a Mohammedan... The fee was one rupee per person, and every child of his insisted on seeing. There was great trouble. The father was trying to convince them, "We don't have twenty rupees. I can stay out, and I can send you, but we don't have twenty rupees."

The owner of the child, who was distributing tickets, heard all this argument between the children and the father. He said, "Wait. I will give you twenty rupees. Let me bring the child with three heads. He can see you are a bigger phenomenon! One man with twenty children." And he brought the child in a trolley to look at this man who had twenty children. And he gave him twenty rupees as a fee, because, "This boy also needs some entertainment. He gives entertainment to thousands of people."

But that boy could not see from any of his three faces and six eyes. It was difficult for him even to turn in the trolley. The Hindu god must be living in a trolley. One head will always be pushing against the pillow, breathing will be difficult. And walking is out of the question.

And all three gods, who have one body, have three wives. Just see the tragedy. Each god is joined with two other gods, and each god has a separate wife. Three wives to one man, because the sexual machinery is only one. I have never heard that the Indian god has three sexual machineries. Now, I cannot figure out how things are managed.

These fictions create three hundred religions, because everybody is free to have his own fiction. Why borrow anybody else's fiction? There are religions which think that god has one thousand hands.

One thousand hands? They must be growing all over the body just like branches in a tree. And I don't think he can manage to do anything. One thousand hands? From the back they will be growing backwards, from the front they will be growing... there will be no space left for anything else!

And there are gods which have one thousand eyes! I cannot conceive it. Even with no-mind I cannot conceive it. One thousand eyes in one head? Then there is no possibility for ears, no possibility for the nose, no possibility for the mouth, no possibility for anything -- not even hair. He must be bald-headed, with eyes all over the head. Even then I don't think he can manage one thousand eyes. How will he move? According to which eye will he see? Even if he winks at a woman, which eye? One thousand eyes winking at one woman! That will be real romance!

God has not solved any problem, God has created thousands of problems. And every religion has its own idea, because it is a fiction. You don't have different ideas about the sun. You don't have different ideas about the rose. You can have only different ideas about a fiction. It is then up to you, whichever way you want.

The Bible says God created man in his own image. The reality is just the opposite: man has created God in his own image. And he has been trying to refine the image of God, finding explanations for all kinds of absurdities. He needs one thousand hands because he has to care for five billion people. But if you have to care about five billion people, you need five billion hands. One thousand hands won't do. At least, if you want even to shake hands with the whole of humanity, you will need five billion hands. Just hands and hands and nothing else! And you go on shaking and nobody is there!

They go on finding explanations: he has one thousand eyes because he has to look after the whole universe. Can't he move his head, just the way I am moving mine? I can see ten thousand people without any difficulty, just with two eyes. Does he not move backwards and go in reverse? He has eyes all over his head, so when he wants to go backwards, the front eyes are closed, the backward eyes are open. When he wants to go sideways, three sides are closed, the right side is open. Is it a god or some kind of toy to entertain children?

The very idea of God is because our mind cannot comprehend eternity. Once you rise beyond your limited mind to an unlimited no-mind, you can conceive all that was inconceivable before. No God is needed.

-Osho, “God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth, #2, Q1”

 Not God created man in his own image, 

 But Man has created God in his own image. 

All is divine. In fact there is no God, only godliness. God is not a person but a quality, not a person but a presence.

The idea of God as a person is anthropomorphic: we have made hat image in our own image. It is nothing but man-projected; it is not the true God. That's why Buddha is silent about God. He talks about godliness but never about God.

My own experience is exactly the same: there is no God but here is godliness, the whole existence is overflowing with godliness. There is no division between God and the world; existence is divine.

Start looking at existence with this vision, with these eyes, and you will be surprised because you will start seeing things you had never sen before. You have been passing the same things every day: the same trees and the same birds and the same people. But once you have this vision, that all is divine, you start looking at things in a new light. Then the world is no more a puzzle, no more a problem, no more a question - not a question to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

-Osho, "Scriptures in Silence and Sermons in Stones, #22“

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There is no God. Yes, there is godliness, but no God. The idea of God is anthropocentric. The Bible says: God created man in his own image. The truth is just the opposite: man has created God in his own image. God is nothing but a projection of human wishes, desires, longings. God is nothing but the projection of human mind.

-Osho, “The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol. 8, #4, Q3”

 God neither ascends nor descends. 

God is. He neither ascends nor descends. Where can he ascend to and where can he descend to? God is all. There is nothing in to which God can ascend or descend. There is nobody else other than God. All that is is divine. So the first thing: there is no ascendence, no descendence.

But when Meher Baba says it, there must be some meaning in it. The meaning is something quite different. Let me explain it to you.

God is, remember. God is a pure isness, pure existence, and there is nowhere for God to go or come. The whole is full of him. He fills his existence, one thing. Second thing: but Meher Baba must be true. Then there must be some other meaning to it -- not God descending and ascending. What can be the meaning? The meaning is there are two ways of man approaching God.

What do I mean by "man" when God is the only reality? Man is the God who has forgotten that he is God; man is a God who has forgotten himself.

Man can remember his godliness in two ways. One way is that of surrender, devotion, love, prayer; another way is that of will, effort, meditation, yoga. If a man tries to work his way through will, then he will feel he is ascending towards God or he is reaching towards God through his will. Hence Jainas call the man who attains to godliness a TEERTHANKARA. TEERTHANKARA means consciousness has reached the peak; man has arrived by ascending, as if there has been a ladder, the ladder of the will, the ladder of effort and yoga. So is the concept of the Buddhas; that too is the path of will. Avatar means God descending; that is another approach, when a man surrenders. He cannot ascend. He simply opens his heart and waits, prays and waits, and suddenly he starts feeling a stirring in his heart. Certainly he will see "God has descended in me." Avatar means descendence, God coming down.

Mahavir went up. For Meera, God came down.

But God never comes down, never goes up. God is where he is. But your experience will be different. If you try hard to achieve God, you will go higher and higher and higher; naturally you will feel the God hidden inside you is arising, rising up, reaching to the zenith. But if you surrender, nothing is arising in you. You are where you are, you simply wait in deep prayer, in deep love, in deep trust, and one day you find God is descending in you, coming from above. These are the experiences of two types of seekers. It has nothing to do with God. It has something to do with the seeker and his way: will or surrender, effort or prayer, yoga or BHAKTI.

So the religions which believe in BHAKTI, in devotion.... Christianity says Christ comes from God. That is the meaning of saying that he is God's son -- he comes from above, he has been sent. And that is the meaning of Mohammed -- he is a prophet, a messenger, PAIGAMBAR. PAIGAMBAR means a messenger who comes from above, brings the message. He does not belong to this world; he comes like a ray of light into the darkness. And so is the concept of the Hindus' avatar -- Krishna, Ram -- they come, they come into the world.

The Buddhist, the Jaina concept is just the reverse. They say there is no God to come, and God is not a father and he cannot have a son. These are all very childish concepts for them. And if you look through their eyes they are; these concepts are childish, very anthropomorphic, man-centered. You create God in your own image, as if God also has a family. He has a family -- the Trinity: God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost must be a woman; otherwise the family will not be exactly as it should be.

But why don't Christians call the Holy Ghost a woman? Male chauvinism. They cannot make a woman also part of the Trinity; it is difficult for them, very difficult for them. So to what have they reduced their God? It seems to be a homosexual family. All men, not a single woman there. It looks ugly. But my feeling is that the Holy Ghost must be a woman.

We create God in our own image.

Jainas and Buddhists say that there is no God and there is no God's family and nobody comes from there. Then what has one to do? One has to arise. God is in you like a seed, as a tree arises from the earth and goes higher and higher. God is not like rain falling, but a tree arising. Man has the seed. Man is potentially God. So when you work hard, you start growing.

These are the two concepts. That's why Meher Baba says, "... God descending in man (Avatar, Rasool, Christ) and man rising to be God (the Perfect Master, Sadguru, Qutub, Teerthankara)." But it has nothing to do with God.

-Osho, “The First Principle, #4”

 God is Existence or Existence is God 

Osho,

What is existence? Is it something like what people call God?

Existence is that which is, and God is that which is not. Existence is a reality, God is a fiction. Existence is available only to meditators, people of silence; God is a consolation for sick minds, sick psychologies.

Existence is not your production – God is. That's why there is only one existence, but thousands of gods. Each according to his needs, each according to his suffering, each according to his expectations, creates a god or accepts an old belief about God.

God is a great consolation, but it is not a cure. Existence is not a consolation. To be in tune with it is to be healthy and whole. All the religions of the world have been teaching God; I teach you existence. I teach you to be in tune with that which surrounds you, which is within you and without you. Once you are in tune with it, there is no death for you, no misery, no tension, no worry, but a tremendous peace surrounds you, a contentment which you have never even dreamt of.

God is for those who cannot grow in consciousness, who are retarded as far as consciousness is concerned. It is a kind of toy; retarded people need it. And the moment I say it is a toy, then it is up to you how you want to make it – looking like a monkey or looking like an elephant. It is just up to you whether to give him four hands or one thousand hands. It is your creation. Strangely enough, man believes God created everything.

The truth is that God himself is a creation of man's imagination.

God is the greatest lie you can ever find, because on that lie thousands of other lies depend. Churches, religious organizations go on multiplying lies upon lies, just to protect one lie.

You have to understand the psychology of lying. The first thing about lying is that you need a good memory because you have to remember. You lie to someone about something, to somebody else about something else; you have to remember what you have said to one and what you have said to the other.

Truth needs no remembrance. Truth is always there, just the same. You don't have to cram it in your memory. Memory gives you a bondage, a prison; it clings around you, covers you so much, slowly, slowly that you disappear completely. Truth is uncovering yourself from all lies. And there is a sudden revelation that you are part of the immense truth I am calling existence.

You don't need any churches, you don't need any temples, you don't need any mosques; you need only a prayerful heart, a loving heart, a grateful heart. That is your real temple. That will transform your whole life. That will help you to discover not only yourself, but the very depths of this immense existence.

We are almost like the waves of the ocean – just on the surface, and the ocean may be miles deep. The Pacific Ocean is five miles deep. But a small wave on the top will never know the depth – her own depth, because she is not separate from the ocean. She will cling to her small entity, be afraid about death, be afraid of losing herself in the vastness, the oceanic infinity. But the truth is, the death of the wave is not a death, but the beginning of an eternal life.

God has been invented.

It was people's need; people needed a protector. In the immensity of the universe, a man feels so alone, so small. The vastness creates trembling in him. What is your existence?

I am reminded of a story by Bertrand Russell. The archbishop of England sees in a dream that he has reached the pearly gates of paradise. On one hand he is immensely pleased, and on the other hand he is very much troubled, because the pearly gates are so vast, in both directions, that he cannot see the whole gate. It is so high that it is beyond the capacity of his eyes to see. And he himself seems to be just like a small ant, compared to this great gate. He is a little bit afraid. He is no ordinary man, he is the archbishop of England. He feels humiliated just by the gate, and the fear arises, "If this is the situation at the gate, what is the situation going to be inside?"

With fearful hands he knocks on the door, but in the immensity of that space only he can hear his knock. It takes days for him, but he goes on knocking harder and harder. Finally a small window opens in the gate and Saint Peter looks out with one thousand eyes, trying to figure out who has been making a noise. Those one thousand eyes are so shiny, like stars, that the archbishop feels even more reduced – almost to a nonentity.

And Saint Peter asks, "Please, whoever you are, wherever you are, come in front of me."

The archbishop declares himself. He says to Saint Peter, "Perhaps you don't know me. You can check with Jesus Christ, I am the archbishop of England."

Saint Peter says, "Never heard of any such thing as England."

The archbishop says, "Perhaps you may not have heard about England, but you must have heard about our beautiful planet, Earth."

Saint Peter says, "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but unless you give me the index number of your Earth, I cannot figure out what you are talking about. I will have to go to the library and look – if you give me the index number – to which solar system you belong, because there are millions of solar systems and each solar system has many planets."

But the archbishop has never thought that the earth has any index number. He says, "I don't know any index number, but I am the archbishop. You just go and tell Jesus Christ."

He says, "You are giving me puzzle after puzzle. Who is this fellow Jesus Christ?"

The archbishop is very much shocked. He says, "You don't know Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God?"

Saint Peter says, "As far as I am concerned, I have never seen God; I don't know whether he exists or not. I am just a doorkeeper. Perhaps somewhere in the most interior parts of paradise somebody exists who thinks that he is God, but I have never come across..."

It is such a shock that the archbishop wakes up perspiring.

The story is significant because it shows how small we are and how big the universe is. Naturally primitive man was not able to adjust himself to the idea of this vastness of the universe without giving it some personality and without making himself in some way related to that personality.

God was an effort of the primitive mind of man to give existence a personality. Then he becomes God the father. Then you can make some relationship with him. You may even be against him, but at least there is someone you can be for, you can be against; there is someone who is greater than you, who is going to protect you, who is your guarantee.

God is simply the poverty of human consciousness.

The people who attained to their inner consciousness and its highest peak, like Gautam Buddha, denied the existence of God. Anybody who has ever become inwardly healthy, gone beyond the mind which is basically sick, has denied God. God as a fiction is good for kindergarten school children. They need it – parables, fables, stories. But very few human beings have gone beyond the kindergarten school.

God exists because you are not aware of yourself. God exists because you have not made any contact with your own center. The moment you know yourself, there is no God and there is no need of any God. In fact I am in absolute support of Friedrich Nietzsche: "God is dead."

The second part of his sentence is even more significant, "God is dead and man is now free." That second part has not received much attention from the philosophers, from the mystics, from the psychologists, but the second part is the most important; the first part is not much. In fact, the first part is basically wrong. God cannot die – fictions never die. The moment you know they are fictions there is no question of their death. Neither are they born, nor do they die. God was never born in the first place – how can he die? Death is the other extreme of birth.

So the first part is not very important, but that has been given much importance by theologians, because they became afraid: "This is sacrilegious, to tell people that God is dead. That means that now no religion is needed." They became afraid for their own business. But they forgot the second part which is more important. It has tremendously significant implications. It means that God was a bondage, God was a retardedness, God was out of fear. God was not a treasure, but a heavy, mountainous weight on your heart and on your growth.

Once God is removed, man's possibility to grow and blossom is absolutely free.

A God is a despot, a fascist. Without God, the world becomes freedom. Existence gives a tremendous dignity to every individual. From the smallest blade of grass up to the greatest star in the universe it gives immense significance and love; it makes no difference. There is equality and equal opportunity. And there is no need unnecessarily to pray and waste your time, to read the holy scriptures, which are the most unholy books in the world. There is no need to be exploited by the priests. You are certainly and suddenly free from all these chains. Now you can be yourself.

While God is in existence you can never be yourself. You are just a puppet, your strings are in the hands of God. The ancient saying in India is that not even a small leaf of a tree moves unless God's order is received for it to move. Whatever you are, according to religions you are made out of mud. The word “human” comes from humus, which means mud. And the word in Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, is admi – it is used as the name of the first man, Adam. Admi means the earth. God made man out of the earth and then breathed life into the puppet.

Now, what kind of freedom do you have? Somebody has breathed life into you, and it is in his hands to stop breathing life into you any moment. Whatever you are doing, the religions believe it is your fate, it is written on your forehead. And there have been many con men who have even been trying to read what is written on your forehead. Astrologers, palmists, all kinds of cunning people have been exploiting the simplicity and innocence of humanity. There are people who are reading your hand, looking at the lines, telling you what those lines mean. The whole emphasis is that you are not living a life of your own, you are just a part in a drama, and the part that you are playing has been decided beforehand. 

That was the argument that the Indian God's incarnation, Krishna – in the great Indian war, Mahabharata – gave to his disciple Arjuna. Seeing the immense massacre that was going to happen, Arjuna simply lost his nerve. He was a man of immense courage and great intelligence.

He said, "I don't see any point in this war. Even if I win... and I am certain I am going to win" – there was no other warrior of his quality – "But sitting on the golden throne of victory surrounded by the corpses of all my friends and all my enemies, all the beautiful people, does not appeal to me at all. The scene makes me feel insane. Rather than fighting, I will leave it to the other party – who is nobody, another cousin-brother. Let him rule over the country and I will go to the mountains, to the Himalayas to meditate, to become a sannyasin. I have lost all interest in fighting."

Krishna tries in every way to persuade him, but Arjuna is a great intellectual; he goes on arguing against him. Finally seeing no other way, Krishna takes the last resort and says, "It is written in your destiny. Going away, you are going away from God. This war is predetermined by God to destroy those who are not virtuous and only let those survive who are virtuous." Now there is no argument against it, because Arjuna himself believes in God and destiny.

Arjuna fought the war. Krishna was responsible, five thousand years ago, for destroying this country by giving a false argument, absolutely fictitious, to Arjuna. That war killed so many people. And it is not only that it killed people, it also destroyed the courage of the country; it became afraid of any small calamity.

Two thousand years of slavery.... I want to make it absolutely clear that the people who are responsible for these two thousand years of slavery are the greatest people of India. The list is headed by Krishna; Arjuna is just his shadow. Then came Mahavira, who taught people to be nonviolent to such an extreme that his followers cannot even cultivate, because plants have life; if you cultivate then you will have to kill the plants when you reap the crop. Gautam Buddha comes third, who taught people to accept, to be contented wherever and with whatever they have – poor, hungry, starving, enslaved, remain utterly contented.

 Their teachings were great. This is something to be remembered; otherwise I will be misunderstood by everyone. Their teachings were great, but they never thought about all the implications of their teachings. They never thought that if you teach a country nonviolence, if you teach a country to drop all weapons, when the whole world is not doing that, then you are putting that country in a state of being victimized, exploited by anyone.

And for two thousand years invader after invader came to India, exploited it and went back. Finally Mohammedans came and they thought, "What is the need to go back? We can not only exploit people, but rule them and remain here." And then came the Britishers and the French and the Portuguese, and they all tried to exploit the country. They all had their small pockets. Britain proved to be far more clever. But the Portuguese had their small islands of Diu, Daman and Goa, and the French had a small portion of the country, Pondicherry. Britain had the whole country.

People have remained starved and hungry, and people have gone on dying because of hunger, and nobody has ever thought that these great principles in some way are responsible for this unfortunate situation that for thousands of years India has had to pass through. And even today nobody is trying to see all the implications. Every great principle has its own black cloud behind it. And unless you understand the black cloud also, you are soon going to be absorbed by the black cloud. If you understand it, you can avoid it.

