• You are being taught everything, but you are not being taught to be yourself. This is the ugliest form of society possible, because it makes everybody miserable.
    - Osho

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Don’t think of God as truth, rather, think of God as beauty. Religion would have been totally different if God were thought of as beauty rather than as truth. I am not saying that He is not true – He is, but it makes a lot of difference for people in how they conceive of Him.

 

Because God has been conceived of as truth, people started thinking logically about Him. Truth creates logic in consciousness, it stirs logic. Truth seems like the conclusion of a syllogism. People started arguing about God, started proving, disproving. Because God was conceived of as truth, religion automatically became reduced to theology. Rather than becoming poetry, it became theology. Rather than becoming an aesthetic experience, it became logic-chopping.

 

Rather than enhancing the earth, making it more beautiful, it went against life. Logic is always against life; it is murderous because it depends on analysis; analysis kills. Because God was thought of as truth, religious people became thinkers, not creative artists. Just that simple phenom-enon dominated the whole past of ten thousand years.

 

Sufis say that God is beautiful, ’jamil.’ Think of Him as beauty, then it stirs creativity in you. Because beauty has to be created – in poetry, in sculpture, in painting; one has to give birth to it. If you think of God as beauty then you can do something about it. If God is truth then you can’t do anything about it, you have to discover it. Truth is there – you have just to uncover it.

 

But if God is beauty then you are not only to discover it, you have to create. Then the whole perspective changes and religion becomes life-affirmative. Then it enhances and affirms. It is not life-negative, it is not in the service of death. Then religion is not against love, because how can beauty be against love? Then religion is not against dance, it is not against celebration. How can beauty be against celebration? Then the earth is not a punishment but a holiday resort. We are here just to enjoy – it is a gift.

 

- Osho, "The 99 Names of Nothingness, #7"

 

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    The concept of God in all the old religions is nothing but out of fear

    Barely one percent of mankind is in a state now to conceive religion. All the old religions are based in fear. Now, a real religion destroys fear. It is not based in fear. The concept of God in all the old religions is nothing but out of fea...
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    Nanak says, you can say nothing about God; therefore it is best to keep silent about Him

    How can we say anything about God? For He has no beginning, no end, nor any limit. The only thing we can possibly do is to be silent about Him. What will you say? What can you say about Him? What can you say in connection with meditation? Th...
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    God is just a way, a method, a technique. 

    There is no one who will take your surrender. If there is someone and you surrender to him, then it is a sort of slavery. Really, there is not even a god to whom you are surrendering. And when we talk about a god, that is just to find you so...
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    God is not to be searched for; what is to be searched for is Consciousness

    From birth to death you go on living, groping in darkness with no light — and you could have created the light. You cannot find it in the scriptures; nobody can hand it to you. It is not purchased or sold; it is nontransferable. But you can ...
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    only in Zen is his devotion towards a living master.

    Question 1 : Beloved Osho, With the path of Sufism, the way of the heart behind us, where does the devotee fit in? Maneesha, the devotee fits in everywhere. Of course the context becomes different. In Sufism, the devotee is devoted to God to...
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    Everybody is resistant against God - why? Because if you want to know God, you have to disappear

    Question 1 : I realized in yesterday’s discourse that i am resisting the word `god’. My thoughts go back to an event which happened several years ago when i was caring for a very ill man in the hospital — he was dying. He had asked me to get...
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    God’s creativity is continuous; there is no rest.

    It is not only that God created existence in the beginning. He continuously creates it, the creativity is a continuum. It has never stopped. In fact there was no beginning and there will be no end. God is more creativity than a creator. Each...
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    Why did friedrich nietzsche declare that god is dead?

    Question 4 Osho, Why did friedrich nietzsche declare that god is dead? He had to declare it, because God was dead. The God that had been worshipped for thousands of years was dead; not the real God, but the God that the human mind had create...
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    God is also seeking you in many, many ways

    Many people have been doing that down the centuries. A Buddha comes, a Jesus comes, a Krishna, a Zarathustra — very few, very rarely. Shiko’s are very few — those who understand. Butei exists as the mass; Butei is the many; Butei is the majo...
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    God is something hidden within humanity.

