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 can ask many, many, questions that appear to be meaningful but are not; they are nonsense.

 

Metaphysical questions are meaningless as far as inner inquiry is concerned. Intellectual questions are meaningless: intellect will not lead you inward, because even if you do get the right answer it will not be of any use. Intellect is an instrument, a bridge to all that exists outside; it has no door to the inner.

 

So the moment you begin to ask intellectually, you can go on asking for many lives and collect many answers but still you will not be connected to the inner world. You can know many things about yourself, but to know something about yourself is not to know you. The ”about” goes round and round on the periphery and the center remains untouched. You can go on in a vicious circle of questions and answers, and every answer will create more questions, then more answers, and then more questions. You remain on the periphery, asking and being answered, gathering much knowledge about the self without knowing the self.

 

How to ask something which can be meaningful – not simply intellectually but existentially, not just for verbal knowing but authentic living? There are a few things which have to be remembered. One: Whatever you ask, never ask a readymade question, never ask a stereotyped question. Ask something that is immediately concerned with you, something that is meaningful to you, that carries some transforming message for you. Ask that question upon which your life depends.

 

Don’t ask bookish questions, don’t ask borrowed questions. And don’t carry any question over from the past because that will be your memory, not you. If you ask a borrowed question you can never come to an authentic answer. Even if the answer is given, it will not be caught by you and you will not be caught by it: a borrowed question is meaningless. Ask something that you want to ask. When I say you, I mean the you that you are this very moment, that is here and now, that is immediate. When you ask something that is immediate, that is here and now, it becomes existential; it is not concerned with memory but with your being.

 

Two: Don’t ask anything that once answered will not change you in any way. For example, someone can ask whether there is a God: ”Does God exist?” Ask such a question only if the answer will change you, so that if there is a God then you will be one type of person and if there is no God you will be a different person. But if it will not cause any change in you to know whether God is or is not, then the question is meaningless. It is just curiosity, not inquiry. So remember, ask whatever you are really concerned about. Only then will the answer be meaningful for you, meaningful in the sense that you are going to be different with a different answer. Are you really concerned about the existence of God? Will it make a vast difference to you if there is a God? Will you be a different type of being? And if there is no God, will your whole life begin to have such a different shape that you cannot be the same?

 

As I see it, whether God exists or not, people remain the same. They are interested only for the sake of peripheral knowledge. They are not really concerned; the question is not existential. Immediately, here and now, spontaneously, let a question arise in you. Don’t carry something from the past, don’t carry something that comes from others, don’t carry something that comes from the scriptures.

 

Let it come from you. And even if nothing comes, that is better. If no question comes and you feel a deep emptiness, that is good. That emptiness is authentic, it is yours. Even in that emptiness much can happen. If you ask in this way from your deeper being, the very questioning becomes a process of meditation.

 

And sometimes it happens that your question itself becomes the answer. The greater the depth it is coming from, the nearer it is to the answer. If you can ask from the very center of your being then there will be no need for any answer; the very question will become the answer. That is why I say that it becomes a process of meditation. If you can ask a question in such a way that you are totally involved in it and nothing remains outside the question, you have become the question.

 

Then no answer is needed. This very fact of totally being the question will become the answer.

 

An answer is needed from the outside only because your questioning is not deep. What I am saying is true as far as the inner search is concerned. In science, or with any outward inquiry, it will not be so. There a question will remain a question and an answer will have to be sought. But as far as the inner being is concerned, the question itself can become the answer, your quest itself can become the end.

 

In the inner search, means and ends are not two separate things. Means themselves are the end. Rightly pursued, the beginning is the end, the quest is the realization. But then the question must be total, authentic. You must be deeply committed to your question, it must not be just a peripheral curiosity.

 

So now, relax. And when I say relax, I mean to relax your past, relax borrowed questions, relax your mind so that your being can emerge. Then this questioning will become a meditative process. Then anything that comes to your mind, don’t hesitate to ask.

 

- Osho, “The Great Challenge, #12, Q1”