God seems to be the greatest principle that has been preached to man down the ages, but nobody has looked at its implications.

If God created man then man has no individuality of his own, then he cannot claim any dignity, any freedom.

There is no question of a puppet declaring, "I want to be free." If God created the universe, then whatever has happened in the universe has had to happen. It was God's will. No effort on our part was going to change anything.

And finally you can see, if God created the world, and if he is behind nuclear weapons and the people who are creating them, then no effort on man's part can prevent the destruction of the whole planet. To give the creation of the world into the hands of a fictitious God is very dangerous. It makes us absolutely impotent. We cannot do anything.

Hence, my simple understanding of consciousness is that if God did not die with Friedrich Nietzsche's declaration, then we have to kill him! Wherever you meet him, there is no need even to say hello. First kill him and then you can say hello – just to fulfill the formality. But God is not needed at all. With God above in the sky, man will always remain a slave, and man will always remain unconscious, and man will never strive to reach to the peaks of his potential.

With God removed you may feel a little fear – just out of old habit – but that fear will disappear.

Once you recognize that you are standing on your own feet and you have to do something to create a better consciousness in you, to create a more loving heart in you, that prayers are useless, there is nobody to answer them... Yes, sometimes they have been answered. At least once, certainly....

A poor man asked God for months continually, "Give me fifty dollars. I don't want much, just fifty dollars."

First he prayed, but then he thought, "Millions of people are praying, and there is one God and there are millions of prayers. Whether my poor prayer ever reaches to him... And there must be around him so much noise – prayers from all the churches, all the mosques, all the synagogues, all the temples – who is going to take care of me? It is better that I write a letter."

He wrote a letter saying, "This is to remind you that for months I have been praying, but the answer has not come. It seems my prayer has not reached you. I can understand, because of the noise around you of so many prayers. And great people are praying – the pope and the archbishop and the shankaracharya – so who is going to take care of my small prayer? And I am not asking much – no paradise, no heaven, nothing, just fifty dollars. Finally I decided to write the letter." And he wrote in big letters, "Fifty Dollars! Remember, it is urgent."

But then he was very much disturbed, because he didn't know the address, whom to address it to. He thought, "The best way is to address it to: God, c/o The Postmaster General. If the postmaster general cannot find his address, who else can?" The letter reached the postmaster general. He looked, he laughed, and then he felt sad also. He thought, "The man must be in desperate need – nobody writes letters to God. And he is not asking much."

So he said to all his friends, "Please look at this poor man's letter. You all contribute, and we will send those fifty dollars to him. At least for once let a prayer be answered." They collected the money, but they collected only forty-five dollars. The postmaster general said, "No harm, at least we should send this much."

When forty-five dollars reached the man he counted the dollars, and he looked above and shouted, "God, remember one thing. Next time you send any money to me, never send it through the post office! Those cunning fellows have taken out their commission. I have received only forty-five dollars!"

Except this, I have not come across any prayer which has been answered – and that too not fully. There is no one to answer. Existence has to be approached in a different way.

God has to be worshipped.

God has to be prayed to.

Existence has to be contacted in meditation.

There are only two kinds of religions in the world: the religions of prayer and the religions of meditation. You can see my point. The religions of prayer all believe in God and the religions of meditation don't believe in any god. Because meditation takes you inwards, and fulfills you, there is no need to pray, there is no need for any consolation. You are in such a rejoicing, in such a blissful state; you can bless the whole world.

I teach you existence, and the entry into existence is through your own being; hence meditation is not prayer – remember, it is against prayer. Prayer is part of that phony jargon about God, heaven, hell. Prayer is part and parcel of that whole rubbish. Meditation is simply the only pure way of coming in contact with existence. And this contact immediately becomes a merger and a melting. You become existence yourself. Then you are in the clouds and you are in the stars and you are in the flowers and you are in the rains. You are everywhere. You are no longer a drop, you have become the ocean.

Remember the clear-cut distinction between existence and God. God is a condemnation of our intelligence. It is accepting humiliation, it is accepting that, "We are only puppets; you are the power. Whatever you want to do with us you will do. All that we can do is to pray." It makes you so crippled. The very idea of God is nauseating. But existence has a freshness and a beauty and a truth.

Never get mixed up with these two words. One is reality, one is simply fiction.

Osho, "Hari Om Tat Sat, Talk #9"

 Existence is, in itself, the master. 

The whole functions in an organic way.

Everything is related to everything else.

The smallest blade of grass is connected with the greatest star millions of light years away. All are functioning, and there is nobody who is dictating.

Existence is, in itself, the master.

And whatever happens is spontaneous: nobody orders it, nobody follows. This is the greatest mystery.

Because this mystery could not be understood, people from the very beginning started imagining a God. Their imagination of a God is only their psychological difficulty in accepting this tremendous universe, running spontaneously on its own without any accidents. Not even a traffic policeman -- and millions of stars...! [....]

Almost all the races of the world have conceived God. It is simply a psychological problem, it has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with philosophy. It is simply incomprehensible, it is inconceivable how this immense universe is running without any controller, how it has come into existence without any creator. Just because people could not stretch their imaginations and their logic, they invented... just to console themselves that there is nothing to worry about; otherwise, it would be very difficult even to sleep.

Millions of stars and galaxies are moving, and who knows in the night where the crash is going to happen? Nobody is looking after it all. There is no policeman, there is no court, there is no law -- but strangely, everything is going so smoothly.

Seasons change and the clouds come with rains. Seasons change and new leaves and new flowers... and it has been going on since eternity. Nobody keeps the record. Nobody tells the sun that it is time; there is no alarm clock that goes off exactly in the morning to tell the sun, "Get out! Get out from your blankets!" Things simply are going perfectly right.

In fact, my own denial of God is based on the same reasoning. I say God is not because no God can manage this immense universe. Either it can be intrinsically spontaneous... it cannot be managed from outside. Unless there is some inner coherence, some inner organic unity, no outside controller can go on managing it from eternity to eternity. He will get bored and shoot himself, because what is the purpose? Nobody is going to pay him; nobody even knows his address! [....]

My own understanding is that it cannot be managed from outside. That is more inconceivable: why should any God take the trouble, and how long can he manage? Sometimes he will get tired, and sometimes he will be on holiday. What will happen on holidays? And when he is tired or has fallen asleep, what will happen? Roses will stop growing, stars will be going on the wrong path, the sun may start rising from the West -- who will prevent it? -- just for the change, just for one day.

No, from outside it is impossible -- God is absolutely absurd -- nobody can manage existence from the outside. The only possibility is from the inner; it is an organic being.

The moment you forget yourself as a separate being, you become part of it. You have been part of it; you were unnecessarily carrying the idea of being separate and feeling burdened. I have not felt burdened at all about anything. Whatever happens I have not even thought that it could have been otherwise. Why should it be otherwise? Who to complain to? Because I don't have anybody to pray to, I cannot complain either. A deep acceptance, and you have gone beyond misery.

Yes, my context, Devageet is vast -- but it is not my context, it is the context of the whole. It is functioning perfectly well -- nothing ever goes wrong. But if you take yourself separately, then you are unnecessarily becoming burdened. My whole teaching is: drop all the burden on the whole, be free of all burden, and live spontaneously and totally and without any guilt.

There is nobody who can punish you, and there is nobody who can reward you. You are part of the whole; you are not doing it. The whole is doing through you, whether you know it or not. The moment you know that it is the whole which is functioning through you, you become absolutely free of all responsibility.

-Osho, “The Invitation, #2, Q3”

 Life is God, God is Life. 

Question 4:

Why should one search for God?

Is not life enough?

Life is God! God is Life! those two words are synonymous, synonyms. Forget about God!

Search for life - it is the same search.

Using the word 'God' does not change anything. But I know why the question has arisen. The question has arisen because the priests have been telling you that life and God are not only separate but opposite. They have been telling you that if you want to search and seek God, you will have to renounce life - hence the question. They have been telling you that God is very angry at you because you are living, God is very angry at you because you are loving, God is very angry at you that you are happy here on this earth. Be sad! be miserable! and pray and ask for the other world. Feel yourself a stranger here; feel as if you have been thrown into a prison. This is a kind of punishment, this life.

That's what your priests have been telling you down the ages. They have created the idea, a very false idea and a very irreligious idea, that God and life are not only separate but antagonistic. If you search for life, you will be against God. If you want to search for God, you have to be against life.

Now this is utter stupidity! God is life, God is the very centre of life. Life is the circumference of God's centre. Life is the cyclone and God is the centre of the cyclone.

Searching for God you will come to know the deepest meaning of life. Searching for life you will start falling into God unawares. If you go deep into life, you will find God. If y you go deep into God, you will find life abundant.

But the religious people have destroyed a beautiful word - -'God' is a beautiful word, but it has been used by wrong people. It has become asso-ciated with wrong meanings. When I use the word 'God', I mean the innermost core of life - not that you have to renounce life, but that you have to love life, that you have to dive deep into life.

Why do I use the word 'God'? Why can't drop it and simply use 'life'? The problem is that with life you have the idea that life finishes in the mundane - the market, the money, the power, the prestige, the politics, the family, and the rut and the routine. You think this is life. This is just the very periphery of life. You are standing in the porch and you think this is the palace. It is part of the palace, but it is just the entrance. There are great treasures in the palace.

That's why I don't use just the word 'life', because that will give you again a wrong notion. So I have to go on using both the words: life and God - and go on insisting that they are synonyms.

Search for the centre of life and you will be searching for God.

Jesus has said: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, then all else shall be added unto you. Life comes on its own - all else shall be added unto you. If you seek the centre, then the periphery follows, the circumference follows. When you are standing at the centre, the whole life is available to you. But it is not so if you are standing on the circumference. You may not be even aware of the centre.

From the centre, the circumference remains available; but from the circumference you may not even become alert, you may not be even conscious that there is a centre also.

I have heard a beautiful story:

Once Haroun-Al Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, was celebrating a royal occasion. He ordered a grand display of all manner of jewellery and artwork for the occasion, and invited not only courtiers and nobles but many commoners also.

At the height of the celebrations, the Sultan developed a magnanimous mood and all of a sudden he ordered every person present to touch any article they liked, and that article, no matter how precious, would belong to that person. No sooner was the royal command given than a rush was made to possess the costliest thing within reach.

A beautiful slave girl, remaining composed and serene by the side of the throne asked the Sultan to reaffirm his command. On receiving affirmation, the slave girl immediately touched the Caliph himself on the arm saying, "Why should I run after those things when the master of them all is here?"

The Sultan, in admiration of the insight shown by the girl, complimented her and said, "Now that you possess me, the whole of my kingdom is yours."

Life is the circumference: God is the centre. If you touch God, all is yours; if you have arrived at the centre, then the whole belongs to you.

You ask: WHY SHOULD ONE SEARCH FOR GOD? IS NOT LIFE ENOUGH?

You will know life only when you have touched God. By being divine, life will be revealed to you in all its dimensions. It has multi-facets to it, it is multi-dimensional. Just eating, drinking and merrying is not all. And I am not against it, remember! It is perfectly good as it is. It is beautiful as it is, but it is not all.

I am a spiritual hedonist. I am a synthesis of Buddha and Epicurus. Nobody has tried that yet. There have been people who are absolutely concerned with eating, drinking and merrying, and they don't bother a bit about God and all that nonsense. There are people who are absolutely concerned with God and don't bother about eating, drinking and merrying and all that nonsense. I love both. I am totally in love with both. And I don't see any contradiction between the two.

Eating, drinking, merrying, is the circumference. It is good! God IS there too, but very dilute. When you start moving towards the centre, God becomes more concentrated. When you drink, you attain to a forgetfulness which is momentary. When you drink out of God, you attain to a forgetfulness which is eternal. When you fall in love with somebody's body, it is going to be a very temporary affair. When you fall in love with somebody's spirit, it is going to be an eternal phenomenon. Loving the body is good, but nothing compared with the love of the soul. Loving the visible is good, but don't get caught there - there is more to it. Hiding behind it is the invisible.

Eating is joyful, but when you start eating consciousness... that is what meditation is. When you start nourishing consciousness, then you know what real eating is. That's what Jesus said to his disciples when he was departing: Eat me, drink me - -let me be your food. Each disciple has to become a cannibal because he has to eat the Master. And each Master is already a skilled cannibal - he goes on eating his disciples.

There are things on the periphery, and there are things at the centre. The circumference cannot exist without the centre and the centre cannot exist without the circumference. That's why I say they both are together, they are part of each other.

Epicurus lives on the circumference. Buddha lives at the centre. I live together in both the spaces.

And that is my message to you: Be available to the circumference as much as to the centre; and go on moving in and out. Fall in love and meditate! Be in the body and be the soul! Be the visible and be the invisible! And you will be the richest sannyasins that have ever existed on this earth.

Epicurus' followers were rich - they knew how to eat and drink and be merry; but they were a little poor in the sense that they didn't know how to meditate. They knew how to love, how to relate, but they were not aware at all that there exists something like meditation. And they were beautiful people! Their dance was something of the eternal, but they were not awake of the eternal. Their joy was a reflection of something very deep, but they were not *awar e of the depth. They lived on the waves - -although the waves were living on the ocean, in the ocean, but they lived on the waves.

They sailed in small boats, and they were happy with the sun and the sea, and their joy was great, and I am ALL for it - but there are deeper treasures also. There are pearls which can only be found by diving. Buddha's followers dived deep into the sea and forgot all about the sun and the waves and the joy and surfing - they forgot all about that. They were rich; they attained to the centre - but they were poor also.

My own approach is that there is no need to choose - be choicelessly available to all. Sometimes it is good to be on the waves, in the sun, and sometimes it is good to go to the depth, to the pacific depth of life, to those dark silences where the sun has never penetrated. To be available to both the world and God, life and God, is freedom. To me, the Epicureans are not free because they cannot go into the depth; and Buddhists are not free either because they cannot go back to the surface.

Their freedom has limitations.

I give you absolute freedom without any limitations; I make available to you all that God has made available to you. You are the most courageous experiment on the earth hitherto! It needs guts to be available to these two places together - it needs guts to be in love and still be in meditation, to meditate and yet to love. It is very easy, comfortable, to be in love and forget about meditation; it is simple, it has no complexity in it - because when you love, you forget yourself, you remember the other, you become other-oriented. It is a simple process to forget yourself and to become other- oriented. To love and to meditate is difficult, complex, because to meditate means to forget the other and become self-oriented. Now you will be moving between pola-rities - you will have to become a swinger. But out of complexity is richness.

-Osho, "Walk Without Feet Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, #9, Q4"

 God is energy. 

 God is absolute awareness. 

God is not a person. Because man has always taken God as a person, a thousand and one difficulties have arisen. All the problems that theology deals with are simply futile exercises -- and the base is that God is taken as a person.

God is not a person and cannot be. Let it go as deep in you as possible, because that will become a door, an opening. And particularly for those who have been raised as Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, it is very difficult to take God as anything else but a person -- that becomes a closing. To think about God as a person is anthropocentric. In The Bible it is said God created man in his own image, but just the contrary seems to be the case -- man has created God in his own image. And men differ, that's why there are so many gods in the world.

It happened that when for the first time Christian missionaries reached Africa, they were in trouble -- because they painted God as white and the Devil as black, and the negroes felt very much offended. They wouldn't listen to them, because from the very beginning the image was in conflict. Then one missionary simply got the idea: he changed the colors. He made God black and the Devil white, and the negroes were very happy -- they could accept. A negro is bound to paint his God in his own image, a Chinese in his own, an Indian in his own. We paint God as our own reflection -- of course, perfect -- but your image cannot be God. You are just a part, a very tiny part, one atom in existence. How can the whole be conceived in the image of the part? The whole transcends the part, the whole is infinitely vast. If you cling to the atom, if you cling to the part, you will miss the whole.

God is not to be conceived in your image; rather, on the contrary, you have to drop your image, you have to become imageless. Then, and only then, you become a mirror and the whole reflects in you.

As man has been seeking more and more, this has become clearer and clearer -- that God as a person creates troubles, because then you are always in conflict with other gods. That's why the Jewish god, the Hindu god, the Mohammedan god, the Christian god exist. This is sheer nonsense! How can God be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan? But there are different gods because Jews have their own idea of god, Hindus have their own idea of god, and the conflict is bound to be there. Hindus think that God speaks the Sanskrit language; the English always think that he is an English gentleman.

It is said that one German and one Englishman were talking, and the German said, "We plan in every way, but why, every time, are we defeated?"

The Englishman said, "You have to be defeated, because whenever we start fighting, first we pray to God and he looks after us. You are to be defeated; you can never be victorious."

The German said, "But that we also do, we also pray."

Then the Englishman laughed. He said, "But who understands German?" To an Englishman, God is an Englishman. To Adolf Hitler he must be a Nordic, has to be because we create our own image.

I was just reading a memoir of an army priest. This priest was attached to Montgomery's wing, and one day, when they were ready to attack, it was so cloudy and there was so much mist and so much cold that it seemed impossible to move. So the priest has written in the memoir that the general, Montgomery, called him and he said, "You pray to God and tell him immediately that we, his soldiers, are on the march, and what is he doing? Is he in conspiracy with the enemy? Tell him immediately to stop all this!"

The priest was surprised: "A man like Montgomery -- and what is he talking about?" He said, "But this won't look good. It doesn't look good to say to God, `What are you doing? Stop this immediately because we are on the move and we are your soldiers.'"

The priest felt a little embarrassed, but Montgomery said, "You listen to my order! You are my priest, attached to my army, so whatsoever I say you have to do. Go and pray immediately!"

This happens. It looks absurd and foolish, but this is happening all the time, to all the people, to everybody. If you take God as a person this is bound to happen. Then you start communicating with him as a person -- and he is not a person. There are millions of atheists because you have taken God as a person. The atheist is not against God, but he is against your conception of God as a person, because the whole concept is foolish. And think in what anguish you must be putting your God, because Germans are praying for their victory, the English are praying for their victory, and everybody thinks that God is with them, at their side.