    First a few fundamentals.... Zen is not a theology, it is a religion -- and religion without a theology is a unique phenomenon. All other religions exist around the concept of God. They have theologies. They are God-centric not man-centric; ...
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    Friedrich Nietzsche - God is dead

    Question : Osho, What do you say about the famous statement of Friedrich Nietzsche that God is dead? Neeraj, Friedrich Nietzsche says God is dead — that means he was alive before. As far as I know, he has never been alive. How can God be dea...
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    God is dead and man is free.

    on The Modern Mind 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, v...
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    You are Gods - dreaming that you are men

    Question : Dear Osho, Are you really just a man who got enlightened? Just the other way round: a god who got lost and has found himself again; a god who rested and slept deeply and dreamt of being a man and is now awake. And the same is true...
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    God is overflowing energy, God is Sat Chit Ananda

    Once Rabiya, a woman Sufi mystic, was passing, and she saw Hassan, another Sufi, praying in the mosque with great fervor, tears rolling down his cheeks, hands raised to the sky. He was crying and weeping and saying to God, ”Come, open the do...
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    Even Godot Is Dead - Let's Dance

    Even Godot Is Dead - Let's Dance Question 1 Osho, It seems that never has any god-oriented religion been more anachronistic than it is today; yet curiously, Christianity at least seems to be blooming. Born-again Christians, Jesus freaks, and...
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    God speaks in everyone’s heart, but we are so occupied in the head

    God speaks in everyone’s heart, but we are so occupied in the head that we never listen to that still, small voice within. There is so much clamoring, chattering, so much unnecessary noise — we have made the head a marketplace — that the hea...
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    I am destroying God and spreading godliness to every human being

    Question : Why does Man need God? It is out of fear. God is not needed at all. Man has lived in so much fear that he has needed some protection. There was fear of disease, there was fear of death — mostly it is death that makes man so afraid...
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    Is it possible for man to live without god?

    Question 2 Is it possible for man to live without god? Yes. In fact, it is only possible for man to live without God. A man with God does not live, he hesitates on every point of living, he is just half-hearted. He is making love and worried...
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    It rarely happens that a person dies with God on his mind

    BAULS say that there is only one way to come out of the stupor man lives in, and that is remembrance of God: NAM-SMARAN, remembrance of His name. That has always been part of the basic techniques on the path of love — to remember Him. And wh...
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    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 no...
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    Godliness is a state.

    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 b...
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    What is wrong with knowing more and more about God?

    Question: Osho, What is wrong with knowing more and more about God? Can it not help the seeker? Kamalesh, knowing and knowledge are different. I am all for knowing and I am all against knowledge. Knowing is your insight, it is your capacity ...
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    God is dead, but that creates the question: who began this universe?

    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 religi...
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    God, fate, destiny – these are bogus words, mumbo jumbo

    Question : Osho, You say we are responsible for ourselves, and that there is no god. What part do fate and destiny have in our lives? or are they just excuses to avoid our responsibilities by pinning hope on something outside ourselves? They...
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    A God born out of love is a true God

    Punitam means the sacred — and that is one of the qualities that is missing, missing very much in the modern world, in modern consciousness. Modern man is the first man in the whole history to have no idea of sacredness, to be living a very ...
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    When you are in suffering your remembering God is just meaningless. Just because you want to avoid suffering, you remember God as a protection.

    Question : Why do I remember God only When I am in Suffering? You don’t remember God. When you are in suffering your remembering God is just meaningless. Just because you want to avoid suffering, you remember God as a protection. You are not...
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    Can't one believe in god without seeing him?

    Question 6 Osho, Can't one believe in god without seeing him? WHO IS TELLING YOU TO BELIEVE IN GOD? I am against all belief. You must be a very new comer here. Belief is irreligious, as much as disbelief is. Belief means you don't know yet y...
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    God - Osho Quotes on God

    Osho Quotes on God God is the state of no-mind. ♦ 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:...
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    Does God exist? how can there be so much evil and corruption in the world if God exists?

    Question 1 : Does God exist? how can there be so much evil and corruption in the world if God exists? God is a mythical word, a mumbo-jumbo word that is the invention of the priesthood. Actually, to ask whether God exists is absurd. For thos...
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    God is not a person but an energy.

    Question 1 : In one of your previous discourses you said that a sudden and direct descent of grace can become a disaster sometimes. the person might be harmed or become mad or he may even die. a question naturally arises: is grace not always...
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    What is your Message?

