Osho Quotes on God

 

 

 

God is the state of no-mind.

 

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When things are no longer important, only consciousness becomes important. When things are no longer significant, a new search, a new door opens. Then you are not rushing towards the without: you start slipping into the within. The kingdom of God is within. And once you drop identifying with things, suddenly you are no longer fighting -- there is no point. You start moving with the river of existence.

 

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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.

 

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Whatsoever you do with happiness is a prayer: your work becomes worship; your very breathing has an intense splendor to it, a grace. Not that you constantly repeat the name of God -- only foolish people do that -- because God has no name, and by repeating some assumed name you simply dull your own mind. By repeating His name you are not going to go anywhere. A happy man simply comes to see God is everywhere. You need happy eyes to see Him.

 

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There is a problem with Christians, Mohammedans, Jews, who think of God as a person -- there is a problem. They think God is the one who created the world. In the East we have a deeper understanding of God than that. Creation is not something separate from God: it is His play; it is He Himself hiding in many forms. Here He has become a rock, there He has become a flower. Here He is a sinner and there He is a saint. The whole play is His. And He is the only actor and He goes on dividing His roles. He is in Jesus and He is in Judas. In the East, God is not a person -- God is the very stuff the universe is made of. God is not a creator -- God is creativity. And the creator and the creation are just two aspects of the same creative energy.

 

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God is alive when you are alive. If you are not alive, how can your God be alive? Your God is yours. If you are dead, your God is dead; if you are alive, your God is alive. Your God cannot be more than you, because your God is your innermost core of being. So if you want to know what God is, become more alive. If you want to know what God is, become more divine. If you want to know what God is, then don't try to know -- try to feel. He comes through the door of the heart.

 

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Even when you have known God, you will not be able to believe that you have known Him. That is what I mean when I say God is a mystery. Unknown, He remains unknowable. Known also, He remains unknowable. Unseen, He is a mystery; seen He becomes an even greater mystery. It is not a problem that you can solve. It is bigger than you. You can dissolve into it -- you cannot solve it.

 

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You become more divine as you become more creative. all the religions of the world have said: God is the Creator. I don't know whether He is the Creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So He must be the Creator because people who have been creative have been closest to Him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it -- whatsoever it is! irrelevant of the fact of what it is.

 

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It is not only that you are seeking God -- God is also seeking you in many, many ways. Sometimes as a Krishna with his flute, sometimes as a Buddha with his silence, sometimes as a Jesus with his revolutionary approach to life -- in millions of ways God has been extending his hand towards you, groping for you. Sometimes your hand has even touched His hand -- but you don't understand. Sometimes even a glimmer, a tremor has gone through your spine, but you don't understand. On the contrary, you explain it somehow.

 

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Every child is a warrior and every old man is a businessman. How every warrior becomes a businessman is a long story: the whole society, education, culture, conditioning, makes you more and more fearful, afraid. You cannot take a risk and everything that is beautiful is risky. Love is a risk. Life is a risk. God is a risk. God is the greatest risk, and through mathematics you will not reach -- only through taking the ultimate risk, putting everything that you have at stake.

 

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Kabir, one of the greatest mystics ever born, has said two things. He has said, "In the beginning, when I was in search of God, I was thinking my drop of water would drop into the ocean of the divine. But when it really happened it happened quite otherwise: the ocean dropped into my small drop." It always happens otherwise. You are not going to meet God, God is going to meet you. How can you seek him? You don't know his whereabouts, you don't know his address. He is in search of you constantly, and whenever you are ready the ocean drops into you. Meditation will make you ready, compassion will make you perfect. So carry these two mantras: PRAGYA, meditation, KARUNA, compassion -- let these two be the goals. Let your whole life revolve around them, and very soon you will be attuned. Then I can pour myself into you.

 

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I myself say I don't know; you cannot come across a more ignorant man than me. There is no truth and there is no way. I have not reached anywhere, I am simply here and now. If you can follow this ignorant man your mind will drop. For the mind always follows knowledge, and when the mind drops there is no need to go anywhere. Everything is available, has been available always; you have never missed it. But just because of your seeking of the future, of the goal, you cannot look. The truth surrounds you, you exist in it. Just like the fish exist in the ocean, you exist in the truth. God is not a goal, God is what is here and now. These trees, these winds blowing, these clouds moving, the sky, you, I -- this is what God is. It is not a goal. Drop the mind and the divine. God is not an object, it is a merger. The mind resists a merger, the mind is against surrender; the mind is very cunning and calculating.

 

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Let your knowing be there, but don't allow it to become knowledge or character. The moment it is turning into knowledge, drop it, empty your hands. Forget all about it. Move ahead! again like a child. Difficult, I know. Easy to say; difficult to be that way -- but that is the only way you can attain to satchitanand -- you can attain to truth, you can attain to consciousness, you can attain to bliss. Yes, it is hard. One has to pay too much for it -- but God is not cheap. You will have to pay with your whole being. Only when you have paid totally and you are not holding anything and you are not a miser, and you have sacrificed and surrendered yourself totally, will you attain. God comes to you when you are not; when you have become just a zero God comes to you. He is just waiting by the corner. The moment you become empty, He rushes towards you, He comes and fulfiles you.

 

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A real man of understanding becomes godly -- godly in the sense that he is in the world and yet he remains out of it; on the periphery and yet he remains mindful of his center. Doing a thousand and one things, yet he remains a non-doer. In tremendous activities, but he is never lost. His inner light burns bright.

 

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Many times God has reached you, and many times you have withdrawn yourself. Many times He has walked with you and you have not recognized Him. Many times He has shouted at you: "Lazarus, come out! " and you won't listen. Or you think: "He must be calling somebody else -- Lazarus is not my name. " Let me tell you: Lazarus is your name!