I have heard: Once Junnaid, a Sufi mystic, dreamt that he saw that he was dead and the greatest sinner of the town was also dead, and both reached God's door and knocked. The sinner was received and the saint was neglected. He felt very, very hurt. He was expecting always that he should be received, welcomed, and what was happening? -- just the opposite. And he knew this man who was being received with such ceremony. When the ceremony was over and the sinner was sent to his abode, the saint said, "Just one question I have to ask God: What are you doing? I have been praying continuously, twenty-four hours, day and night, calling your name, praying. Even in my sleep I have been calling your name and chanting!"

God said, "Precisely because of that -- you have pestered me so much that I am really afraid of you now that you have come to heaven. What will you do here? From Earth, so far away, in twenty-four hours you have not left me a single moment of peace! This man is good, that's why we are celebrating. He never bored me, he never pestered me; he never used my name; he never created any trouble for me."

God as a person is just foolish, the whole concept is foolish. And he cannot be a person because he has to be all persons -- how can he be a person himself? He cannot be somebody because he is everybody, and he cannot be anywhere because he is everywhere. You cannot define him, and personality is a definition. You cannot limit him, and as a person he becomes limited. Personality is just like a wave that comes and goes, and he is like an ocean. He is immense -- he abides. Personalities come and go, they are forms; they are there and then they are no more there. Forms change; forms change into the opposites continuously, and he is the formless. He cannot be defined, it cannot be said who he is. He is all. But the moment you say, "He is all," the problem arises: how to communicate? There is no need; you cannot communicate with him like a person. You have to communicate with him in a totally different dimension -- that dimension is of energy, that dimension is of consciousness, not of personality.

God is energy.

God is absolute awareness.

God is bliss, ecstasy; indefinable, unlimited; no beginning, no end; always and always; eternal, timeless, beyond space -- because God means the total.

The total cannot have a personality -- this is the first thing to be understood, very, very deeply; not only intellectually, but as totally as possible, because if you can conceive, can feel, grope towards God as totality, then your prayer will be different. Then your prayer will not be a foolish prayer, then he cannot be on your side -- he is on every side. He is also with your enemy as much as with you, and he is as much in the saint as in the sinner -- because he is all! He is as much in the dark as in the light. He comprehends all. All opposites meet and mingle and become one in him. Because of the concept of God as a person we have to create a Devil against God, because all the negativities! -- where will you put them? You have to create somebody to throw all the negativities onto. Then your God also becomes false, your Devil also false, because negatives and positives exist together, not separately. And all that you like you put on God's side. It is your division.

God cannot be divided -- he is undivided.

First thing: God is not a person. And remember, you are also not a person. It is ignorance, it is self-ignorance: that's why you appear like a person. If you move deeper, soon personality becomes blurred; a moment comes when you don't know who you are. Sometimes it happens that if somebody wakes you suddenly, you may have observed many times, you suddenly don't know where you are -- whether it is morning or evening, whether it is your house or somewhere else, what town it is; for a single moment everything is blurred, no time sense, no space sense, and you don't know who you are. Why does it happen? -- because in deep sleep you move towards the center, of course unconsciously, but at the center there is no personality, an impersonal energy exists. And if somebody suddenly wakes you, you have to move from the center to the periphery in such a rush that there is no time to gather personality. In a sudden rush you simply lose identity -- and this is your reality, this is who you are in fact.

Deep in meditation you will become more and more aware of the indefinable, unlimited. First it will look like a blurred phenomenon, and you may even become afraid, scared: What is happening to you? Are you losing your mind? Are you going mad? If you become afraid you will miss. Don't be worried, it is natural. You are moving to the indefinable from the defined; in between there will be a ground where everything will get blurred.

-Osho, "The Hidden Harmony, #4"

 A belief system is nothing but poison 

Any religion, any ideology, that is based only on belief, faith, is bound to cripple your intelligence. A belief system is nothing but poison to your capacity to understand.

Good words are used to hide ugly things.

These Bible-bashing Christians are not doing anything unexpected. For two thousand years they have been doing the same thing. They are full of anger if you are not ready to follow them; they are full of love if you are ready to follow them. Their love is conditional, and any love that is conditional carries with it hate, anger, cruelty -- everything that is against love. They give you the choice: either you follow them, or you will have to be a victim of their anger, hatred, cruelty. [....]

Every believer is bound to be split. There is no way to avoid it because the moment you believe in something you have decided not to listen to reason any longer. But it is reason which finds facts, realities, indubitable truths.

-Osho, “From Personality to Individuality, #19“

 Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy 

It is absolutely necessary that God should be dead. But I want you to know my understanding. It was good of Friedrich Nietzsche to declare God dead. I declare that he has never been born. It is a created fiction, an invention, not a discovery. Do you understand the difference between invention and discovery? A discovery is about truth, an invention is manufactured by you. It is man-manufactured fiction.

Certainly it has given consolation, but consolation is not the right thing! Consolation is opium. It keeps you unaware of the reality, and life is flowing past you so quickly -- seventy years will be gone soon.

Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth. The very desire to find the truth disappears.

But in the beginning it is bitter if all your belief systems are taken away from you. The fear and anxiety which you have been suppressing for millennia, which is there, very alive, will surface immediately. No God can destroy it, only the search for truth and the experience of truth -- not a belief -- is capable of healing all your wounds, of making you a whole being. And the whole person is the holy person to me.

- Osho, "God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth, #1, Q1"

 There is no God, There is no Priesthood 

Question : 

With gautam buddha religion took a quantum leap. god became meaningless and only meditation was important. now, twenty-five centuries after buddha, again religion is taking the quantum leap in your presence and becoming religiousness. please talk about this phenomenon.

The credit of bringing a quantum leap in religion goes back twenty-five centuries before Gautam Buddha to Adinatha, who for the first time preached a religion without God. It was a tremendous revolution because nowhere in the whole world had it ever been conceived that religion could exist without God.

God has been an essential part -- the center -- of all the religions: Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism. But to make God the center of religion makes man just the periphery. To conceive of God as the creator of the world makes man only a puppet.

That's why in Hebrew, which is the language of Judaism, man is called Adam. 'Adam' means mud. In Arabic man is called 'admi'; it is from Adam, again it means mud. In English, which has become the language of Christianity by and large, the word human comes from 'humus' and humus means mud.

Naturally if God is the creator he has to create from something. He has to make man like a statue, so first he makes man with mud and then breathes life into him. But if this is so man loses all dignity, and if God is the creator of man and everything else, the whole idea is whimsical because what has he been doing for eternity before he created man and the universe?

According to Christianity he created man only four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ.

So what was he doing all along through eternity? So it seems whimsical. There cannot be any cause, because to have a cause for which God had to create existence means there are powers higher than God, there are causes which can make him create. Or there is a possibility that suddenly desire arose in him. That too is not very philosophically sound, because for eternity he was desireless. And to be desireless is so blissful that it is impossible to conceive that out of an experience of eternal blissfulness a desire arises in him to create the world. Desire is desire, whether you want to make a house or become the prime minister or create the world. And God cannot be conceived as having desires. So the only thing that remains is that he is whimsical, eccentric. Then there is no need for cause and no need for desire -- just a whim.

But if this whole existence is just out of a whim it loses all meaning, all significance. And tomorrow another whim may arise in him to destroy, to dissolve the whole universe. So we are simply puppets in the hands of a dictatorial god who has all the powers but who has not a sane mind, who is whimsical.

To conceive this five thousand years ago Adinatha must have been a very deep meditator, contemplative, and he must have come to the conclusion that with God there is no meaning in the world. If we want meaning in the world then God has to be disposed of. He must have been a man of tremendous courage. People are still worshipping in the churches, in the synagogues, in the temples; yet that man Adinatha five thousand years before us came to a very clear-cut scientific conclusion that there is nothing higher than man and any evolution that is going to happen is within man and in his consciousness.

This was the first quantum leap -- God was disposed of.

Adinatha is the first master of Jainism. The credit does not go to Buddha because Buddha comes twenty-five centuries later than Adinatha. But another credit goes to Buddha. Adinatha disposed of God but could not manage to put meditation in its place. On the contrary, he created asceticism, austerities, torturing the body, fasting, remaining naked, eating only once a day, not drinking in the night, not eating in the night, eating only certain foods. He had come to a beautiful philosophical conclusion but it seems the conclusion was only philosophical, it was not meditational.

When you depose God you cannot have any ritual, you cannot have worship, you cannot have prayer; something has to be substituted. He substituted austerities, because man became the center of his religion and man has to purify himself. Purity in his conception was that man has to detach himself from the world, has to detach himself from his own body. This distorted the whole thing. He had come to a very significant conclusion, but it remained only a philosophical concept.

Adinatha disposed of God but left a vacuum, and Buddha filled it with meditation. Adinatha made a godless religion, Buddha made a meditative religion.

Meditation is Buddha's contribution. The question is not to torture the body; the question is to become more silent, to become more relaxed, to become more peaceful. It is an inward journey to reach to one's own center of consciousness, and the center of one's own consciousness is the center of the whole existence.

Twenty-five centuries have again passed. Just as Adinatha's revolutionary concept of godless religion got lost in a desert of austerities and self-torture, Buddha's idea of meditation -- something inner, that nobody else can see ; only you know where you are, only you know whether you are progressing or not -- got lost into another desert, and that was organized religion.

Religion says that single individuals cannot be trusted, whether they are meditating or not. They need communities, masters, monasteries where they can live together. Those who are on a higher level of consciousness can watch over others and help them. It became essential that religions should not be left in the hands of individuals, they should be organized and should be in the hands of those who have arrived at a high point of meditation.

In the beginning it was good; while Buddha was alive there were many people who reached self-realization, enlightenment. But as Buddha died and these people died, the very organization that was supposed to help people to meditate fell in the hands of a priesthood, and rather than helping you to meditate they started creating rituals around the image of Buddha. Buddha became another God. Adinatha disposed of God, Buddha never accepted that God exists, but this priesthood cannot exist without a God. So there may not be a God who is a creator, but Buddha has reached godhood.

For others the only thing is to worship Buddha, to have faith in Buddha, to follow the principles of Buddha, to live life according to his doctrine; and Buddha got lost in the organization, the imitation. But they all forgot the basic thing which was meditation. My whole effort is to create a religionless religion. We have seen what happened to religions which have God as the center. We have seen what happened to Adinatha's revolutionary concept, godless religion. We have seen what happened to Buddha -- organized religion without God.

Now my effort is: just as they dissolved God, dissolve religion also. Leave only meditation so it cannot be forgotten in any way. There is nothing else to replace it. There is no God and there is no religion. By religion I mean an organized doctrine, creed, ritual, priesthood. And for the first time I want religion to be absolutely individual, because all organized religions, whether with God or without God, have misled humanity. And the sole cause has been organization, because organization has its own ways which go against meditativeness. Organization is really a political phenomenon, it is not religious. It is another way of power and will to power.

Now every Christian priest hopes some day to become a bishop at least, to become a cardinal, to become a pope. This is a new hierarchy, a new bureaucracy, and because it is spiritual nobody objects. You may be a bishop, you may be a pope, you may be anything. It is not objectionable because you are not going to obstruct anybody's life. It is just an abstract idea.

My effort is to destroy the priesthood completely. It remained with God, it remained with godless religion, now the only way is that we should dispose of God and religion both so that there is no possibility of any priesthood.

Then man is absolutely free, totally responsible for his own growth. My feeling is that the more a man is responsible for his own growth, the more difficult it is for him to postpone it for long. Because it means if you are miserable, you are responsible. If you are tense, you are responsible. If you are not relaxed, you are responsible. If you are in suffering, you are the cause of it. There is no God, there is no priesthood that you can go to and ask for some ritual. You are left alone with your misery, and nobody wants to be miserable.

The priests go on giving you opium, they go on giving you hope, "Don't be worried, it is just a test of your faith, of your trust; and if you can pass through this misery and suffering silently and patiently, in the other world beyond death you will be immensely rewarded." If there is no priesthood you have to understand that whatever you are, you are responsible for it, nobody else.

And the feeling that "I am responsible for my misery," opens the door. Then you start looking for methods and means to get out of this miserable state, and that's what meditation is. It is simply the opposite state of misery, suffering, anguish, anxiety. It is a state of a peaceful, blissful flowering of being, so silent and so timeless that you cannot conceive that anything better is possible. And there is nothing which is better than the state of a meditative mind.

So you can say these are the three quantum leaps: Adinatha drops God because he finds God is becoming too heavy on man; rather than helping him in his growth he has become a burden -- but he forgets to replace him with something. Man will need something in his miserable moments, in his suffering. He used to pray to God. You have taken God away, you have taken his prayer away and now when he will be miserable, what will he do? In Jainism meditation has no place.

It is Buddha's insight to see that God has been dropped; now the gap should be filled, otherwise the gap will destroy man. He puts in meditation -- something really authentic which can change the whole being. But he was not aware -- perhaps he could not be aware because there are things you cannot be aware of unless they happen -- that there should be no organization, that there should be no priesthood, that as God is gone religion should also be gone. But he can be forgiven because he had not thought about it and there was no past to help him to see it, it came after him.

The real problem is the priest, and God is the invention of the priest. Unless you drop the priest, you can drop God, but the priest will always find new rituals, he will create new gods.

My effort is to leave you alone with meditation, with no mediator between you and existence. When you are not in meditation you are separated from existence and that is your suffering. It's the same as when you take a fish out of the ocean and throw it on the bank -- the misery and the suffering and the tortures he goes through, the hankering and the effort to reach back to the ocean because it is where he belongs, he is part of the ocean and he cannot remain apart.

Any suffering is simply indicative that you are not in communion with existence, that the fish is not in the ocean.

Meditation is nothing but withdrawing all the barriers, thoughts, emotions, sentiments, which create a wall between you and existence. The moment they drop you suddenly find yourself in tune with the whole; not only in tune, you really find you are the whole.

When a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the ocean it does not find that it is part of the ocean, it finds it is the ocean. And to find it is the ultimate goal, the ultimate realization, there is nothing beyond it.

So Adinatha dropped God but did not drop organization. And because there was no God, the organization created rituals.

Buddha, seeing what had happened to Jainism, that it had become a ritualism, dropped God. He dropped all rituals and single-pointedly insisted on meditation, but he forgot that the priests who had made rituals in Jainism are going to do the same with meditation. And they did it, they made Buddha himself a God. They talk about meditation but basically Buddhists are worshipers of Buddha -- they go to the temple and instead of Krishna or Christ there is Buddha's statue. There was no statue of Buddha for five hundred years after Buddha. In Buddhist temples they had just the tree under which Buddha became enlightened, engraved on marble, just a symbol. Buddha was not there, only the tree.

You will be surprised that the statue of Buddha that we see today has no resemblance at all to Buddha's personality, it resembles the personality of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great came to India three hundred years after Buddha. Till then there was no statue of Buddha. The priests were in search because there was no photograph, there was no painting, so how to make a statue of Buddha? And Alexander's face looked really superhuman, he had a beautiful personality, the Greek face and physiology; they picked up the idea of Buddha's face and body from Alexander. So all the statues that are being worshipped in Buddhist temples are statues of Alexander the Great, they have nothing to do with Buddha. But the priests had to create the statue -- God was not there, ritual was difficult, around meditation ritual was difficult. They created a statue and they started saying -- in the same way all religions have been doing -- have faith in Buddha, have trust in Buddha, and you will be saved.

Both the revolutions were lost. I would like that what I am doing is not lost. So I am trying in every possible way to drop all those things which in the past have been barriers for the revolution to continue and grow. I don't want anybody to stand between the individual and existence. No prayer, no priest, you alone are enough to face the sunrise, you don't need somebody to interpret for you what a beautiful sunrise it is. [....]

And this is my attitude: you are here, every individual is here, the whole existence is available. All that you need is just to be silent and listen to existence. There is no need of any religion, there is no need of any God, there is no need of any priesthood, there is no need of any organization.

I trust in the individual categorically. Nobody up to now has trusted in the individual in such a way.

So all things can be removed. Now all that has been left to you is a state of meditation which simply means a state of utter silence. The word meditation makes it look heavier. It is better to call it just a simple, innocent silence and existence opens all its beauties to you.

And as it goes on growing you go on growing, and there comes a moment when you have reached the very peak of your potentiality -- you can call it Buddhahood, enlightenment, bhagwatta, godliness, whatever, it has no name, so any name will do. [....]

- Osho, "The Last Testament, Vol 5, #16"

 He(God) is the ultimate enemy of humanity 

As long as there is a God, man cannot be at peace. It is God who is dividing man. He is the ultimate enemy of humanity; otherwise what is the difference between a Hindu and a Mohammedan and a Christian and a Jew? -- just their idea of God. And that idea is nothing but an idea, just an empty hypothesis.

There is no God anywhere; there is no evidence anywhere, there is no proof. And if somebody says he has seen God, he is simply a madman. He is deluded; he has been hallucinating and he needs psychiatric treatment. If we had treated our saints through psychiatry, humanity would have been in a peaceful state.

Now God is your greatest chain. Are you ready to throw it away?

Your holy scriptures are dividing you, because every scripture demands that it be the only holy scripture. That necessarily creates conflict: Hindus cannot believe that THE BIBLE is holy... great competition. The VEDAS are holy because they are the ancientmost scripture in the world; God himself wrote them. It is so stupid to talk this way.

I have talked with learned Hindu scholars and asked them, "Have you ever thought about your VEDAS, which you claim that God has written? Just look at the content... the very content shows that it cannot be written by God; there is an intrinsic impossibility." And I was surprised -- great scholars like Omkarnath Maharaj, who was thought to be the authority on the VEDAS, were shocked by my question. He said, "I have never thought about it."

I said, "You are the greatest authority. Open the VEDAS anywhere, at any page. I don't insist on a certain page -- open it at random and read the content. The content will give you the proof that it cannot be written by God."

He had a copy of RIG VEDA by his side. He opened it at random, and what was the content? He was so shocked. The content was: "A brahmin is praying to God..." Now, how can God write it? -- "A brahmin is praying to God, saying, `I pray so much, but you don't listen; there is a limitation to patience. This year you have proved it: just let your clouds rain on my fields, and not on the fields of my enemies.'" This kind of rubbish is written by God? It is intrinsically an absolute proof that some stupid brahmin is writing it.

But even after that he continued. After two years I saw him again. I said, "You have not stopped."

He said, "To encounter you... I feel such a deep fear in me."

I said, "Why should you be afraid? Just because you have been preaching nonsense..."