    Question : Osho, What is your Message? Pritam, MY MESSAGE IS VERY SIMPLE Live life as dangerously as possible. Live life totally, intensely, passionately, because except for life there is no other God. Friedrich Nietzsche says God is dead. T...
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    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 prob...
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    Kabir says: I sing the glory of forms, because I cannot sing the glory of the formless

    And Kabir says: I sing the glory of forms, because I cannot sing the glory of the formless. You cannot sing the glory of God; that is not possible. It is difficult tp reduce Him a song, it is difficult to reduce Him the words. So Kabir says:...
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    Fighting with god is like hitting your head against the wall

    Fighting with god is like hitting your head against the wall: it is not going to do any harm to the wall, only your head will be destroyed. You will lose your sanity. To be in tune with god means to find a door. You can go through it and the...
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    Truth is known only by going within

    People ask me all kinds of questions: ”Does God exist? Is liberation a fact?”… and many more such queries are made but never one asks: ”Who am I What am I?” The basic question of religion is not God but the being of the Self. The journey of ...
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    Bliss is God. Seek bliss and you will find God

    Anand Elles. Anand means bliss; elles comes from the Hebrew root el; el means God. Bliss is God. God is indefinable, but if any definition is possible at all, then bliss is his definition. The definition that comes closest to define God is b...
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    on Krishna – Whenever there is enlightenment, god takes possession of the enlightened perso

    Krishna is one of the incarnations of god. The Hindu concept of god coming to earth is not like the Christian – not that god has only one son, not that god only comes in one form, as Christ: god comes in many forms, god comes in every age. G...
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    Metaphysical questions are meaningless as far as inner inquiry is concerned. Intellectual questions are meaningless

    Question 1 : Does God Exist? Something about right inquiry…. Before you ask something, it will be good to know what is meant by right questioning. Every question is not a right inquiry, because as far as the inner dimension is concerned you ...
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    To know God is totally different than knowing about God

    Question 2 : I wish i could know more about god. can you help me, Beloved Osho? There is no way to know more about God. You can know God, but you cannot know more about God. Knowing more about God is not knowing God. Knowing more is knowledg...
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    God is crazy, truth is crazy, because truth is so vast

    Question : Osho, Your ideas seem to be crazy! Thank you for the compliment. They don’t SEEM to be crazy, they ARE. But that is the only way God expresses himself. God’s ways are crazy. If the word `crazy’ does not look proper, you can say, “...
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    The real problem is the priest, and God is the invention of the priest.

    (Interview BY Aaj Ka Anand) 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 pres...
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    God is more a mother than a father

    Question : You refer to God always as ‘him’ or ‘he’. What are some of the female qualities of god? NOW IT IS a very delicate problem…. In fact, all His qualities are feminine — that’s why I call Him ‘He’ and ‘Him’. Otherwise He has no reason...
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    Consecrated to god is exactly the definition of sannyas. One starts living not for the ego but for the whole, one starts living as a vehicle of god

    There is a flowering inside. Roses bloom inside, and roses which are imperishable, roses which are not gross, which are made of grace. Gravitation has no effect on them. They come from the beyond, they descend on you, they shower on you. But...
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    Don’t think of God as truth, rather, think of God as beauty

    Don’t think of God as truth, rather, think of God as beauty. Religion would have been totally different if God were thought of as beauty rather than as truth. I am not saying that He is not true – He is, but it makes a lot of difference for ...
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    God is a pure isness, pure existence, and there is nowhere for God to go or come.

    Question : Meher Baba has talked about god descending in man (avatar, rasool, christ) and man rising to be god (the perfect master, sadguru, qutub, teerthankara). would you please talk to us about the same? God is. He neither ascends nor des...
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    Blessed are those who are blissful - A miserable person cannot find truth. He can theorise about truth

    Bliss is equivalent to god. ‘God’ is a beautiful word but it has become ugly because of wrong associations. It has fallen into wrong company. The priests have exploited it so much that I appreciate very much Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration...
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    What is God? - God is a Presence not a Person

    Question : Osho, What is God? God is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if...
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    God is not a 'who', He is not a person.

    Question 1 Do you believe in you? Do you believe in god? Who is god? NO, I DON'T BELIEVE IN ME... I CANNOT, BECAUSE I AM NOT. There is nobody I to be believed in, and nobody to believe in it either. If you believe in yourself, you believe in...
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    All those things that are dependent on the concept of God are bogus

    Question 3 All the religions are based on god. their morality, their commandments, their prayers, their saintliness -- everything points towards god, and you say that god is dead. then what will happen to all these great things that are depe...
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    You can deny God, but God never denies you

    There is an ancient Sufi parable: A man gave to a Sufi mystic a present, a golden bowl with a beautiful fish in it. The Sufi looked at the bowl and the fish and felt very sorry for the fish, because the bowl is an imprisonment. He went to th...
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    God has no form, although all forms are his.

