Osho - Do you believe in God?
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 an illu-sion. The very belief will prevent you from knowing the
reality.
Once you start believing in an
illusion, you start losing contact with the real. To know the real, all
illusions have to be dropped - and the greatest illusion of all is the ego, the
'I'.
You ask me: Do you believe
in you?
No, not at all. That's why I am
able to know.
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.
I have heard:
The policeman was walking his
beat when he saw two men fighting and a little boy standing alongside them
crying, "Daddy, Daddy!"
The officer pulled the two men
apart and, turning to the boy, asked, "Which one is your father,
lad?"
"I don't know," the
boy said, rubbing the tears from his eyes, "That's what they're fighting
about."
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.
Just the other night I was
talking about a follower of Mahatma Gandhi; his name was Professor Bhansali. He
took a vow of silence. Now, the real silence never arises out of vows. The very
phenomenon of the vow indicates that the silence is imposed, false, pseudo,
violent; otherwise, there is no need to take a vow. If you have understood the
beauty of silence, you will be simply silent! Why take a vow? Why decide for
tomorrow? Why say that "From now onwards I will remain silent and I will
not speak a single word"? Against whom are you taking the vow?
If you have known the beauty of
silence, if you have experienced the joy of it, if you have melted in it, if
you have flowed into it - what is the point? You never take a vow that "I
will love my whole life - I take the vow." You don't take the vow that
"I will eat my whole life." You don't take the vow that "I will
go on breathing till I die." This will look foolish! You enjoy love -
there is no need to take the vow.
People take vows for celibacy,
not for love - why? Because celibacy is unnatural, imposed. When celibacy is
also natural, spontaneous, no vow is taken.
Now this man, Professor
Bhansali - I knew the man - took a vow of silence, went to the Himalayas.
For two years, three years, he
remained in silence. It was a hard struggle; it was a continuous fight with
himself - it was repression, great repression. He must have become split: the
one who is trying to impose the vow and the one, the natural one, who wants to
have a little chit-chat with people, or to talk, or to relate, communicate.
One night he was sleeping and
somebody in the darkness walked over him. He was fast asleep.
In sleep you cannot remember
your vow. He shouted, "Who are you? Are you blind or something?
Can't you see I am sleeping
here?" Then he remembered that he had broken his vow. Naturally, he felt
very guilty; great guilt arose in him. He had taken the vow and he had broken
it! And he was really a masochist - otherwise, why should one take the vow of
being silent?
Talking, communicating to
people is such a joy! Why should one become enclosed into one's being?
This is morbid. But now he was
guilty - to punish himself he started eating cow-dung! But that was not enough.
To punish himself, he sewed up his lips with a copper wire. Even that was not
enough - insanity knows no limitations. He jumped into a cactus bush and rolled
naked, thousands of thorns in his body, and he would not allow the thorns to be
removed by anybody. There were wounds and wounds all over the body.
But he became very famous - he
became a mahatma. People started coming towards him, worshipping him. Now, what
will you call this man? Will you call him a mahatma? If you have any senses
left in you, you will call him pathological. He needs psychiatric treatment,
maybe electric shocks; he needs psychoanalysis. But he was a famous disciple of
Mahatma Gandhi - just next to Mahatma Gandhi.
This has been happening down
through the ages. There have been Christian saints who have been beating
themselves every morning, wounding their bodies; and people would come to worship
them and to see who was wounding himself more. And the person who was wounding
himself more than others, of course, was a greater saint.
Now, these people who were
wounding themselves, killing themselves slowly, they were pathological; and the
people who used to come to see them, they were also pathological. The saints
were masochists and the onlookers and the worshippers were sadists - they both
were in a subtle ill state of affairs.
There have been saints who cut
their genital organs. There have been women saints who cut their breasts. What
will you call these people? But they live according to the belief - they are
believers!
Man has to get rid of all this
stupid kind of religiousness. Man has to get rid of all this nonsense that has
persisted down the ages. It is because of this nonsense that religion has not
become part of everybody's life.
No, 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...
Excerpted from '
Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind ' by Osho
Mây Trắng
Saturday, August 26, 2017