THE BIBLE is full of pornography, five hundred pages of pornography. And when I said it, immediately ten Christian associations forced the magistrate of Kanpur to issue an unbailable arrest warrant. I have my people everywhere to fight for me; they immediately took a stay order from the Allahabad high court. It is absolute nonsense; the judge should first see THE BIBLE -- and I am ready to point out the exact five hundred pages which are pornographic.

But strangely, Christians and Jews both go on calling the Old Testament a holy scripture, written by God. It seems... is God just a pornographic writer, just on the board of editors of PLAYBOY?

These are the problems. Every prophet, every messiah, every avatara, every tirthankara is claiming that only he is the right one. You think only ordinary people are competing with each other? -- that is not true. Your so-called great men are so ugly in their competition, you cannot believe it.

In the times of Mahavira, twenty-five centuries ago... Mahavira and Buddha were both contemporaries, and there were six others; eight people were contending that they were the twenty-fourth tirthankara of Jainism. Even Gautam Buddha was one of the candidates. And because Mahavira proved to be more orthodox, more in tune with the Jaina ideology of self-torture and masochism, he won the battle. Even Buddha lost the election. Frustrated because he lost the election and Mahavira was accepted as the twenty-fourth tirthankara, he started a new religion.

If you look without prejudice, you cannot believe it -- why are there so many wars, why is there so much lunacy, why is there so much insanity? Even your great peaks, your highest suns behave like children.

Jesus goes on declaring that he is the only son of God. Naturally, he cannot accept Gautam Buddha or Confucius or Lao Tzu or Basho or Bodhidharma -- not even as cousins. The family is very closed, and a very strange family at that!There is no woman in the family. And in fact the woman is the very center of a family; without a woman you can have a house but not a home. Strange company: God the father, Jesus Christ the son, and a strange fellow -- nobody knows who he is, whether he is male or female -- the Holy Ghost. These three people go on dominating the whole world. This is their trinity.

For centuries intelligent Christians have been asking, "At least give one place to a woman," but such is the macho male mind that he will not allow it. Even the mother of Jesus is not allowed in the holy family. A woman cannot be accepted high on the ladder of hierarchy.

Christians cannot accept Mahavira or Buddha as people of real religious importance. These are the problems that have been dominating humanity for centuries. In particular in Israel the problem has become a very burning issue, because the whole of the Middle East is Mohammedan. But Mohammedanism is only fourteen hundred years old, Christianity is two thousand years old. So before Mohammed was born, Jews had already entered the Arabic world, and they had their own settlements. Then Christians came and they started making their own settlements....

The problem is this special rock, which is said to be the central piece of the great Jewish Temple of Solomon, which was destroyed by the anti-Jewish elements long ago. Only the rock which was the central piece remains; it is called the "Rock of the Dome."

Now, Jews claim that it is their holy place, because it is the site of their great temple. And Christians claim that this is the place where Jesus was crucified, so it is their holy place -- not Jewish but Christian. And then comes another contender, and in a very strange way...

Six hundred years after Jesus, Mohammed established a new religion -- because the Arabs had no religion of their own. They were a nomadic race, wanderers; they had no organized religion. Mohammed collected those Arabs under the name of Mohammedanism. He himself was an Arab, and naturally had great influence. For his whole life he was fighting -- war and war, not a single day of rest -- and on his sword was his message: "My message is peace." It was written on his sword!

-Osho, “The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #15”

 A religious person is not interested in God 

God has been experienced. Nobody has ever been able to say exactly what that experience is. And even if somebody tries to say it, you are not going to believe it. Your prejudices, your A PRIORI ideas, will prevent you.

No, no need to believe in God; no need even to believe that one day you are going to see him. In fact, God is not a religious subject at all -- you will be surprised when you hear it -- God is a philosophic subject. It is for those useless people who go on endlessly into logic-chopping and hair-splitting. It is for those people to discuss God.

A religious person is not interested in God; he is more interested in the very source of his being – ‘Who am I?’ That is the MOST fundamental religious question – not God, not heaven, not hell, but ‘Who am I?’

And if you can find the truth of your own being you will have found all the truth that is necessary to know and is worth knowing. You will have found God and you will have found nirvana and you will have found all that the seers, the rishis, the Buddhas, the prophets, down the ages, have been telling you to inquire into.

But don't make a philosophical inquiry, otherwise you will end up with a conclusion. And all conclusions are dangerous because once you conclude you become fanatical about your conclusion, you start clinging to it. You become afraid of truth -- because who knows? Truth may disturb your conclusion, and your conclusion is so cozy and so convenient, and it has helped to give you a certain feeling of security. So you go on clinging to your conclusion -- and your conclusion is your conclusion.

If you are unaware, what value can your conclusion have? Your conclusion cannot be bigger than you, your conclusion cannot be higher than you. Your conclusion will be as high, as deep, as you are high and you are deep. Your conclusion will only reflect you.

God is not a conclusion. It is not arrived at by logical processes -- by believing, by discussing, by analyzing, no. All mind processes have to cease. When all processes have ceased, something -- call it XYZ -- suddenly wells up within you. A few qualities can be indicated: you will feel tremendously ecstatic, blissful, at home, at ease. For the first time existence will be your home. You will not be an outsider, a stranger. For the first time there will be no conflict between you and existence, no struggle for the survival of the fittest. For the first time you will be in a state of let-go. And in let-go wells up great joy.

You will be able to sing the song that you have brought in your heart and is still unsung. You will be able to bloom into thousands of flowers. Or as in the East we say: you will bloom into a thousand-petalled lotus of consciousness, of awareness. That is God -- or better, godliness.

-Osho, “Ah, This!, #6, Q6”

 There is no other God than Life 

"My whole effort is to bring God back into your neighbourhood, to make him also so close, just like breathing, that he can beat in your heart. Then there is no need to escape from life or to be destructive or to be negative. Then to be alive is worship, and to be more alive is to be more religious. To be totally alive, to be wholly alive is to be holy.

There is no other God than life. All other gods are false, manufactured by man. Only life is not manufactured by man."

- Osho, "Scriptures in Silence and Sermons in Stones, #26"

"Waiting for God is a way of escaping from God, a very tricky and cunning way, very clever and subtle -- so subtle that one can deceive oneself through it. What do you mean when you say 'waiting for God'? God is not there, far away, distant. You are not to travel to God, there is going to be no pilgrimage. God is where you are; you ARE because of God. God is in your breathing, God is your life. There is no other God than life.

To avoid life, people have created images of God -- they are not images of God, they are escapes from God. People are avoiding God, hence they have made temples and mosques and gurudwaras and churches. These are not made by religious people, remember, these are made by the irreligious. Those who don't want to get involved with God, those who want to postpone it, they have created the temples and the so-called religions. Those religions give you a feeling that God will be in the future -- in some other country, in some other land, in some other space, in some other world, but never here. And he is here.

And he is here in the songs of the birds and the green of the trees and the red of the trees and the gold of the trees. He is in the bird on the wing... he is everywhere. You need not even go outside yourself to find him. He is your innermost core, your substratum, your very being. How can you wait for him? It will be just like a fish in the ocean waiting for the ocean; it will be utterly foolish. So all waiting is for Godot. All waiting is futile."

- Osho, "Take It Easy, Vol 2, #6"

Christianity says: You are sons of God. Buddhism says: When you come to know yourself, you are not sons -- you are godhood itself. There is no God other than you, there is no God other than the universe. Hence Buddha never talks about God, because there is no God other than this. There is no that other than this. This is that. Existence is divine.

But to know this, no prayer is going to help. To know this, no philosophy is going to be of any support. To know this, one has to go utterly into oneself -- with only one question like an arrow piercing your heart: Who am I? And the deeper you go, the deeper you will see that you don't exist as an individual.

- Osho, "Take It Easy, Vol 1, #11"

All the religions have been suicidal. Of course they don't call it suicide, they give it beautiful names -- asceticism, tapascharya -- but basically it is nothing but masochism, self-torture. They call it renunciation, but it is nothing but destroying yourself gradually, slowly. All the religions of the world up to now have lived with a philosophy of life-denial.

My fundamental approach is that of life-acceptance, total life-affirmation. There is no God other than life! The very idea of God other than life is dangerous, because if God is other than life then naturally you will start choosing God against life. You will be pro-God and anti-life, because life is momentary and God gives you the greed of being eternal, forever.

I say to you, there is no other God than life, hence the question of choice does not arise at all. Live! Live totally, live passionately, live intelligently, live lovingly. Become a flame so intense, so total, that each moment starts having the flavor of eternity.

Remember, eternity is not horizontal. It is not like a line going from A to B, from B to c, from c to D -- it is not horizontal. Eternity is intensity, it is vertical. It is diving from A to a deeper A, not going to B: from A to Al, from A1 to A2, from A2 to A3... In fact as far as intensity is concerned, A is the only alphabet. In fact, the word "alphabet" comes from A; it comes from Arabic ALEPH. A is enough! And when you can get A, why bother about B?

- Osho, "The Wild Geese and the Water, #1, Q1"

People who are very uptight, unable to enjoy anything, unable to relax, incapable even of enjoying a good sleep, they are the very people who become interested in God. And they become interested for wrong reasons. They think that because life is useless, futile; they have to seek and search God. Their “God” is something against life, remember.

Gurdjieff used to say: “I have searched every religion, every church, mosque and temple, and I have found that the ‘God’ of the religious people is against life.” And how can God be against life? If he is against, there is no reason why life should exist or should be allowed to exist. So if your God is against life, in fact deep down you are against the real God. You are following a Godot, not a God.

God is the very fulfillment of life, God is the very fragrance of life, God is the total organic unity of life. God is not something that exists like a dead rock, God is not static. God is a dynamic phenomenon. God does not exist – it happens; when you are ready it happens. Don’t think that God exists somewhere and you will find a way to reach him. No, there is no way and there is no God existing somewhere waiting for you. Godliness is something that happens to you when you are ready. When you are ready – when the sadness has disappeared and you can dance, when the heaviness has disappeared and you can sing, when the heavy weight of conditioning is no longer on your heart and you can flow – godliness happens. God is not a thing that exists; it is something that happens. It is a dynamic, organic unity.

When godliness happens everything happens: the trees, the stars, the rivers. And to me, to be capable of enjoying is the door. Serious people have never been known to reach him. Seriousness is the barrier, the wrong attitude. Anything that makes you serious is irreligious. Don’t go to a church that makes you serious.

-Osho, “Come Follow to You, Vol. 1, #2”

 God Is Not a Solution - but a Problem 

Question 1:

Osho,

Do you really believe that God does not exist?

I do not believe that God does not exist, I know for sure He does not exist. And thank God that he does not exist - because the existence of God would have created so many problems, difficulties, that life would have been almost impossible.

You may not have looked at it from the angle from which I am going to talk to you - perhaps nobody has ever tried to look at it from this angle.

The Christians say that God created the world. In fact, the hypothesis of God is needed for the creation. The world is there; somebody must have created it. Whoever created it, that creator is God. But do you see the implication?

If the world is created, then there can be no evolution: Evolution means that creation continues.

Think of the Christian story. God created the world in six days, and then on the seventh day He rested; since then He has been resting. The whole creation was completed in six days. Now, from where can evolution possibly appear? Creation means: finished! - the full stop has arrived. On the sixth day, the full stop; and after that there is no possibility of evolution.

Evolution implies that creation is not complete, hence the possibility of evolving. But God cannot create an incomplete world; that will be going against God's nature. He is perfect, and whatsoever He does is perfect, neither He is evolving, nor is the world evolving: everything is at a standstill, dead.

This is the reason why the popes were against Charles Darwin, because that man was bringing in an idea which is going to kill God sooner or later. Those popes were perceptive in a way: they could see the faraway implications of the idea of evolution.

Ordinarily you would not connect creation and evolution. What connection is there between God and Charles Darwin? There is a connection. Charles Darwin is saying that the creation is an ongoing process, that existence is always imperfect, that it is never going to be perfect; only then can it go on evolving, reaching new peaks, new dimensions, opening new doors, new possibilities.

God had finished His work in six days and not long ago: four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ was born. It must have been the first of January, a Monday, because we manage to fit God into everything that we have created. He has to follow our calendar. If you ask me, I will say it must have been Monday, the first of April, April Fools' Day, because that day seems to be absolutely suitable for doing such an act of creating a complete ready-made existence.

If evolution becomes impossible, life loses all meaning, life loses all future; then it has only a past.

It is not unnatural that religious people are constantly past-oriented - they have only the past.

Everything has been already done; there is nothing to be done in the future, the future is empty, blank, and yet you have to live in that future. Everything that had to happen happened four thousand and four years before Jesus was born. After that there has been no addition, no evolution, no development.

God created the world just as a potter creates a pot, a dead thing out of mud. But you have to remember, the potter can destroy the pot any moment. If you give the power of creation to God, you are simultaneously giving Him the power of un-creation too. These are the implications that have not been looked into. God can un-create. April Fools' Day comes every year; any year on the first of April He can un-create. At the very most it may take six days again.

The very idea that you have been created makes you a thing, it takes away your being.

You can be a being only if there is no God.

God and you as a being, cannot coexist.

That's why I say I am sure God does not exist, because I see beings everywhere.

The presence of beings is enough proof that God does not exist, cannot exist. Either you can exist or God can exist; you both cannot exist. The person who starts believing in God, unknowingly is losing his beinghood; he is becoming a thing. So there are Christian things, Hindu things, Mohammedan things, but not beings. They have dropped their being of their own accord; they have given their being to God.

The fiction has become alive, and the alive has become a fiction. I am simply putting things right side up.

When I say God does not exist, I have no grudge against God. I don't care a bit about God, whether He exists or not - it is none of my business.

When I say God does not exist, my purpose is to give you your lost beinghood; to show you that you are not a thing created by somebody arbitrarily.

Why did He decide, on a certain day, four thousand and four years before Jesus was born, to create the world? What caused the idea of creation? Was there something else that was forcing Him to create? Was there some serpent seducing Him to create? Why on a certain day, and not before? I want you to see the point. It is arbitrary, whimsical. If the story is true, God is insane. What was He doing for the whole of eternity? - the idea of creation came so late to Him.

The very idea of creation makes us arbitrary, whimsical, whereas evolution is not arbitrary, whimsical.

Evolution is eternal; it has been always going on. There was not a time when existence was not, there will never be a time when existence will not be:

Existence means eternity.

God makes everything silly, small, arbitrary, meaningless, whimsical. Just that old man... and He must have been really old, really, really old, and then this idea of creation came to Him... and in six days He completed it. That's why the popes were against Charles Darwin: "You are saying that it is not yet completed, it is evolving. You are against the Bible, the holy scriptures. You are against God, against the idea of creation."

Charles Darwin was saying simply, "I am not against any God, I don't know any God." He was a very fearful person, and he was a Christian. He used to pray; in fact he started to pray more after he wrote the theory of evolution. He became very much afraid: who knows, perhaps he was doing something against God. He had believed that God created the world, but the facts of nature were telling a different story - everything is evolving, life is never the same again.

So if anybody believes in God, he cannot believe that you are a being.

Only things are created; they have a beginning and an end - beings are eternal.

Because of this fact, two religions in India, Jainism and Buddhism, dropped the idea of God - because to keep that idea simply meant you were dropping the idea of being, which is far more significant. They would have liked to keep both, but it was logically impossible.

Once you accept that you have been created, you accept the other part of it, that the same whimsical man, any day, can un-create you. So what meaning do you have? - just a toy in the hands of some magical old man? So whenever He wants, He plays with the toys, and whenever He wants, He destroys them? It was really a great, courageous step on the part of Mahavira and Buddha to choose being and drop the idea of God - and that too, twenty-five centuries ago. They could simply see that you cannot manage both; they are against each other. But they were not aware of evolution; that was a later development. Now we know that creation goes against the idea of evolution too.

Creation and evolution are absolutely against each other. Creation means completion; evolution means constant growth.

Growth is possible only if things are imperfect, and they remain imperfect. Howsoever they grow, there is always a possibility of growing more. There are a few other things which have to be considered.

If you are created, you can't have freedom. Have you seen any machinery having freedom? - any "thing" having freedom? Anything that is created is in the hands of the creator, just like a puppet. He has the strings in his hands; he pulls one string... you must have seen a puppet show. The strings are pulled - the man is behind the screen; you don't see him, you simply see the puppets - and the puppets dance and they fight... but that is all false: the puppeteer is the reality.

These puppets cannot have freedom to fight, to love, to get married - all these things happen in a puppet show - to dance or not to dance... or when they don't want to dance, to say, "No! I am not going to dance." The puppet cannot say no.

And all the religions have been teaching you not to say no don't say no to God, to His messiah, to His holy book - never, never think in terms of saying no.

Why? - if you cannot say no, what is the meaning of your yes? It is a corollary: yes has meaning only when you are capable of saying no. If you have to say yes, and there is no other alternative except yes I have heard that when Ford first started manufacturing cars, he himself used to go to the showroom and take an interest in the customers, talk to the customers. He would say to them, "You can choose any color provided it is black" - because at that time only black cars were available. But he used to say, "You can choose any color provided it is black."

You are free, provided your answer is yes. What kind of freedom is this?

Puppets cannot have freedom. And if God has simply made you, you are a puppet.

It is better to revolt against God and be a being than to submit and be a part of a puppet show - because the moment you accept yourself as a puppet, you have committed suicide.

You see puppets the whole world over, with different colors, different names, different rituals. Hindus say that without God's will even a leaf in the tree cannot move - so what about you? Everything happens according to God. In fact, He has determined everything the moment He created; it is predestined. Now, it is so strange that intelligent people also go on believing in such garbage.

Just see the garbage: on one hand God has created you; on the other hand, when you do something wrong you will be punished.

If God has created you, and He has determined your nature and you cannot go against it, you don't have any freedom.

There is no possibility, with God, to have freedom; then how can you commit a crime, how can you be a sinner? - and how can you be a saint either?

Everything is determined by Him. He is responsible; you are not. But people go on believing in both things together: God creating the world, God creating man, woman, everything - and then throwing all responsibility on you. If there is something wrong in you, God is responsible and should be punished. If you are a murderer, then God creates a murderer; then He should be responsible for the Adolf Hitlers and the joseph Stalins and the Mao Tse-tungs. He created these people.

But no, the religious mind loses intelligence, becomes rusted, forgets completely that these are incompatible things; God and freedom are incompatible.

If you are free, then there is no God.