 

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If you are looking for God, you will never find Him -- because looking means you have a certain idea already of who God is. And your idea is bound to be either Christian or Judaic or Hindu or Mohammedan. Your idea is going to be your concept -- and your concept can never be higher than you. And your concept is bound to be your concept. Your concept is bound to be rooted in ignorance, borrowed. At the most, it is just belief; you have been conditioned for it. Then you go on looking. A person who is looking for truth will never find it, because his eyes are already corrupted, he already has a fixed concept. He is not open.

 

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A fish in the ocean forgets the ocean. Throw the fish on the shore, in the sands, hot sands, and then the fish knows, then the fish remembers. But there is no way to throw you out of God; there is no shore to Him -- God is a shoreless ocean. And you are not like a fish, you are like a wave. You are exactly like God; your nature and God's nature are the same.

 

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To arrive one has to become feminine. You cannot reach God as aggressive invaders, conquerors. You can reach God only... or it will be better: God can reach you only when you are receptive, a feminine receptivity. When you become yin, a receptivity, the door is open. And you wait.

 

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Zen has NO concept of God -- because how can you have a concept of a formless God? That is absurdity! The moment you have a concept you have created a form. That's why Zen never talks about God, Buddha never mentioned God at all. He has been asked again and again, but he keeps mum, he will not say.

 

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If you are a man of prayer, existence appears as God, as personal. If you are a man of meditation, existence is impersonal, just a wholeness, a divineness. For the man of prayer there is God; for the man of awareness there is godliness but no God.

 

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Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it -- that is the only way to know it.

 

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God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration.

 

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There is no God, but there is certainly a quality I call godliness. It comprises compassion, love, friendship, joy, creativity. It brings you new songs, it brings you new dances. It brings you the truth, and the immersion of you into the truth.

 

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Look deep into your throbbing life and you will find the quality of the divine. You will not find a God but you will find a godliness, a truth, an awakening, a buddha.

 

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You cease totally and only then you arrive. You enter into the world of God, or godliness, only when you are no more.

 

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Godliness is the fragrance of the man who has attained enlightenment.

 

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What exists is a godly existence, a divine existence. God not as a person but as a presence certainly exists. But to understand that presence, you have to understand your own inner presence first, because it is from there that you can take off, it is from there that you can have the first glimpse of what godliness is. If you have not known yourself you will never know God.

 

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Jesus says God is love. I would like to change it. I would like to say love is God. When you say God is love, love is only one of the qualities of God; he may have other qualities: wisdom, justice, etcetera. To me, love is God; godliness is only one of the qualities of love. There is no other God than the fragrance of love. But the fragrance can arise only in deep meditation.

 

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God is not a person at all. You cannot worship God. You can live in a godly way but you cannot worship God -- there is nobody to worship. All your worship is sheer stupidity, all your images of God are your own creation. There is no God as such, but there is godliness, certainly -- in the flowers, in the birds, in the stars, in the eyes of the people, when a song arises in the heart and poetry surrounds you... all this is God. Let us say `godliness` rather than using the word `God` -- that word gives you the idea of a person, and God is not a person but a presence.

 

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God is a quality, not an object. God is not God but godliness -- and godliness has to be found first within yourself. Unless you have a taste of it in your own being you will not be able to see it anywhere else. Once you have tasted it, once you have become drunk on the divine, then you will see it in the trees -- in the green of the trees, in the red of the trees, in the gold of the trees. You will see it in the sun, in the moon, in the stars. You will be able to see it in the animals, birds, people, rivers, mountains. The whole existence will reflect your understanding, will become a mirror to you. You will be able to see your own face everywhere. We can see only that which we are, we cannot see that which we are not.

 

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By `God` I mean godliness; the whole existence is full of godliness. And when you will come to know, you will not see a god standing before you, you will see the trees as divine, the rocks as divine, the people as divine, the animals as divine. God is spread all over the place, from the pebble to the star, from the blade of grass to the sun -- it is all divine.

 

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God cannot be found outside you, because there is no God who can ever be outside you. God is the ultimate fragrance of your consciousness. When your consciousness opens like a lotus, the fragrance that is released is God -- better to call it godliness.

 

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You can call it godliness -- it IS godliness. It is the highest, the greatest flowering of being. But it is not a God somewhere outside you. You cannot pray to it. You can be it, but you cannot pray to it, because it is not separate.

 

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According to Buddha the only burden is the self, the ego. Put the burden aside and you are absolutely free. He does not talk about God; he only talks about the burden, the ego. Put it aside and you will know what God is. There is no need to talk about God; talking about God is utterly futile. He emphatically avoids talking about God; it is useless. He gives you the right way to experience godliness. You are gods. Just the seed has to die, the self has to die, and you will start growing. That growth is divine. Religion is the process of inner growth, the process of actualizing the potential, the process of being reborn. Unless you are born again you cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

 

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Whatever you are doing, if there is contentment and a feeling that this whole existence is nothing but the manifestation of godliness, that we are traveling on holy earth, that whomever you are meeting, you are meeting God -- there is no other way; only faces are different, but the inner reality is the same -- all your tensions will disappear. And the energy that is involved in tensions will start becoming your grace, your beauty.

 

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There is no need for God! If you want to meditate you can meditate without God. Buddha meditated without God; he had no belief in God. Mahavira meditated and became enlightened without any idea of God. God is not a necessity, God can be disposed of! But when Buddha attained to meditation he became a god. Mahavira became a god himself. That`s how it happens: you meditate and YOU will become a god, you will discover godliness in your own being. And that is the beginning of discovery. Then you start discovering it in others. Then slowly slowly, the whole existence is full of God, overflooded with God.