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Part VI : Questions about Religion
Thousands of times I had to tell people, "Are you really
interested in God? What will you do if he exists? Is it going
to make any difference in your life whether God exists or not?
Is it a life and death problem for you?"
They would say, "No, but we are curious whether God is
or not." And sooner or later, when they became a little more
acquainted with me, their real problems would come up: anger,
jealousy, possessiveness. They are real problems, but they hurt
the ego. To ask, "Why am I jealous?" is to recognize
your jealousy, is to declare that you are jealous. Nobody wants
that. Everybody is jealous, everybody is possessive, but everybody
thinks it is not so. "It is not so with me - it may be
so with others." guida10
You ask: 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 those who know, God is existence, or existence is God.
Things exist, not God. A chair exists because a chair can go into
nonexistence. To say that the chair exists is meaningful because
its nonexistence is possible.
God is existence, the very isness. When we say God exists we create
something out of the word God, then God becomes a thing. But God
is not a thing, nor is God a person. That is why you cannot make
him responsible for anything. Responsibility only comes when there
is a personality, when there is someone who can be responsible.
God is not a person, he is pure existence. The word is misleading
because the word personifies. It is better to use the word existence.
The totality of existence is God.
So it cannot be asked whether God exists. That is like asking
whether existence exists. Put this way - whether existence
exists - the question becomes absurd. Obviously existence
exists; there is no question about it. The question cannot even
exist if there is no existence, nor can the questioner.
I would like to make it clear that when I say God, I mean existence
as such. God is not a thing among other things, God is total thingness.
To say that the table exists is the same as saying that the table
is God. To say that you exist is the same as saying that you are
God. God is the existence. God is isness, the quality of isness,
the quality of existence…. gchall08
A Muslim friend came to visit me. This was his question too.
He said, "The biggest question I feel is that if God is,
then why is the world so evil?" He is right, because there
can be no relationship between God and evil. How can there be?
I told him, "Let us remove all evil from the world for
a moment. Can you visualize what the world will be like then?"
The moment you remove evil, the good also disappears from the
scene. Good cannot exist on its own. It is because of evil that
good exists. Remove darkness and light disappears together with
it. Light exists because of darkness. Remove the cold, and the
heat is automatically lost. Heat and cold are different variations
of the same thing. If we try to remove death, life too will be
lost. If there is no death, how can life be? Or, if there is no
life, how can death be?
The universe exists with the help of polar opposites. The world's
existence is brought about by the music between opposites. If
the opposite is removed, both are removed. Remove the male, and
the female is lost. Remove old age, and youth is lost. The young
person always wishes to prolong his youth because he does not
know that youth and old age are so closely combined that if one
is removed, the other is lost. We all wish ugliness to be removed
from the world; but if ugliness is lost, beauty will also disappear.
If you wish for a world without ugliness, be prepared to face
a world where nothing is beautiful.
I told my friend, "If you wish for a world where evil is
banned, good will flee from such a place immediately. Then this
world will be a big prison house; because where there is no freedom
to do evil, there can be no freedom at all.
In fact, the word "freedom" contains the freedom to
do evil also. If a man is told that he is free only to be good,
what meaning does such a freedom convey? This freedom has no meaning.
Rather, it implies bondage. It would be proper to say; you are
condemned to be good - not free to be good. When we tell a
person he is free to be good, the freedom to be evil enters along
with the freedom to be good. God is the totality and yet he does
not control anything. This means that God creates, but He creates
freedom.
A man is free to be good and free to be bad - as bad as
he wishes - when God is the Lord of everything. This is because
true freedom exists only if there is freedom to do what one wishes,
be it good or bad. When no such freedom exists, man is not man
but a machine which does whatever it is made to do because it
is insentient.
Man is sentient; he possesses consciousness. Consciousness is
not possible without freedom. way204
For tantra, everything is holy.
One Christian missionary was with me a few days ago and he said,
"God created the world."
So I asked him, "Who created sin?"
He said, "The devil."
Then I asked him, "Who created the devil?"
Then he was at a loss. He said, "Of course, God created the
devil."
The devil creates sin and God creates the devil. Then who is the
real sinner - the devil or God? But the dualist conception
always leads to such absurdities. For tantra God and the devil
are not two. Really, for tantra there is nothing that can be called
"devil", everything is divine, everything is holy. And
this seems to be the right standpoint, the deepest. If anything
is unholy in this world, from where does it come and how can it
be? vbt02
People come and ask me whether their fate is determined. They
are asking whether they are so important, so significant for this
universe that their fate must be determined beforehand. "What
is my purpose?" they ask. "Why was I created?"
This childhood nonsense that you are the center creates these
questions like, "For what purpose am I created?"
You are not created for any purpose. And it is good that you
are not created for any purpose; otherwise you would be a machine.
A machine is created for some purpose. Man is not created for
some purpose, for something - no! Man is just the outflowing,
overflowing creation. Everything simply is. Flowers are there
and stars are there and you are there. Everything is just an overflowing,
a joy, a celebration of existence without any purpose….
Try to understand it. Because our minds are fixed, we take things
as theories, not as devices. So many times people come to me and
say, "One day you said this is right, and another day you
said that is right, and both cannot be right." Of course
both cannot be right, but no one is saying that both are right.
I am not concerned at all with which is right and which is wrong.
I am only concerned with which device works. vbt06
People come to me and say that they are seeking God, that they
are seeking their soul. Their faces give no indication of their
search. Their search is misnamed; they seek something very different
under the cover of God and soul.
A friend approached me - he was an old man - and said
he has been seeking God for the last thirty years. "That
is a long time!" I exclaimed. "You should have found
him by now. It seems that God is avoiding you. If that is so,
then even thirty births will not be sufficient. Or it could be
that you are not seeking in the right direction, you have not
taken the path to his house. Either he is avoiding you or you
are avoiding him. Tell me exactly what it is that you seek."
"I told you. I am seeking God," he said. "I do
my practices and my meditation regularly, but I have no results
to show."
"What results are you trying to achieve?" I asked.
"I want to attain some occult powers."
Now this man is not seeking God; he is seeking power in the name
of God. It is not only in the bazaar that we find one name on
the label and something quite different inside the package. It
happens in the temples too. shiva08
Osho writes to a friend:
Love. You ask for my ten commandments. This is very difficult
because I am against any sort of commandment. Yet just for the
fun of it I set down what follows:
1. Obey no orders except those from within.
2. The only God is life itself.
3. Truth is within, do not look for it elsewhere.
4. Love is prayer.
5. Emptiness is the door to truth, it is the means, the end and
the achievement.
6. Life is here and now.
7. Live fully awake.
8. Do not swim, float.
9. Die each moment so that you are renewed each moment.
10. Stop seeking. That which is, is: stop and see. teacup03
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