Friedrich Nietzsche's statement I remind you of again. This man is certainly crazy, but sometimes the so-called sane people are so dumb and so dull, so idiotic, that crazy people come up with great insights; and Nietzsche has that genius. Once in a while he comes up with such a great insight that you cannot believe why people had not seen it before; and Nietzsche was alive just a hundred years ago.

Nietzsche says: God is dead, therefore, I declare, man from now onwards is free. This whole sentence brings freedom and God together for the first time in the whole history of man. It was waiting for this crazy man, Friedrich Nietzsche, to put these together: that God is dead, therefore you are free, otherwise, you are not free.

You may not have thought about it. How you can be free with a creator who is continuously watching you, who is continuously maintaining you and directing you? In the first place He has put everything in you as a fixed program. And you will follow that program; you cannot do otherwise. Just what you feed to the computer - the computer can only answer with that. If you start asking things which you have not fed to the computer before, the computer cannot answer it. The computer is a mechanism:

first you have to feed it all the information, then whenever you need, you can ask the computer and the information will be available.

You are a computer - if there is a creator.

He has put certain information in you, he has programmed you, and you are doing things accordingly.

If you are a saint, you are not to take the credit for it - it was the program. If you are a sinner you need not feel condemned and bad - it was the program. [....]

In a drama you may go against the program, because it is acting, it is not your being; your being is still free. You may be acting the part of Ravana or Rama, but those are parts, roles; your being is still free. You can decide for or against.

But if your being is created then there is no possibility of your going anywhere other than where the program says, doing anything other than what's in the program.

If there is a God who has created the world, then nobody is responsible except Him. And to whom can He be responsible? - there is nobody above Him. You are not responsible because He has created you. He is not responsible because there is nobody else to whom He can be responsible.

God means the world loses all responsibility, and responsibility is the very center of your life.

Then you can play the role, but you are not there, only promptings; whether given from the outside, from behind the curtain, or whether given from the inside through the hormones, through biology, physiology, psychology doesn't matter. You are only a collection of promptings, and you are just following them.

It takes all dignity from man totally.

It reduces you to a puppet.

To accept God is not to be religious, because without responsibility how can you be religious?

Without freedom how can you be religious Without an independent being of your own, how can you be religious?

God is the greatest anti-religious idea.

If you look into it from every aspect, then those who believe in God are not religious, cannot be religious.

So when I say there is no God, I am trying to save religion.

There is no danger from the devil, the real danger comes from God. The devil is only His shadow.

If God disappears the shadow will disappear automatically.

The real problem is God.

And you can see what I am saying if you look at history. Every step in evolution is stopped by the churches out of fear that it proves that creation is incomplete. Man has reached the moon, but in India I have come across Hindu shankaracharyas, Jaina acharyas - they are equivalent to the pope - who don't believe it, because their scriptures say that the moon is a goddess. The sun is a god - so the moon is not a planet. You will be surprised to know that one Jaina monk has accumulated millions of rupees in donations because he is creating a lab to prove that man has not reached the moon, he has landed on some other planet!

Now, these idiots... and people believe in them because the scriptures are in their favor. They collect all the quotations from all the scriptures spoken by people who are omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent: avataras, tirthankaras, God's special messengers. And if they say this, then what can poor scientists do?

They are deceiving you, cheating you, cheating themselves. A fact that nobody can deny, a fact that all the scientists of the whole world, including India, have accepted, is not acceptable to the religious mind because it will destroy their faith in the scriptures. They are more worried about their faith than about reality.

When I say God is the greatest enemy of religion, it is going to shock the so-called religious people, because they think praying to God, worshipping God, surrendering to God is what religion is.

They have never thought about responsibility, freedom, growth, consciousness, being; they have never bothered - and yet these are the real religious questions.

Your prayers are silly. You are simply praising God in the same way you have been praising kings and queens; in the same tone, in the same words. You are praising God and thinking that just as your queens and kings become influenced by your prayer and you can persuade them to do favors for you, so you will be able to persuade God.

The Bible's statement that God created man in His own image is absolutely wrong. Just the contrary is true: man created God in his own image; it is man's creation - God! Hence the Hindu God is different, the Mohammedan God is different, the Jewish God is different, because different people were trying to figure out how God looks, what language He speaks. Now, Jews cannot believe that He speaks any other language than Hebrew, and Hindus cannot believe it - God speaking Hebrew!

- have you gone mad? Do you think God is a Jew? He speaks pure Sanskrit! [....]

The so-called religious person starts focusing himself upon a fiction and forgets his own reality, forgets himself and thinks of somebody there, above, in the sky. That person above in the sky is non-existential, but you can focus on any non-existential thing, and you can forget yourself in that focusing.

And that is where real religion happens - within you.

Hence prayer has nothing to do with religion.

In my religion there is no place for prayer.

No true religion can have anything like prayer, which is absolutely bogus.

What are you doing in prayer? You are creating first an image of your own imagination, surrendering to your own imagination, then talking to that image. You are just performing an insane act.

In all the churches, in all the synagogues, in all the temples and in all the mosques of the world, these people are doing something insane; but the whole earth is full of these insane people.

Because they have been doing this for centuries, and you have accepted them as religious, it shocks you when I say that they are not religious. They are not even normal - to be religious is far away.

They are below normal. They are doing something so stupid that if they go on doing it, whatsoever little intelligence is left in them, by and by, will go down the drain. Perhaps it has already gone.

To me, religion is a tremendous phenomenon.

It is not fictitious. It is entering into the very heart of reality. It is knowing existence from its very center. But you will have to drop your fictions. Those fictions will never allow you to enter into yourself, because those fictions are projected outwards, and you get completely identified with them.

You know it. You watch a movie or a television show and you know perfectly well that many times tears have come to your eyes, although you know that it is only a television screen and there is nobody there. But you forget completely that you are only a watcher. You become identified with someone; so much so, that if the other person is in great suffering tears come to your eyes. [....]

But you are also forgetting when you become emotional in a film or in a novel. And this is what your so-called religious people have been doing. They have become involved in imagining gods and goddesses of all kinds and types that you can imagine. And they have completely forgotten themselves. They are worshipping something which is not there, but they have been worshipping so intently that they can create the hallucination of it.

It is possible for a Christian to see Jesus with open eyes; it is possible for a Hindu to see Krishna with open eyes. But the greatest difficulty would be for Jesus to appear to a Hindu. For a Hindu, Jesus never appears - never, even by mistake - and Krishna never appears to a Christian. Once in a while it wouldn't do much harm, but they never commit that mistake. The Christian will not allow the mistake to be committed; his hallucination is of Jesus, he cannot hallucinate about Krishna. Only what you are projecting appears on the screen.

If you are projecting a film, only that film appears on the screen; if you project another film then another film appears on the screen. It is not possible to project one film, and for another film to start appearing on the screen - that is not possible. That's why it is not possible for Krishna to appear to a Christian, or a Mohammedan or a Jew. It is not possible for Jesus to appear to anybody else except Christians.

Still we go on and on strengthening, enforcing our imagination and hallucinations. And what have you got out of it? From thousands of years of hallucination, what have you got? - this humanity that you see around the world, this mess? This is the result of thousands of years of religious practices, disciplines, ritual, prayer.

Millions of churches, synagogues, temples, all around the earth - and this is the result? - the man that you see, the actual man, this man has come out of this whole effort?

It was bound to be so, because we have wasted all these years in sheer stupidity, calling it religion.

We have wasted much time in which man could have grown to heights unknown, to depths unfathomable; to the freedom of the spirit, the compassion of the soul, integrity, individuality. If all these thousands of years had not been wasted after a bogus God, just hocus-pocus - of no worth, not a single penny.... And you ask me, "Do you really not believe?"

It is not a question of believing or not believing - there is no one to believe in or not to believe in!

There is no God.

So please remember: don't start saying that I am an unbeliever. I am neither a believer nor an unbeliever.

I am simply saying that the whole thing is a mere projection of the human mind and it is time that we stopped this game against ourselves.

It is time that we said goodbye to God forever.

-Osho, “From Ignorance to Innocence, #8”

 The True Religion 

The true religion can only be one. It is such a simple thing to understand. Can you think of science as Christian science, as Hindu science, as Mohammedan science? It will be simply idiotic. Science is science. It is an enquiry into the objective world without any prejudice. How can it be Christian, how can it be Hindu? Religion is an enquiry into the subjective world without any prejudice. How can it be Christian or Jewish or Buddhist?

Truth is one, and religions cannot be many.

What is dying is their "many-ness," and out of this death will arise a simple religiousness with no adjective to it. Can't you think of a man just being religious, just as you think of a man being scientific? If we can visualize a man being truthful, being sincere, being authentic, being nonviolent, being compassionate -- he is a religious man.

Religion is not something to be believed in but something to be lived, something to be experienced... not a belief in your mind but the flavor of your whole being. Whatever you do will have a religious quality to it, just as a scientific mind is bound to do everything in a scientific way, even sometimes to the extent of absurdity.

- Osho, The Path of the Mystic, #29

Religion is not concerned with others. It is concerned with you, absolutely with you. Religion is personal. It is not a social phenomenon. In fact, there cannot be any sociology of religion; there can only be a psychology. Society is a totally different matter; the crowd is a totally different matter -- where peripheries meet. Religion is when you are so alone that there is nobody left to be met. In that total, virgin aloneness, the suprememost ecstasy is born. But you have to come to a ripeness. [....]

Religion is not concerned with others. And, finally, religion is not concerned with scriptures, words. Wise words are there, but for those words you are not the target; they were never addressed to you. Krishna talked to Arjuna; it was a personal dialogue. Jesus talks to his disciples -- a small group of disciples, a personal dialogue -- he knows everybody; he knows what he is saying; he knows to whom he is saying it. But the Bible becomes dead, the Gita becomes dead.

- Osho, "Until You Die, #8"

 God is Dead 

The series is dedicated to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was the first man in the history of mankind to declare, "God is dead, therefore man is free."

It was a tremendous statement; its implications are many. First I would like to discuss Nietzsche's statement.

All the religions believe that God created the world and also mankind. But if you are created by someone, you are only a puppet, you don't have your own soul. And if you are created by somebody, he can uncreate you any moment. He neither asked you whether you wanted to be created, nor is he going to ask you, "Do you want to be uncreated?"

God is the greatest dictator, if you accept the fiction that he created the world and also created mankind. If God is a reality, then man is a slave, a puppet. All the strings are in his hands, even your life. Then there is no question of any enlightenment. Then there is no question of there being any Gautam the Buddha, because there is no freedom at all. He pulls the strings, you dance; he pulls the strings, you cry; he pulls the strings, you start murders, suicide, war. You are just a puppet and he is the puppeteer.

Then there is no question of sin or virtue, no question of sinners and saints. Nothing is good and nothing is bad, because you are only a puppet. A puppet cannot be responsible for its actions. Responsibility belongs to someone who has the freedom to act. Either God can exist or freedom, both cannot exist together. That is the basic implication of Friedrich Nietzsche's statement: God is dead, therefore man is free.

No theologian, no founder of religions thought about this, that if you accept God as the creator, you are destroying the whole dignity of consciousness, of freedom, of love. You are taking all responsibility from man, and you are taking all his freedom away. You are reducing the whole of existence to just the whim of a strange fellow called God.

But Nietzsche's statement is bound to be only one side of the coin. He is perfectly right, but only about one side of the coin. He has made a very significant and meaningful statement, but he has forgotten one thing, which was bound to happen because his statement is based on rationality, logic and intellect. It is not based on meditation.

Man is free, but free for what? If there is no God and man is free, that will simply mean man is now capable of doing anything, good or bad; there is nobody to judge him, nobody to forgive him. This freedom will be simply licentiousness.

There comes the other side. You remove God and you leave man utterly empty. Of course, you declare his freedom, but to what purpose? How is he going to use his freedom creatively, responsibly? How is he going to avoid freedom being reduced to licentiousness?

Friedrich Nietzsche was not aware of any meditations -- that is the other side of the coin. Man is free, but his freedom can only be a joy and a blessing to him if he is rooted in meditation. Remove God -- that is perfectly okay, he has been the greatest danger to human freedom -- but give man also some meaning and significance, some creativity, some receptivity, some path to find his eternal existence.

Zen is the other side of the coin. Zen does not have any God, that's its beauty.

But it has a tremendous science to transform your consciousness, to bring so much awareness to you that you cannot commit evil. It is not a commandment from outside, it comes from your innermost being. Once you know your center of being, once you know you are one with the cosmos -- and the cosmos has never been created, it has been there always and always, and will be there always and always, from eternity to eternity -- once you know your luminous being, your hidden Gautam Buddha, it is impossible to do anything wrong, it is impossible to do anything evil, it is impossible to do any sin.

Friedrich Nietzsche in his last phase of life became almost insane. He was hospitalized, kept in a mad asylum. Such a great giant, what happened to him? He had concluded, "God is dead," but it is a negative conclusion. He became empty, but his freedom was meaningless. There was no joy in it because it was only freedom FROM God, but for what? Freedom has two sides: from and for. The other side was missing. That drove him insane.

Emptiness always drives people insane. You need some grounding, you need some centering, you need some relationship with existence. God being dead, all your relationship with existence was finished. God being dead, you were left alone without roots. A tree cannot live without roots, nor can you.

God was non-existential, but it was a good consolation. It used to fill people's interior, although it was a lie. But even a lie, repeated thousands and thousands of times for millennia, becomes almost a truth. God has been a great consolation to people in their fear, in their dread, in their awareness of old age and death, and beyond -- the unknown darkness. God has been a tremendous consolation, although it was a lie. Lies can console you, you have to understand it. In fact lies are sweeter than the truth.

Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, "Truth is bitter in the beginning, sweet in the end, and lies are sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end" -- when they are exposed. Then comes a tremendous bitterness, that you have been deceived by all your parents, by all your teachers, by all your priests, by all your so-called leaders. You have been continuously deceived. That frustration brings up a great distrust in everybody. "Nobody is worthy of trust..." It creates a vacuum.

So Nietzsche was not insane in this last phase of his life, it was the inevitable conclusion of his negative approach. An intellect can only be negative; it can argue and criticize and be sarcastic, but it cannot give you any nourishment. From no negative standpoint can you get any nourishment. So he lost his God, and he lost his consolation. He became free just to be mad.

And it is not only Friedrich Nietzsche, so it cannot be said that it was just an accident. Many intellectual giants find themselves in mad asylums or commit suicide, because nobody can live in a negative darkness. One needs light and a positive, affirmative experience of truth. Nietzsche demolished the light and created a vacuum in himself and in others who followed him.

If you feel deep down a vacuum, utter emptiness with no meaning, it is because of Friedrich Nietzsche. A whole philosophy has grown in the West: Nietzsche is the founder of this very negative approach to life.

Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and Marcel, and Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger -- all the great giants of the first half of this century -- were talking only about meaninglessness, anguish, suffering, anxiety, dread, fear, angst. And this philosophy has been called in the West existentialism. It is not. It is simply non-existentialism. It destroys everything that has consoled you.

I agree with the destruction because what was consoling man was only lies. God, heaven, hell -- all were fictions created to console man. It is good they are destroyed, but you are leaving man in an utter vacuum. Out of that vacuum existentialism is born, that's why it talks only about meaninglessness: "Life has no meaning." It talks about no significance: "You are just an accident. Whether you are here or not does not matter at all to existence." And these people call their philosophy existentialism. They should call it accidentalism. You are not needed; just by accident, on the margin, somehow you have popped up. God was making you a puppet, and these philosophers from Nietzsche to Jean-Paul Sartre are making you accidental.

And there is a tremendous need in man's being to be related to existence. He needs roots in existence, because only when the roots go deep into existence will he blossom into a buddha, will he blossom into millions of flowers, will his life not be meaningless. Then his life will be tremendously overflowing with meaning, significance, blissfulness; his life will be simply a celebration.

But the conclusion of the so-called existentialists is that you are unnecessary, that your life has no meaning, no significance. Existence is not in need of you at all!

So I want to complete Friedrich Nietzsche's work; it is incomplete. It will lead the whole of humanity to madness -- not only Friedrich Nietzsche, but the whole of humanity. Without God certainly you are free, but for what? You are left with empty hands. You were with empty hands before also, because the hands that looked full were full of lies. Now you are absolutely aware that the hands are empty and there is nowhere to go.

I have heard about one very famous atheist. He died, and his wife brought his best clothes, best shoes, before he was put in the coffin -- the best tie, the costliest possible. She wanted to give him a good farewell, a good send-off. He was dressed as he had never dressed in his whole life.

And then friends came, and neighbors came. And one woman said, "Wow! He's all dressed up and nowhere to go." He was an atheist, so he did not believe in God, he did not believe in heaven, he did not believe in hell -- nowhere to go, and so well-dressed!

But this is the situation any negative philosophy is going to leave for the whole of mankind: well-dressed, ready to go, but nowhere to go! This situation creates insanity.

It was not an accident that Friedrich Nietzsche became insane, it was the outcome of his negative philosophy. Hence, I am calling this series, "God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth."

I absolutely agree with Friedrich Nietzsche as far as God is concerned, but I want to complete his statement, which he could not do. He was not an awakened being, he was not an enlightened being.

Gautam Buddha also does not have a God, nor does Mahavira have a God, but they never went mad. All the Zen masters and all the great Tao masters -- Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu -- nobody went mad, and they don't have any God. They don't have any hell or heaven. What is the difference? Why did Gautam Buddha not go mad?

And it is not only Gautam Buddha. In twenty-five centuries hundreds of his people have become enlightened, and they don't even talk about a God. They don't even say that there is no God, because there is no point. They are not atheists. I am not an atheist, nor am I a theist. God simply is not there, so there is no question of atheism or theism.

But I am not mad. You are my witnesses. It does not create a vacuum in me; on the contrary, there being no God, I have gained the dignity of an individual who is free -- free to become a buddha. That is the ultimate goal of freedom. Unless your freedom becomes your very flowering of awareness, and the experience of freedom leads you into eternity, leads you into the roots, into the cosmos and existence, you are going to be mad. Your life will be meaningless, with no significance. Whatever you do it does not matter.