    Nirakar, the formless. God has no form, although all forms are his. This paradox becomes possible only because he has no form. If he had any particular form then he could not have all the forms. He is liquid, utterly liquid. Because he is fo...
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    Why should one search for god?

    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 ...
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    What is Existence? Is it something like what people call god?

    Question - Osho, What is Existence? Is it something like what people call god? Sampurna, 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...
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    God Is Dead – Or Just Missing in Action?

    God Is Dead – Or Just Missing in Action? "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 c...
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    You can be God – you are – but you cannot know Him. The very effort to know Him is based on separation.

    Question : Why can’t i know God? FOR YOU ARE IT! Knowledge is not possible. Knowledge pre-supposes division, split. The knower has to be separate from the known. That’s why God cannot be known. You can be God – you are – but you cannot know ...
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    Godliness is an energy.

    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 wi...
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    Whenever I use the word god I simply mean godliness, remember it.

    Osho on Godliness Hell is a lie; there is no hell. And heaven is a lie; there is no heaven. But they have lived for centuries and centuries, and I don't think they are going to disappear. They will live. God as a person is a lie. There is go...
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    God comes in many ways, in thousands of ways

    God is always ready to give. He is always ready to share his being, his bliss, his truth, but we are unavailable, we are very closed. We don’t give him any way into our being, we don’t open even a single window. Out of fear we keep all the d...
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    God is not a person but the impersonal presence. The very life of existence is God, the living energy is God.

    Bliss is a by-product of trust, of total trust in existence or in God. God is not a person but the impersonal presence. The very life of existence is God, the living energy is God. And to trust in it means to stop struggling against it. Stru...
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    God is the eternally unknown. Even by knowing him, one never knows him

    Question : The sky and the plants can bring me to my knees and there is a heartache for something unknown. Yes, God is the eternally unknown. Even by knowing him, one never knows him; even by knowing him, he remains unknown. His unknowabilit...
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    There is godliness, but no God.

    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...
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    God is not a thought but the experience of thoughtlessness

    Deva means divine, unmana means no-mind. The state of no-mind is the state of the divine. God is not a thought but the experience of thoughtlessness. It is not a content in the mind; it is the explosion when the mind is contentless. It is no...
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    Is it really true that God is also searching for me?

    Question : Osho, Is it really true that God is also searching for me? Can I wait for him to find me? Sat Vijaya, it is absolutely true that just as you are seeking God or truth or the beloved, he is also seeking you. The search is never one-...
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    Never believe in a God who is separate from His creatures and the creation

    ONCE UPON A TIME, two explorers came to a clearing in the jungle. It was a beautiful place — thousands and thousands of flowers were blossoming. One of the explorers said, “There must be a gardener tending these flowers, looking after this p...
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    A tree is more alive than any temple, than any church

    God is not the creator, not a separate entity. God is the very creativity, the very life. So if you are against life, you are against God. Gurdjieff is reported to have said somewhere a very paradoxical but very true statement. He has said t...
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    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: ...
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    God is already there in the innermost core of your being

    Question : How do i find my way? RASHID, THERE IS NO WAY TO BE FOUND, and there is no one to find it — and there is no need either. The very idea of the way misleads, misguides. The way is possible only if God is far away; if there is a dist...
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    on Ishavasya Upanishad – Everything is of God

    The essential proclamation of the Ishavasya Upanishad, the very meaning of its title, Ishavasya, is: Everything is God’s. All things belong to God. But our human mind tries to argue that it is all ours, and we live in this delusion throughou...
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    The real seeker cannot search for God, because to start a search for God means you have already accepted that God is.

    Question 2 : Is it not possible at all that the, great religious, scriptures of the world can help the seeker in his search for god? The real seeker cannot search for God, because to start a search for God means you have already accepted tha...
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    on Purpose of Existence and Creation – Existence exists without any cause

    Question : You said that god is the creative process. Then why are things created? What is the purpose of creation, or is it something that just exists? If God exists as a person then the question why becomes relevant. If God is a person the...
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    It was good of Friedrich Nietzsche to declare God dead. I declare that he has never been born

    Question 1 Is god really dead? the very idea of his death creates intense anxiety, fear, dread and anguish. The way I look at things, God has never been there, so how can he be dead? He was never born in the first place. It was invented by t...
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    I am saying God is not, but there is tremendous godliness.

    Question 1: Beloved Osho, If there is no god, why were you being called bhagwan? 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...
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