Existence according to the so-called existentialists, who are all following Friedrich Nietzsche, the founder, is absolutely unintelligent. They have taken away God, so they think -- according to logic it seems apparently true -- if there is no God, existence also becomes dead, with no intelligence, with no life. God used to be the life, God used to be the consciousness. God used to be the very meaning, the very salt of our being. With God no longer there, this whole existence becomes soulless, life becomes just a by-product of matter. So when you die, everything will die, nothing will remain.

And there is no question of being good or bad. Existence is absolutely indifferent, it does not care about you. God used to care about you. Once God is removed, a great strangeness starts happening between you and existence. There is no relationship, existence does not care, cannot care because it is not conscious anymore. It is no longer an intelligent universe, it is simply dead matter, just as you are. And the life that you know is only a by-product.

A by-product disappears immediately when the elements that were creating it separate. For example, some religions believe that man is made of five elements: earth, air, fire, water, sky. Once these five elements are together, life is produced as a by-product. When these five elements separate in death, life disappears.

To make it clear to you... in the beginning as you learn to ride a bicycle you fall many times. I have also learned, but I did not fall while learning, because first I watched the learners and why they fall. They fall because they don't have confidence. To be on two wheels you need tremendous balance, and if you hesitate... it is just like walking on a tightrope. If you hesitate just for a moment those two wheels cannot keep you on your seat. Those two wheels can keep you in balance only at a certain speed, and the learner is bound to move slowly. Obviously -- it seems to be rational -- if you are a learner, you should not go with great speed. [....]

Once you know that a certain balance is needed between the negative and the positive, then you have your roots in existence. It is one extreme to believe in God; it is another extreme not to believe in God, and you have to be just in the middle, absolutely balanced. Atheism becomes irrelevant, theism becomes irrelevant. But your balancing brings a new light, a new joy, a new blissfulness to you, a new intelligence which is not of the mind. That intelligence which is not of the mind makes you aware that the whole existence is tremendously intelligent. It is not only alive, it has sensitivity, it has intelligence.

Once you know your inner being is balanced and silent and peaceful, suddenly doors that have been closed by your thoughts simply move, and the whole existence becomes clear to you. You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it.

That's what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth -- everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody except you. This gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.

You are the highest evolution of existence, of intelligence, and it is dependent on you. If you grow higher than the mind and its intelligence, towards no-mind and its intelligence, existence is going to celebrate: one man again has reached to the ultimate peak. One part of existence has suddenly risen to the highest possibilities of the intrinsic potential in everybody.

There is a parable that the day Gautam Buddha became enlightened, the tree under which he had become enlightened, suddenly without any wind, started moving. He was amazed because there was no wind, no other tree around was moving, not even a single leaf was moving. But the tree under which he was sitting was moving, as if it was dancing. It does not have legs, it is so rooted in the earth, but it can at least show its joy.

It is a very strange phenomenon that certain chemicals which make you intelligent, which give you a better mind, are found in the bodhi tree in greater amounts than in any other tree. So it is not just coincidence that the tree under which Gautam Buddha became enlightened is still called according to his name. Bodhi means enlightenment. And the tree, scientists have found, has a larger amount of intelligence than any other tree in the world. It has so much of those chemicals it is overflowing.

When Manjushri, one of Gautam Buddha's closest disciples, became enlightened, the story is that the tree under which he was sitting suddenly started showering with flowers, and it was not the season for the tree to bring flowers.

It may be just a parable. But these parables indicate that we are not separate from existence, that our joy will be shared even by the trees, even by the rocks, that our enlightenment will be a festival for the whole of existence.

It is meditation that fulfills your inner being and takes away the vacuum that used to be filled by a great lie, God. And many lies have grown around him.

If you remain with the negative you are going to be insane sooner or later, because you have lost all contact with existence, you have lost every meaning, every possibility of finding meaning. You have certainly dropped lies, which is good, but that is not enough to find the truth.

Drop the lies and make some effort to go inwards to find the truth. That is the whole science of Zen. That's why I have entitled the series, "God Is Dead, Now Zen Is the Only Living Truth." If God is dead and you don't come close to the experience of Zen, you will become insane. Your sanity depends now only on Zen, that is the only way to find the truth. Then you are absolutely related with existence, and you are no longer a puppet, you are a master.

And a man who knows his relation, his deep relation with existence, cannot commit anything against existence, against life. It is simply impossible. He can only pour as much blissfulness, as much benediction, as much grace as you are ready to receive. But his sources are inexhaustible. When you have found your inexhaustible sources of life and its ecstasy, then it does not matter whether you have a God or not. It does not matter whether there is a hell or a heaven. It does not matter at all.

So religious people when they read Zen are simply puzzled, because it is not talking about anything they have been taught from the very beginning. It is talking about strange dialogues which have nothing... NO place for God, no place for paradise, no place for hell. It is a scientific religion. Its search is not based on belief, its search is based on experience. Just as science is objectively based on experiment, Zen is based subjectively on experience. One science goes outward, another science goes inward.

Nietzsche has no idea how to go inward. The West has been a wrong place for people like Friedrich Nietzsche. If he had been in the East, he would have been a far greater master, a man of absolute sanity. He would have been in the same category, in the same family, as the buddhas.

But unfortunately the West has not learned the lesson even now. It goes on working so hard on objects. Even one tenth of our energy will be enough to find the inner truth. Even an Albert Einstein dies in deep frustration. The frustration was so great that before he died he was asked, "If you are born again, what are you going to be?" He said, "Never again a physicist. I would rather be a plumber."

The greatest physicist the world has known dies in such frustration that he does not want anything to do with physics, anything to do with science. He wants a simple job like plumbing. But even that is not going to help. If physics has not helped, if mathematics has not helped, if such a great intelligence like Albert Einstein dies in frustration, being a plumber is not going to help. Still you are outside. A scientist may be too deeply involved; a plumber may not be that much involved, but he is still working outside. Being a plumber is not going to give him what he needs. He needs the silence of meditation. From that silence flowers meaning, significance, a tremendous joy that you are not accidental.

I say unto you, that what I am teaching you is authentic existentialism, and what in the West is thought to be existentialism is only accidentalism. I am teaching you how to come in contact with existence, how to find out where you are connected, wired with existence. From where are you getting your life moment to moment? Where is your intelligence coming from? If existence is unintelligent, how can you be intelligent? Where will you get it from?

When you see the roseflowers blossoming, have you ever thought that all this color, all this softness, all this beauty was hidden somewhere in the seed? But the seed alone was not enough to become a rose, it needed the support of existence -- the soil, the water, the sun. Then the seed disappeared into the soil and the rosebush started growing. Now it needs air, it needs water, it needs the earth, it needs the sun, it needs the moon. All these together transform the seed which was almost like a dead piece of stone. Suddenly a transformation, a metamorphosis. These roses, these colors, this beauty, this fragrance, cannot come from it unless existence has it already. It all may be hidden, it may be covered in the seed. But anything that happens means it was there already -- maybe as a potential.

You have intelligence... 

-Osho, "God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth, #1"

 God is Dead and Man is Free 

The modern mind is feeling more meaningless than ever has been the case, because the past centuries lived in a kind of stupor, sleep. Orthodoxy was much. Convention was heavy and strong. The citadel of religion was very, very great, powerful, dictatorial. People lived for centuries in belief.

This century has dared to drop beliefs. Those beliefs wed to give people a feeling that there is meaning in life. Now those beliefs have disappeared. This is good. As far as it goes it is good that beliefs have disappeared. This is the first age of agnosticism. For the first time man has become mature, mature in the sense that he does not rely on beliefs, on superstitions. We have dropped all superstitious beliefs.

So a kind of vacuum has come into existence. The beliefs have disappeared -- and with the beliefs the false sense of meaning has disappeared. An emptiness has settled in. We have done the negative part, we have demolished the old building, now the positive part has to be done -- we have to erect a new building. The old temple is no more, but where is the new temple? Belief has been destroyed, but where is trust? Belief has gone -- this is good -- but this is not enough. It is necessary but not enough. Now you will have to grow into trust.

Let me explain these two words to you. Belief is borrowed; somebody else gives it to you -- your parents, your society, your priest, your politician, they give it to you. Immediately the child is born we start -- either we circumcise the child or we baptise the child. We do something. Immediately we start conditioning him. Before he becomes alert, beliefs have gone deep into his blood and bones, even into his marrow. Before he becomes alert and before he can think clearly, he is already poisoned. The beliefs have become unconscious. He has already been conditioned. He is not free to think.

That's why all religions are so interested in teaching children religion. They are interested immediately. The first thing they want to do is to teach children religion. Psychologists say that the only possibility to teach a child religion is to teach him before he is seven. Once he has left the age of seven then it will become more and more difficult to teach him because he will start questioning, he will start arguing. He will become doubtful, he will become sceptical. Up to the age of seven a child simply trusts the parents. He believes that whatsoever they do is right. He has no doubt. This is a natural phenomenon. The child has to trust the mother. The child is so helpless that he cannot exist on his own. It is a necessity, a must for his survival, to trust the parent. And he trusts.

Religions use that natural trust to condition the child. The mother takes him to the church or to the temple, to the priest or to the minister, and the child follows the mother and the parent and the family. By the very atmosphere of the family a subtle conditioning starts going in. By the time the child can think, can formulate, he is already conditioned. Those conditionings have gone so deep now that he will never be able to drop them easily.

A Master will be needed to hammer. You will need somebody whom you can love more than you love your father, whom you love more than you love your mother. You will need a Master -- only then. The Master can go to those deepest layers of your being where conditioning has happened, and he can destroy. Unless the Master becomes more significant than your parents, it is not possible, it is not psychologically possible.

That's why Buddha says, 'Until you destroy and kill your father and mother, you cannot come to me.' A strange statement. Jesus says, 'If you don't hate your father and mother you can't follow me.' It does not look very good. Jesus, the apostle of love and peace, Buddha, the most compassionate human being that has ever walked on earth, talking about hating? -- not only hating, but killing?

What do they mean? They don't mean your actual parents, they mean the parents that have gone deep into your being, that have become your base. that base has to be destroyed.

Once that base disappears you will again become a child. Once that conditioning has been dropped you will suddenly become again a child, innocent. And this time you will be in a far better situation because you will not be helpless, you will be on your own feet -- and innocent like a child.

This is the meaning of sannyas. This is the meaning of initiation. This is the meaning when Sufis say that somebody has become a SADHAKA, somebody has become a disciple.

In this age, slowly, slowly, belief has disappeared. And nothing has appeared in its place.

You must have heard about a German thinker, Ludwig Feuerbach. He seems to be the herald of the contemporary mind. Feuerbach explained God away in terms of the infinite desire of the human heart. He said, 'There is no God. God does not exist as an objective reality. It is only a wish-fulfilment. Man wants to become omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Man wants to become God -- this is man's desire, the desire to become infinite, a desire to become immortal, a desire to become absolutely powerful.'

This was the first hammering on the belief of God: that God is not objective; that God is not there; that God is just a projection in the human mind; that God has no ontology, he is only a psychological dream; that man is thinking in terms of God because he feels himself very impotent. He needs something to make him complete. He needs an idea that gives him a feeling that he is not a stranger here; that in this world there is somebody who looks after him. God is nothing but a projected father. Man wants to lean upon something. It is just a pure desire. It has no reality.

Then came Karl Marx. Marx explained God away in terms of an ideological attempt to rise above the given reality. Marx said that because people are poor, in suffering, in misery, they need a dream -- a dream that can give them hope. People are living in such hopelessness, in such utter misery, that if they cannot dream that somewhere in the future everything will be perfect, they will not be able to tolerate this intolerable reality. So God is the opium.

Religion is the opium for the masses. It is a drug. It helps, consoles.

It is a kind of tranquilliser. You are in such pain that you need a pain-killer -- the idea that today, yes, today is miserable, but tomorrow everything is going to be good.

Marx says that's why Jesus' beatitudes have become so important: 'Blessed are the poor.' Why? Why 'Blessed are the poor'? Because 'they shall inherit the kingdom of God.' Now the poor can hope. Here he is poor but there he will inherit the kingdom of God. Not only that, Jesus says, 'Those who are the first here will be the last there and those who are the last here will be the first there.' Now the poor man feels really happy. He forgets his poverty. He is going to be the first there. Jesus has different meanings for these stimulants but Marx thinks these are just drugs.

And Marx also looks very logical. When people are in misery they have only one way to tolerate it: to pass time away they can imagine a better future. You are in the hospital -- you can imagine that tomorrow you will be getting out of hospital and you will be going home and everything will be okay. It is only a question of a few hours more. You can tolerate it.

This world is a question of a few years, don't be worried about it. Soon paradise is waiting for you. And the poorer you are, the higher you are going to be in paradise. And all that you are missing here is abundantly supplied there. You don't have a beautiful woman? Don't be worried. In paradise everybody will be having as many as they want -- and the most beautiful women you can conceive of, APSARAS. They are so beautiful that they never age, they always remain stuck at the age of sixteen. They never grow beyond that. These are the dreams of man.

Here you can't get alcohol -- or even if you can, it is difficult or it is costly or there are a thousand and one problems in getting it. And the politicians are always thinking about prohibition. But in FIRDAUS, in paradise, there are streams of wine, alcohol -- all kinds. You can drink as much as you want, you can swim, you can absolutely soak yourself in it.

These dreams are just consolations for those who are down-trodden, oppressed. So Marx says that religion is just a trick... a trick to exploit people, a trick to keep them under rule, a trick so that they cannot rebel. He hammered very hard on the old beliefs.

And then the third hammer came with Friedrich Nietzsche. He said, 'God is nothing but a weakening of the will to love.' When a person becomes old or a society becomes old, rotten, dull and dying, it starts thinking of God. Why? Because death is coming close by and one has to accept death. One is going to renounce life, life is slipping out of the hands, one cannot do anything about it -- but one can accept death. God is a trick to accept death. And death is accepted by only those who have become weak, weaklings.

Nietzsche used to say that the very idea of God comes out of the feminine mind. he used to say that Buddha and Christ are both effeminate. They are not really masculine. They are too soft. They are the people who have accepted the defeat. They are fighting no more. They are not fighting for survival. When a person stops fighting for survival he becomes religious. When the will to power is no more functioning one starts shrinking and dying and one starts thinking of God and other related things. God is against life. Life is the will to power. Life is struggle, constant struggle. Life is conflict and one has to win. When people become too weak and cannot win, those defeated minds start becoming religious. Religion is defeatism.

Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, these three together created the atmosphere where it could be declared that God is dead and man is free.

This is the situation in which you have been born. If you are contemporary at all, this is the situation. You are more in tune with Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche than you are in tune with Patanjali, Kapila, Kanada. They are far away. We don't belong to them, they don't belong to us. The distance is too much. Our real prophets are these -- Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin -- and these people have destroyed the whole fabric, the whole structure, the pattern of belief. And I would like to tell you that they have done a great service to humanity.

But don't misunderstand me. They have cleaned human consciousness completely of belief but this is only half the job. Now something is needed. It is as if you are preparing for a garden and you prepare the ground and you throw away all the weeds and you throw away all the stones and the ground is ready -- and then you simply wait and you don't bring the rose bushes and you don't sow new seeds. These people have done a great service to humanity. They have uprooted all the weeds. But just by uprooting the weeds the garden is not ready, cannot be ready. It is part of preparing a garden to uproot the weeds but this is not the garden itself. Now you have to bring the roses. Those roses are missing, hence meaning is missing.

People are stuck. Either they have become communists or they have become Freudians or they have become fascists. And they think that this clean patch of ground where no belief grows, where no desire springs up about the unknown and the beyond, is the garden. And then you are looking all around. It is nothing. It is a desert. These people have cleaned the ground but only a desert is created out of it.

Man has become very, very anxious. Anxiety has been created. The anxiety has been repressed for centuries because of conforming with the party, with the religion, with the sect, with the society. For thousands of years the anxiety has remained locked. Man has functioned as a slave. Now the lock has been broken, man is no more a slave and the whole anxiety, repression, of thousands of years has broken loose. Man is turning mad.

What these people have done can turn into a great liberation or it can become just a loss. It depends. If you use this situation rightly and you start growing rose bushes in your heart, soon you will have a great thankfulness towards Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and all the people who have destroyed belief, who have destroyed the old religion. They have prepared the way for a new kind of religion -- more mature, more adult, more grown-up.

I am all for them but I don't stop with them. If you stop, meaninglessness will be your destiny. Yes, it is good that there exists no God -- the God of belief -- but then, then start finding what exists in your inner being. Then go on an exploration and you will stumble upon God. And this God will be the God of your experience.

They have created a situation in which you can say 'I don't know' -- that's what agnosticism is -- now use this as a jumping board to go into the unknown. You are ready to go into the unknown. Knowledge is not binding. Nobody is fettering your feet. You are free for the first time. But what are you doing standing there? You were standing there because you were chained and now you are still standing there although the chains have been removed. Move forward. Now explore! The whole existence is yours. Explore it with no concept, with no prejudice, with no a priori philosophy. Explore it with an open mind and you will be surprised to find that God is.

But this will be a totally new God, utterly new, absolutely new. This will be the God one comes to know, not the God one believes in. This will be an alive God which throbs in your heart. which breathes, which flowers in the trees, which sings songs in the birds. This will be the God of the mountains and the rivers and the stars. This will be the God of life. This will not be a God who exists somewhere in heaven, no, this will be the God who exists herenow -- in me, in you, in everybody. This is the God that is equivalent, synonymous with existence.

But this God can come only through knowing, not through knowledge. Knowledge has been destroyed and that's good. These three persons -- Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche -- have done a good job of clearing away the whole nonsense of centuries, but remember, even they were not benefitted by it. Nietzsche died in a madhouse, and if you are stuck with Nietzsche you are waiting for madness and nothing else. Nietzsche did a great service, he was a martyr, but he got stuck with his own negativity. He destroyed the belief but then he never went to explore what is there. Without belief what is there? With no belief what is there? There is something. You cannot say there is nothing. There is something. What is it? He never went into meditation. Thinking, logical thinking, can do one thing: it can destroy belief. But it cannot lead you into truth.

You can be led into truth only by the door

of meditation or by the door of love -- MARIFA or MAHABA, either by knowing or by loving, either by becoming a lover, an ASHIK, a BHAKTA, a devotee, or by becoming a yogi, DHYANA, a meditator. These are the only two ways -- either through intelligence or through feeling. These are the two doors to God.

Man has to create meaning now. The meaning is no longer given by the society, is no longer given by anybody else.

Martin Heidegger says, 'Once one has become aware of the meaninglessness of life and existence there arises great anxiety, angst, anguish. This happens through unlocking that which subjection to conformity and conditioning of centuries had locked. Once this liberation has happened one can act -- but not according to norms given by anybody or anything. One has to fall upon oneself.'

Heidegger is right. You have to fall upon yourself. Now you cannot lean on anybody. No scripture will help. Prophets are gone. Messengers are no longer there. You will have to lean upon yourself. You will have to stand on your own feet. You will have to become independent. Heidegger calls it 'resolve'. You will have to come to a resolve, a resolution that 'I am alone and no help is coming from anywhere. Now what am I going to do? And I don't know anything. No belief exists to give me a map. No chart exists and the uncharted is all around. The whole existence has again become a mystery.'

It is a great joy for those who have courage because now again exploration is possible.

This is what Martin Heidegger calls resolve. This is what Hindus call SANKALPA. Now you have to resolve. He calls it resolve because through it the individual becomes resolute, the individual becomes individual.

No God, no conventions, no laws, no commandments, no norms, no principles -- one must be oneself and one must decide where to go, what to do, and who to be. This is the meaning of the famous existentialist motto: 'Existence precedes essence -- that is, there is no essential human nature. Man creates what he is, man projects himself.'

The meaning has to be projected, the meaning has to be created. You have to sing your meaning, you have to dance your meaning, you have to paint your meaning, you have to live your meaning. Through living it will arise, through dancing it will start penetrating your being, through singing it will come to you. It is not like a rock lying there, it has to bloom in your being. It has to become an inner lotus.

-Osho, “Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 1, #5”

 Religion is dead, Religio is born. 

The death of God is the victory of truth. It is freedom for man. Now you need not pray, now you need not ask a favor. Now you need not believe in a messiah, in a savior, in a messenger -- they all died with the death of God. Without God there is no savior, no prophet, no messiah. There is no pope, no Ayatollah Khomeini, no shankaracharya. They are all living and exploiting humanity in the name of God -- who does not exist at all.

The death of God is an immense freedom, multidimensional. It is not to be mourned; it has to be celebrated. Yes, I have declared that religion too is dead. If God is dead, how can religion survive? One lie leads you to another lie, and God is the fundamental lie. Then you can make a whole palace of playing cards -- just a small breeze of understanding, of intelligence, and the whole palace collapses.

Religion is dead. It has really lived too long, it should have been dead long ago. It has not done any good to humanity, it has done immense harm. It has divided humanity. It has given different groups of people the idea that “You are the real people of God,” that “You are special; other human beings are second class.” It has fulfilled the egos of Jews, of Christians, of Hindus, of Mohammedans – of everybody. It has created so many wars. It has killed millions of people, burned thousands of people alive, and all in the name of God. For your own sake you are being burned alive!

Religion is one of the most criminal phenomena that have existed in the world. It is time that we declare it dead.

But remember, every death is a beginning of something new; every death is not an end. On the one side it looks as if something has ended, but on the other side something fresh starts growing. The death of religion becomes the beginning of religio.

The word “religion” comes from religio. Religio has a beauty of its own, which is lost in “religion.” Religio means an existential, an experiential phenomenon. The very word means coming to a point where you are one – one with yourself, one with existence. Religion which comes from the same root does not have that meaning. It, on the contrary, makes you split. Making you one is not its work; its work is to make you schizophrenic, to put you into a split state, to put you against your own body, to put you against your own sex, to put you against yourself; to divide you into parts, fragments, and create an inner conflict in you.

All religious people are continuously fighting with themselves, because their biology says to do something, and their holy scripture says to do just the opposite. Their own being wants to grow in one way, but the priests direct them into some other way.

Every religion has been trying to make you somebody else. No religion has allowed you to be just yourself. They are all afraid of your being just yourself; then their function is lost. Their function is to create conflict in you, to make you miserable, suffering, in anguish. Then naturally you have to seek help.

They create the disease, and then they start praying for you to be forgiven. They are the criminals, and they are asking for you to be forgiven. And whom are they asking? There is nobody.

So it is really a great exploitation by the priesthood of all the religions. They have destroyed every individual. They have made you Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, but they have not allowed you to become just an individual, a human being. You were born not as a Christian, you were born not as a Buddhist; you were born just as a human being. They have destroyed your innocence; they have misdirected your life. They have molded you into something which you cannot become; it is not your potential.

This is not religio. Religio is accepting you in your totality, making you whole, healthy. And that opens the door to become one with existence. You are part of it; every moment you are part of it. You are breathing existence in and out every moment – you are eating it, you are living it in every possible way. No man is an island, we are all part of an infinite continent; that’s what I am calling existence.

Religio will relax you. Religio will give you, for the first time, the dignity of being a human being, and the vastness of being part of the whole existence.

Religion is dead, religio is born.

Religion is something like marriage: unnatural, arbitrary, artificial, created by social convenience.

Religio is like love: natural, simple. No law is involved in it; no society, no culture dominates it.

Love is a law unto itself, and love gives you something that is immensely precious. You start feeling needed. You are not superficial, you are not just accidental; you are needed, you are fulfilling some essential need. Love gives you the first glimpse that existence wants you the way you are. There is no need to become Jesus Christ or Gautam Buddha. Nature does not like carbon copies. Existence likes originals. You, in your originality, are acceptable.

But a Christian is a carbon copy; he is trying to become Jesus Christ, and in two thousand years not a single Christian has succeeded. In twenty-five centuries not a single Buddhist has succeeded in becoming Gautam Buddha. Is it not proof enough? You can go even further backwards. In five thousand years, no Hindu has succeeded in becoming a Krishna. It is simply impossible. Nature never repeats.

They say history repeats itself – because history is not nature. History belongs to carbon copies, retarded people; naturally it repeats itself. They don’t know what else to do, so they go on doing the same thing again.

Nature is very inventive. It does not create even two persons equal, even similar. There are four billion people on the earth today, but you cannot find two persons who are exactly alike. Even twins are not exactly alike. They may appear to be, but their mother knows who is who; their wives know who is who. There are differences – very subtle. Outsiders may be puzzled, but those who know them closely can see the differences in their individuality – in their gestures, in their way of speaking, in their way of thinking, in their way of walking – in small things. But the differences are bound to be there.

Religion has tried a very futile experiment, and almost destroyed humanity for thousands of years.

The death of religion releases you from becoming somebody else. Now you can enjoy being yourself.

We can call our commune, religio – a mystery school, a way of searching for one’s own spiritual being, a way of discovering one’s original face. Nobody has to become anybody else.

And you are asking me, “God is dead, religion is dead, then what is left now?”

In fact, those were the hindrances, which are removed, and everything that is essential is available now. Now you can be yourself without any guilt. Now you can be simply a human being without belonging to any organized religion. The moment truth becomes organized, it becomes untrue.

I am reminded of a beautiful ancient story.

A newly-recruited devil came running to the master devil, huffing and puffing, and said, “Something has to be done immediately! One man on the earth has just found the truth! And if he spreads it, what are we going to do? Our whole business is finished! He has to be prevented.”

The old man laughed. He said, “You are a new recruit; you don’t know – my people are already there.”

The young devil said, “Your people?”

He said, “Yes, my people. The priests are already around the man, and they are organizing whatever he has found. That is my way of destroying truth, and it has never failed; for centuries I have been doing that. The priests – all the priests – are in my service! They don’t know it, but the moment truth is organized, it dies.”

Why does truth die when it is organized? It dies because it is an individual experience. Can you organize love? Nobody has ever thought about it; otherwise it would have died. You cannot organize love. Love is something that transpires between two individuals. It does not need any priest, it does not need any book of instructions.

When I was studying in the university I used to have a roommate – he was a little bit of an idiot, just the same as people are all over the world.

He asked me, “Everybody talks about the fact that he has fallen in love, and some girl has fallen in love with him. It seems we are the only two persons in this whole university…. About you there is no problem, because you don’t want anything to do with any love, any woman, because you think they will be a distraction in your search. I don’t know what you are searching for, but I am at a loss. I want to fall in love. But how to fall in love? I have been to the university library looking for a book, HOW TO FALL IN LOVE; there is not a single book on the subject. And I cannot ask anybody else, because they will simply laugh. If everybody knows how to fall, then why don’t I?”

I said, “You don’t be worried, I will teach you. You just choose the girl that you would like to fall in love with.”

He said, “I chose her two years ago, but how to start? The moment she enters, I become so nervous in the classroom, I forget all about love. I forget even what the teacher is saying.”

I said, “Don’t be worried. I will write a love letter for you. You simply post it to the girl and wait for the answer.”

I knew the girl; she was one of the most beautiful girls in the university. She had been interested in me, but I had told her, “Right now, I am involved too much in my own work, in my meditations, and I don’t think you have patience enough to wait. But if you can wait, then I can promise you one thing: the day I become enlightened I will be ready. But not before that.”

She said, “Enlightened? My God! How long will I have to wait?”

I said, “Nobody knows. I may become enlightened in this life, I may become enlightened in another life. Nothing can be said, it is unpredictable. So the best is, for the time being you choose somebody else.”

But she was persistent. So I approached her and said, “Just do me a favor.”

She said, “Have you become enlightened?”

I said, “No, not yet. But one of my friends is in a difficulty. He wants to fall in love, but he does not know how to fall in love. So you will receive a letter from him. Don’t discourage him – write him a beautiful letter.”

She said, “This is tricky. Then I will be stuck with that boy – and I know your roommate, I don’t want anything to do with him.”

I said, “You need not be worried.”

And she said, “How can I write a very loving letter to that idiot? I cannot!”

I said, “Then I will write it.” So I was writing letters from both the sides. And the boy was so ecstatic!

He could not believe that just with his writing a letter, love began.

But then the girl fell in love with somebody else. She told me that she could not wait, her parents were forcing her: either she had to choose someone, or they would. “You are my choice, but your enlightenment is a strange thing,” she said. ”I have never heard of anybody making such a condition, that when they become enlightened, then they will think about other matters. I have to choose; otherwise they will choose. So I have chosen, unwillingly. I will remember you, but I am getting married.”

I said, ‘You get married happily, and don’t feel that you are doing it unwillingly. I am responsible for making you sad, and for making you decide in favor of someone else. I like you, but as far as love is concerned, that involvement is possible only after my enlightenment, not before that!”

She said, “Then what about your friend that you have been unnecessarily forcing upon me? He goes on writing every day. And you have made it such a mess that you go on writing in my name, and I have to post those letters. I read them and I say, ‘My God! That idiot!’ And you are praising him and telling him, ‘I will die without you, and I cannot live without you. You are my heart.’ What am I to say to that man?”

I said, “You have simply to say that your parents are forcing you to get married.” And in India it is common, an arranged marriage. A love marriage is still not acceptable.

So she told the idiot, “What can I do? I love you so much, but my parents have arranged my marriage. So now I will not be seeing you anymore, and you stop writing the letters.”

He almost came to a nervous breakdown, crying, in tears. I asked, “What is the matter?” – I knew what was the matter!

He said, “My love affair was going so smoothly. Every day a letter – I was writing, she was replying; everything was going so smoothly. And her father has disturbed everything. I will shoot that man!”

I said, “That won’t help. You find another girl – there is no problem – and start writing letters again.”

He said, “But I don’t know what to write.”

So I said, “You do one thing. You go to the girl and ask for all the letters you have written to her.”

He said, “What!”

“You just tell her, ‘I need those letters, because I have not been writing them.’ And return her letters to her.”

So he went to the girl and asked for his letters. But she said, “What will you do with those letters?”

He said, “What will I do? Have I to live or not? You are getting married – I will have to write letters to somebody else. Now what is the point of writing the same letters again? I can use these letters. And here are your letters that you had written to me; perhaps you may need them sometime, because who loves one’s own husband? Who loves one’s own wife? You may need them.”

The girl said, “You can have both the sets, because both are written by the same man.”

He was very angry with me, but I said to him, “That is the function of a priest. I have not done anything unique; that is what the priests have been doing all through man’s history. They pray for you to God. They even bring answers from God to you – answers to your prayers. They make your prayer, they make the answers for your prayer. I have been just functioning like a priest – only the area was different; it was love, it was not God.”

The priests have no function if there is no God. Then there is no prayer, then there is no holy book, then there is no ritual. The priest has nothing left. He wants an organized religion. He turns religio into its opposite and calls it religion.

Religio is a freedom. Religion is a slavery. Dropping God, dropping religion, I have restored your freedom. Now you can be yourself without any fear. You can grow without copying anybody. You can just grow into your own unknown potential.

You are asking, “What is left?” Everything becomes available; only blocks have been removed, hindrances have been removed. Now you can meditate. You cannot pray; prayer needs a God.

Meditation needs no God. Prayer has divided humanity, because Christian prayer is different from Hindu prayer. Mohammedan prayer is different from Christian prayer. But meditation is the same.

Here, this very moment… if you are all silent, it is the same silence.

Silence cannot have any name, any label.

And meditation is the ultimate growth of silence.

Now you can be silent, you can grow deeper and deeper within yourself, searching for the center from where your life arises. The moment you discover that center, there is an explosion which is far more significant than any atomic explosion, far more luminous. The atomic explosion is destructive. The explosion that happens at your center gives you a tremendous energy to be creative.

And it does not make you part of any organized cult, creed, dogma – no. It simply makes you a dignified individual, immensely blissful because you have found the greatest treasure in the world. There is nothing more to be found. In finding your center, you have found the very center of existence.

You have found eternity.

Now there is no death.

And out of this experience arises lovingness, compassion, creativity. Even sitting silently, doing nothing, there will be a certain aura of bliss around you, a certain fragrance around you.

You have come home.

- Osho, "Bondage to Freedom, #23"

 There Is No God 

Q: DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A GOD?

A: My God! There is no God, so how can I consider myself a god? God is the greatest lie invented by man.

Q: WHY?

A: Because man feels so helpless, so afraid of death, so burdened with life's problems. Because he has been raised by a father, by a mother, and those were the beautiful days -- no responsibility, no worry -- somebody was taking care of him. That psychological childhood is projected into all the religions: God becomes the father. And there are a few religions in which God becomes the mother. It is a simple psychological projection of a child. It has no basis in reality.

And whenever you are afraid, whenever you are in trouble, you start seeking help. No help ever comes. Even Jesus on the cross was waiting for the help to come, and finally got disappointed and shouted, "Father, have you forsaken me?" A great doubt must have arisen in him, a great question. Nothing is happening, and he was believing all these years that God would come to save him, his only begotten son. Nobody came. Jesus Christ must have died in utter disillusionment.

I don't have any illusion. I cannot be disillusioned.

Q: HE ALSO SAID, "FATHER, FORGIVE THEM FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO."

A: That was again the same mind. I call Jesus' mind sick.

Q: WHY?

A: Because his whole life... whatsoever he was teaching and doing was just nuts. Only a crackpot can claim to be the only son of God. And then, preaching to people that he is the savior, and whosoever is with him will be saved, and whosoever is not with him will fall into hell -- eternal hell... all these things. His behavior: he cursed a fig tree because he and his disciples were hungry and there were no fruits on the fig tree. In fact, it was not the season; it was not the fault of the fig tree, but he cursed the fig tree.

I cannot conceive of this man as sane. And this prayer to God that, "Forgive these people because they know not what they are doing," is again out of that same arrogant, egoistic idea. I don't think that it is out of compassion. It is the emphasis of the Christians for centuries that out of compassion he prayed even for his enemies. But let me repeat his sentence: "Forgive these people because they know not what they are doing." In fact, it was not an act of compassion, he was still condemning the people that they knew not and he knew.

Q: BUT HAVEN'T THERE BEEN SOME TEACHINGS HANDED DOWN FROM JESUS WHICH FORM THE BASIS OF MUCH THAT IS GOOD IN CIVILIZATION TODAY?

A: Nothing. Not a single thing has come out of Jesus which has helped humanity in any way. All those teachings have proved not blessings, but curses. They are beautiful words and because they have been repeated so often, you have -- and everybody has -- forgotten the implications of them.

He says, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God." It looks beautiful, but basically it is ugly. It is a consolation to the poor. It is an exploitation of the poor. It is giving false hope to the poor, and the ultimate result is that the world has remained poor.

Who would not like to inherit the kingdom of God? Jesus says that even a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot enter through the gates of heaven. Now this man is responsible for all the poverty in the world. He is condemning richness. He is condemning the creativity which can make the world rich.

I am all for richness in all dimensions, and I cannot say, Blessed are the poor. That is just what Karl Marx said: Opium of the people. It is possible to use beautiful words, but if you go into the implications, what are the Christians doing today and what have they done for two thousand years? They will open orphanages. They are against birth control. They are against abortion.

Q: SOME OF THEM.

A: Those who are not will soon be expelled. They are being expelled. And those who are... for example the pope himself is against abortion, against birth control. He is against the greatest revolution in humanity -- the pill. Population goes on growing, poverty goes on growing, and who is responsible for this? I think these people are criminals.

Q: THE POPE?

A: The pope. He should be behind bars.

Q: WHY?

A: Teaching such stupid things to humanity: go on producing children -- they are gifts of God. He is responsible for Ethiopia. He is responsible for poor India. Anywhere poverty happens, these people are responsible. On the one hand, they go on increasing the population, which is already too much, in the name of God. But the real thing is that they can convert only the poor to Christianity. I have never seen a single rich man being converted to Christianity in India. Beggars, orphans, prostitutes-these people get converted.

Q: IS THERE ANY PART OF CHRISTIANITY, HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, ANY OF THE ESTABLISHED RELIGIONS THAT YOU THINK ARE GOOD?

A: Nothing is. I want to be finished with the whole past completely, I want it to be erased completely. I want a discontinuity with the past. Only then the new humanity is possible, a new world, a new man. So I categorically say everything is wrong. And the proof is there: the whole world is in a mess. These are the people who have given the world principles how to live, ideologies, systems. This is the outcome of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Mohammedanism. This is the outcome.

-Osho, “The Last Testament, Vol 1, #1”

 There Is No Creator 

Q:* YOU SAY THERE IS NO GOD – ARE YOU SAYING THAT THERE IS NO GOD OUTSIDE OF CREATION, PER SE?

A:* Certainly I am saying that there is no creator. Creation itself is enough unto itself; it needs no outside agency to create it. The moment you accept an outside agency to create it, you fall into a vicious circle.

Because the reasoning is that how can existence be there without being created by someone? That is the reasoning of all the religions. If you accept their reasoning then the question arises: Who created the God? And if God can be there without being crated then what is the problem? Then existence can be there without being crated, so why unnecessarily go from A to B, from B to C, and those are all hypothesis. God A creates god B, god B creates god C unnecessarily. The whole theology is simply nonsense. It begins with God, theo means God, and logy means logic about God. That is a contradiction in terms.

Q:* SO CREATION ITSELF IS GOD. WE'RE GOD, YOU'RE GOD, I'M GOD, EVERYBODY HERE IS GOD ... THE WHOLE ... THE WHOLE GAME IS GOD.

A:* Yes, if you want to use word God.

Q:* OR SOURCE.

A:* There is no problem. There is no problem for (typewriter defect -- check tape) have to change the meaning. Because the donkey will be the god, even the yankee will be the god. Better drop that word because that word is dangerous. Then sometimes you are riding on a donkey, you are riding on a god. Sometimes you are....

Q:* I GUESS THE FORCE THAT GIVES US LIFE OR WHATEVER IT IS, ENERGY.

A:* I would like to call it pure consciousness. Just consciousness. Or if you are too attached to the word god, call it godliness, but don't make it a noun, make it a quality. Godliness is perfectly okay.

Q:* WHY DO YOU SAY MAKE IT A QUALITY RATHER THAN A NOUN?

A:* Because the moment you make it a noun you kill(?) it. The moment you make it a noun you stop its growth. Nouns don't grow, only verbs grow.

-Osho, “The Last Testament, Vol 2, #2”

 There Are No Devils 

Q: SOMEBODY TOLD ME THAT THE ONLY DEVILS RUNNING AROUND ARE THE ONES THAT ARE IN OUR OWN HEARTS. DO YOU THINK THAT THAT'S TRUE?

A:* There are no devils. With the God, all devils disappeared. They were shadows of your God. Without God the devil cannot exist.

You will be surprised to know that the word devil and the word divine have the same root. They come from the same root. It is a Sanskrit root. In Sanskrit divine is called deva. From deva comes the English word divine and the devil. In fact the devil and God are two sides of the same coin. There is neither God nor devil.

you are there -- either asleep or awake. If you are asleep then life is misery, suffering, anguish, meaninglessness. If you are awake all dis-ease disappears. For the first time you find yourself surrounded by tremendous beauty, bliss, silence, serenity.

And to experience this, all that is needed is very simple. One should put his prejudices aside. One should not be a Christian; otherwise he cannot come to this moment of luminosity. One should put one's communism aside, just for the moment. I am not saying put it aside forever. I am saying just for the moment put it aside. Because I know once you have put it aside for a single moment, you have put it aside forever.

Q:* WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

A:* Because the experience will transform you so totally, you need not go to the church. The whole existence becomes your church. You need not read the Bible. The songs of the birds, the fragrance of the flowers, the sound of the running water will give you all the gospels that you need. And they will be living. They will not be dead words printed in a book. They will be alive, as alive as you are. And if your heart starts dancing with the living that surrounds you, what is the need to be a Christian, what is the need to be a Mohammedan?

These are for people who are asleep and have never tasted anything of life. These are toys given to children to play with, to remain engaged, to remain busy. Your religions are not for mature people. They are childish.

-Osho, “The Last Testament, Vol 2, #3”

 I am not a theist - I am saying there is no God 

There is no God, but that does not mean that I'm an atheist. Certainly I am not a theist - I am saying there is no God - but that does not mean that you jump to the opposite, the atheist.

The atheist says there is no God also, but when I say there is no God, and the atheists like Charvaka, Karl Marx, Lenin, Epicurus.... When these people say there is no God, there is a tremendous difference between my statement and their statement - the statements are absolutely similar - because I say at the same moment that there is godliness.

Charvaka will not agree on that point; Epicurus, Marx, other atheists will not agree on that point.

To them, denying God means denying consciousness. To them, denying God means the world is simply matter and nothing more, and whatever you see as consciousness is only a byproduct of certain matter put together, just a byproduct. Take those things apart and the byproduct disappears.

It is just like a bullock cart: you take the wheels away, you take other parts away, and each time you can ask, "Is this the bullock cart?" When you take the wheels away, certainly the answer will be, "It is not." No part is the whole. You can take, by and by, each part and remove the whole, and no single part was the bullock cart. And in the end you can be asked, "Now where is the bullock cart?

- because we have not removed it; you have never said at any point that the bullock cart has been removed."

'Bullock cart' was only a combination. It had no existence of its own, it was a byproduct. That's what Marx means when he says consciousness is an epiphenomenon: remove the body, remove the brain, remove all that constitutes a man's being - you will not find anything like consciousness.

And when you have removed everything, it is not that consciousness will be left behind; it was only a combination. You have taken the combination apart.

So when I say there is no God, I am not agreeing with Marx or Epicurus. I am certainly not agreeing with Jesus, Krishna, Moses, Mohammed, when they say there is God, because they use God as a person. Now, to think of God as a person is just your imagination. The God of the Chinese has a Chinese face, and the God of the Negroes has a Negro face, and certainly the God of the Jews must have a Jewish nose; it can't be otherwise. And if horses think about God, their God will be a horse. So this is just projection. Giving personality to God is your projection.

When I say there is no God, I am denying personality to God. I am saying God is not, but there is tremendous godliness. That is an impersonal energy, pure energy. To impose any form on it is ugly.

You are imposing yourself on it.

Now, Jesus is calling God 'father'; Jesus must have a certain idea of what 'father' means. He is imposing on God the same idea. Now, there are in India religions which believe not in a father god but in a mother goddess. The statue of their God is of a woman, the most beautiful woman that they can conceive - but it is a Hindu woman. Centuries have been going on, passing; religions have been born, died, disappeared. Their gods have disappeared, naturally.

There is a place in India, Mohenjo Daro... it has been found to be the ancientmost city in the world.

There are seven layers in Mohenjo Daro. It seems that civilization had to face some calamity seven times. When the first layer was found, it was thought that this is all: we have found Mohenjo Daro.

That was determined to be seven thousand years old. But a little more digging and another city was found underneath the first city which must have been ten thousand years old. Then the work continued. The people who were working on the excavation went on digging and city after city....

Seven cities have been found in Mohenjo Daro. The seventh seems to be at least twenty thousand years old. They have temples, they have statues of God. Those civilizations have disappeared; those people have disappeared, their religions have disappeared, their gods have disappeared.

The Christian god will disappear the moment Christianity disappears, the Hindu gods will disappear the moment Hinduism disappears. Do you see what I mean to say? It is your projection. If you go on projecting it, it is there. If you are not there to project it, if the projector is not there, the god disappears. I am not in favor of such gods, which have been projected by the tiny mind of man. And of course the tiny mind of man is bound to give qualities to God which are its qualities.

The Jewish god in the Talmud says, "I am an angry God. I am not nice; I am not your uncle." Now, this is perfectly meaningful in a Jewish context, but to a Hindu, God saying that, "I am an angry God" is a sheer impossibility. Anger and God? - they cannot meet. The Jewish god is perfectly angry; it is very Jewish, very human. And if you don't worship him, if you go against him, he will destroy you. He destroyed two cities because the people of those two cities were behaving sexually in a perverted way, and he was very much against it. Sodom and Gomorrah - these two cities he completely destroyed.

This will not appeal to a Hindu, it is impossible. It will not appeal to the Mohammedan, because the Mohammedan prays every day, "God, the compassionate one...." Compassion is the very innermost quality projected by him towards God. Now, God can only be compassion, nothing else. The Mohammedan prays that just accepting your sin is enough, because God is compassionate. You will be forgiven.

Omar Khayyam, one of the great poets of Persian literature, says, "Don't prevent me from drinking wine, enjoying women, because God is compassionate. Don't tell me that I am committing sin, let me commit as many sins as possible. His compassion is far greater than all my sins combined together. To stop a certain activity in fear that you will be punished by God, is to disbelieve in his compassion." Now, this is a different attitude - but these are all human attitudes.

So when I say there is no God, I am saying there is no person as God; all personality is human projection. I want you to take away the personality and let God be free, free from the bondage of personality that you have imposed upon him.

I am not an atheist. To me, the whole universe is full of the energy of God and nothing else.

You have to understand one thing which is very fundamental. The world consists of verbs, not of nouns. Nouns are a human invention - necessary, but after all, a human invention. But existence consists of verbs, only of verbs, not nouns and pronouns. Look at this. You are seeing a flower, a rose. To call it a flower is not right, because it has not stopped flowering, it is still flowering; it is a verb, it is a flow. To call it a flower you have made it a noun. You see the river. You calI it a river - you have made it a noun. It is rivering. It will be more accurate to the existential to say that it is rivering, flowing. And everything is changing, flowing. The child is becoming a young man; the young man is becoming old; life is turning into death; death is turning into life. Everything is in continuity, continuous change; it is a continuum. There never comes a stop, a full stop. It comes only in language.

In existence there is no full stop.

Do you remember when you stopped being a child? - when, at what point came the stop and you became a young man? There is no place, no demarcation, no full stop. The child is still flowing in you. If you just close your eyes and look within, you will find everything that has been is still there, flowing. You have been absorbing more and more, but all that has been is still there. The river is becoming big, new rivulets are joining it, but the original is still there.

If you have seen the Ganges in India, one of the most beautiful rivers, you can understand it. The point where it arises is so tiny that the face of a cow - of course of stone, stone carved into the face of a cow - is enough. Through that cow's face the Ganges falls, starts its journey... so small.

And when you see it near the ocean, when it is reaching to meet the ocean, it looks almost like the ocean itself... so vast. But that small current falling in Gangotri, far away, thousands of miles away in the Himalayas, from a stone mouth of a cow - that current is still there. So many rivers have come and fallen into it and have made it oceanic. It is still alive. Even while it is falling in the ocean it will remain alive, it will go on moving. Perhaps it will become a cloud; perhaps it will rain again. It will go on and on. Existence goes on and on and on; it never stops. There is no rest period. There is no place where you can demarc that something has come to its end. Nothing comes to its end. You cannot find the beginning, you cannot find the end. It is an ever flowing process.

When you say 'God' you are using a noun, something static, dead. When I say 'godliness' I am using a word for something alive, flowing, moving. So these points have to be clear to you. I am not a theist like Jesus or Mohammed or Krishna, because I cannot agree with a dead god. [,,,,]

God - perfect, absolute, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; these are the words used for God by all the religions - is dead, cannot be alive, cannot breathe. No, I reject such a god, because with such a dead god, this whole universe will be dead.

Godliness is a totally different dimension.

Then the greenness in the tree, then the flowering of the rose, then the bird in flight - all are part of it. Then God is not separate from the universe. Then he is the very soul of the universe. Then the universe is vibrating, pulsating, breathing... godliness.

So I am not an atheist, but I am not a theist either. And there is a third term also, which is 'agnostic'.

Socrates, Bertrand Russell, people like this are agnostic. An agnostic means one who says, "I don't know whether God is, or God is not."

These agnostics are at least more honest than your so-called theists in the churches, in the synagogues, in the temples, in the mosques - all phony and hypocrites, not knowing what God is and still bowing down. Their hearts are empty, their prayers are phony, they don't mean what they are saying and doing. They are just imitating their forefathers; they are just puppets in the hands of tradition. They are hypnotized by their society, culture, civilization; they are conditioned by the teachers, by the priests, by the parents. What they are saying is not their own; it is borrowed.

-Osho, "From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #3, Q1“

 Heaven and hell are within you, they are psychological. 

Heaven and hell are not geographical. If you go in search of them you will never find them anywhere. They are within you, they are psychological. The mind is heaven, the mind is hell, and the mind has the capacity to become either. But people go on thinking everything is somewhere outside. We always go on looking for everything outside because to be inwards is very difficult. We are outgoing. If somebody says there is a god, we look at the sky. Somewhere, sitting there, will be the divine person.

One psychologist in an American school asked small children what they thought about God. Children have clearer perception: they are less cunning, more truthful. They are more representative of the human mind, they are unperverted. So he asked the children and the answers were collected. The conclusions were very ridiculous. Almost all the children depicted God something like this -- an old man, very tall, bearded and very dangerous. He created fear. If you didn't follow him he would throw you into hell; if you prayed and followed him he would give you paradise and all the pleasures. He was sitting on a throne in the sky watching everybody. You couldn't escape him; even in your bathroom he was looking.

The outgoing mind projects everything outside. This is YOUR God too. Don't laugh, don't think this is a child's conception -- no, this is you.

This is how you think about God -- as a cosmic spy, always searching to condemn, to punish, to throw you into hell... as very ferocious, revengeful. That's why all religions are based on fear. Religions say if you do this you will be appreciated, rewarded; if you don't do this, you will be punished. The base seems to be fear. God just seems to be a very powerful emperor sitting on a throne in heaven. The whole concept is foolish but human; the human mind is foolish. The whole concept is anthropocentric.

In the Bible it is said God created man in his own image. In reality, it seems to be quite otherwise: man created God in his own image. We have projected God in our own image; he is just a blow-up of the human mind. He is a bigger human mind, that's all. Remember, if you think God is somewhere outside you, you have not even taken the first step towards being religious.

The same happens with all such concepts. We say heaven is without, hell is without; it is as if there exists nothing within. What is within you? The moment you think of the within it seems that everything goes empty. What is within? The world is without, sex is without, sin is without, virtue is without. God, heaven, hell -- everything is without. What is within you? Who are you? The moment you think of the within your mind goes blank, there is nothing. In reality, everything is within; the outer is just a projection. Fear is within you; it is projected as a hell. Hell is just a projected image on the screen -- of the fear that is within you, of the anger, of the jealousy, of all that is poisonous in you, of all that is evil in you. Heaven is, again, a projected image on the screen -- of all that is good and beautiful, of all that is blissful within you. The Devil is the fallen human being, God is the risen human being. God is the ultimate possibility of your beatitude; the Devil is your ultimate fall. There is nobody like the Devil existing somewhere. You will never meet him unless you become him. And you will never encounter God unless you become God.

In the East religions transcended this anthropocentric attitude very long ago, in the past. Eastern religions are non-anthropocentric. They say "you cannot encounter God, you can become God. They say "When you reach to the ultimate point of existence, there will be no God to receive you and welcome you. Only you will be there in your godliness. So this can be said, and I go on insisting: There exists no God -- existence is divine. There exists no one like a person, a super-person, no one. God is nonexistential, godliness is existential.

The moment I say godliness... it becomes something inward; the moment you say God, you have projected it.

This story is beautiful. The Zen master Hakuin is one of the rare flowerings. A warrior came to him, a samurai, a great soldier, and he asked "Is there any hell, is there any heaven? If there is hell and heaven, where are the gates? Where do I enter from? How can I avoid hell and choose heaven?" He was a simple warrior. Warriors are always simple.

It is difficult to find a businessman who is simple. A businessman is always cunning, clever; otherwise he cannot be a businessman. A warrior is always simple; otherwise he cannot be a warrior. A warrior knows only two things, life and death -- nothing much. His life is always at stake, he is always gambling; He is a simple man. That's why businessmen could not create a single Mahavir, a single Buddha. Even Brahmins could not create a Ram, a Buddha, a Mahavir. Brahmins are also cunning, cunning in a different way. They are also businessmen -- of a different world, of the other. They deal in business not of this world, but of the other world. Their priesthood is a business; their religion is mathematics, arithmetic. They are also clever, more clever than businessmen. The businessman is limited to his world, their cunningness goes beyond. They always think of the other world, of the rewards they are going to get there. Their rituals, their whole mind is concerned with how to achieve more pleasures in the other world. They are concerned with pleasure: they are businessmen. Even Brahmins could not create a Buddha. This is strange. All the twenty-four Jaina tirthankaras were kshatriyas, warriors. Buddha was a warrior; Rama and Krishna were warriors. They were simple people, with no cunning in their minds, with no arithmetic. They knew only two things -- life and death.

This simple warrior came to Hakuin to ask where is heaven and where is hell. He had not come to learn any doctrine. He wanted to know where the gate was so he could avoid hell and enter heaven. And Hakuin replied in a way only a warrior could understand. If a brahmin had been there, scriptures would have been needed; he would have quoted the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bible, the Koran, then a Brahmin would have understood. All that exists for a brahmin is in the scriptures; scriptures are the world. A brahmin lives in the word, in the verbal. If a businessman had been there, he would not have understood the answer, the response Hakuin gave, the way he acted with this warrior. A businessman always asks "What is the price of your heaven? What is the cost? How can I attain it? What should I do? How virtuous should I be? What are the coins? What should I do so heaven can be attained?" He always asks for the price. [....]

But this samurai was not a Jew; he was not a businessman, he was a warrior. He had come with a simple question. He was not interested in scriptures, not in cost, not in any verbal answer. He was interested in reality. And what did Hakuin do? He said, "Who are you?" And the warrior replied, "I am a samurai." It is a thing of much pride to be a samurai in Japan. It means being a perfect warrior, a man who will not hesitate a single moment to give his life. For him, life and death are just a game.

He said, "I am a samurai, I am a leader of samurais. Even the emperor pays respect to me."

Hakuin laughed and said, " You, a samurai? You look like a beggar."

The samurai's pride was hurt, his ego hammered. He forgot what he had come for. He took out his sword and was just about to kill Hakuin. He forgot that he had come to this master to ask where is the gate of heaven, to ask where is the gate of hell. Then Hakuin laughed and said, "This is the gate of hell. With this sword, this anger, this ego, here opens the gate." This is what a warrior can understand. Immediately he understood: This is the gate. He put his sword back in its sheath. And Hakuin said, "Here opens the gate of heaven."

Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you. When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven.

What happened to this samurai? When he was just about to kill Hakuin, was he conscious? Was he conscious of what he was about to do? Was he conscious of what he had come for? All consciousness had disappeared. When the ego takes over, you cannot be alert. Ego is the drug, the intoxicant that makes you completely unconscious. You act but the act comes from the unconscious, not from your consciousness. And whenever any act comes from the unconscious, the door of hell is open. Whatsoever you do, if you are not aware of what you are doing the gate of hell opens. Immediately the samurai became alert. Suddenly, when Hakuin said, "This is the gate, you have already opened it --" the very situation must have created alertness.

-Osho, “A Bird on the Wing, #3”