... Christians, Hindus fighting Mohammedans, about the attributes of God. Nobody has seen God ever, and they are fighting and killing thousands of people in such stupid inquiries: What are the attributes of God? Theology is a contradiction in terms. Theo means God and logy means logic - logic about God. There is no logic about God and if there is logic there is no God. They both can't exist together. But the...

... be able to touch them. But I don't see them - the box is empty. I move it, but there is no noise." The salesman laughed and he said, "Lady, we have been out of stock for three weeks! But because it is an invisible commodity we thought there is no problem. Even I cannot tell any difference between the empty box and the box full of invisible clips." God, heaven, hell, angels - all the...

... of China - which is the biggest nation in the world, one fourth the population of the world - never has a man been even punished for murdering his wife. So naturally, societies which are ruled by man cannot accept God as a 'she'. He cannot be so inferior as to be a woman. In the biblical story God created man first, which looks not very reasonable because man in himself cannot give birth. It would...

... have been far more reasonable to create the woman first because she is capable of creating. She has the womb, she is going to be the mother. Man is secondary. His function in creation is nothing more than that of a syringe which is used for injections. Man is a syringe! Strange, God created the syringe first - but it is a story written by a man - and then he created the woman because man was feeling...

... alone. The woman is just an entertainment to help the man not feel bored, not feel alone. That is her function. God created man in a different way than he created the woman. He created the woman by taking a rib out of man's body. This is insulting, humiliating; the woman is nothing but a rib. Man is really the master - ribs cannot be masters. In all the religions the woman is humiliated in different...

... woman need not wait for another birth; she can become a man right now. And Jainism believes that Mahavira is omniscient - he knows everything, past, present, future - but he does not know about plastic surgery. He is omnipresent - but for twenty-five centuries he has not been seen anywhere. He is omnipotent, he can do anything. All the qualities of God are attributed to Mahavira because Jainism does...

... not believe in God. It makes one thing clear: that there is some inner psychological need - if you remove God, then all the qualities of God are deputed to somebody else. And the reason is that man is born in a family where the father is the master. Just the other night I was telling a journalist from Sweden that God is man's creation. All the religions say God created man in his own image. It is a...

... lie! The truth is, man has created God in his own image. Of course, he could not make God a woman. But there are a few small, primitive societies around the world where God is not he, God is a she. And that seems to be more logical because 'she' includes 'he', but 'he' does not include 'she'. 'She' is vaster, bigger; it has a womb. Those small primitive societies where God is thought of as a woman...

... have not been able to achieve weapons, destructive methods. They have not been fighting; there have been no wars in a matriarchal society. The fact has to be considered. The man-made society has been doing only one thing, continuously fighting. In those societies where God is a mother, the psychology is the same. It seems the child, because he is brought up by a mother and a father... whoever is more...

... powerful becomes his idea of God. In matriarchal societies the woman is powerful. She works, she creates, she goes to the farm, she goes to the garden. She does everything that you have been told the woman cannot do because she is weak, she is "the fair sex," she is delicate. But in matriarchal societies just the opposite is the case. The man looks after the children and for centuries that has...

... cause of the projection of God - whether as man or woman doesn't matter; whoever is powerful here the child will project one day. And the priest has been exploiting this situation. He becomes a mediator. He says God is far away, and to know God needs tremendous discipline, hard effort, continuous prayer, so only a very few people who can go through all those austerities come close to God. They have a...

... direct communication line to God. You will be surprised that here in America, in the twentieth century, there is a sect of Christians, the Mormons.... They believe - and they are educated, very efficient in every way, but they believe that their leader has a direct telephone line. God gives the message to the leader and the leader gives the message to the people; it cannot be disobeyed. And it is...

... from God that this judge has to resign and go to Nigeria to spread the message of Christianity. And you won't believe it - the man resigned! He is a judge, but if God orders and sends him to Nigeria - which is the worst place in the world to go... In Nigeria there are still cannibals. This poor fellow is sent to Nigeria to convert people to Christianity. This is not God's message! And out of all the...

... Mormons in America, this poor fellow is chosen. It is a message from the White House, not from God. It is politics, not religion. But religions can exploit in this way because man has a weakness: dependence. As he becomes a young man, he finds that the people he was dependent upon are just as weak, as unintelligent, as anyone else. Now he feels a vacuum and that vacuum, frightens him. Up to now he was...

... projected a father figure. It is not a coincidence that you call God the father. You call the priest also father. Why? In India, I have heard.... two children were playing on the street. One was a Hindu, another was a Christian. The Christian priest was on his daily round, going to Christian families, and the Christian boy saluted him and addressed him as "father." The Hindu boy simply laughed...

... when the father had left. He said, "This is strange - this man is celibate, he has no wife. In what way has he become a father?" Hindus cannot understand that this man is 'father'. And the same is the situation of the Christian trinity - the father, the Holy Ghost, the son. Not a single woman is included in the trinity. Strange! How is God the father and how is Jesus Christ his son? Where...

... AIDS have made love to the monkeys. And sodomy, making love to the animals, is not a new thing. It is as ancient as the Old Testament. In the Old Testament there were two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. 'Sodomy' comes from the name of the city, Sodom, because in Sodom people were making love to animals. God became so angry that he destroyed Sodom, and he destroyed Gomorrah, because Gomorrah was turning...

... gay. Now Christian priests are saying that AIDS is a punishment from God for those people who have not listened to religious teachers, doctrines - and people go on believing. In fact, God and his priests are responsible for homosexuality. They separated man and woman, with no possibility of contact; naturally the nuns became lesbians, the monks became homosexuals. One journalist was saying to me...

... lesbians? - because no lesbian suffers from AIDS. Is God in favor of lesbianism? You go and ask Mr. Falwell." Homosexuals are punished, but what is the difference between homosexuality and lesbianism? Lesbians should also be punished in the same way, but no lesbian has been found to have AIDS. In fact, sometimes I think that if we want to save humanity, all women should turn into lesbians and leave...

... the men and their God and their priests to die with AIDS! Now it is very dangerous to love a man, it is risky. He can be a carrier of ultimate death from a disease which knows no cure. If the women are intelligent, this will be the step they should take. They should simply say, "We are finished with you!" Yes, there are men who are not suffering from AIDS; their semen can be collected in...

... tuberculosis and all the diseases, he cannot dodge death; that is going to come anyway. Death, disease, weakness, the unknown universe create so much fear - and nobody to protect.... It was a simple step to give God the father as the protector. And man's inner space was in such a need, he accepted it. He was not capable of doubting it, because to doubt means to live almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown...

.... And with God comes the priest; he becomes the mediator. He becomes more powerful than politicians. In religious countries like India, politicians go and touch the feet of Hindu priests - of course, only before election time. Then for five years they don't bother about the priest, about the temples. But as the election comes near they start going on religious pilgrimages to temples far away in the...

... is only hypothetical, for the time being." This is true humbleness. They are not arrogant about things which are absolutely proved! Still they will not say that this is absolutely proved, because infinity is waiting. So all scientific statements are relative, never absolute. Religious statements are always absolute. It does not say, "Perhaps God exists." Science, making every...

... religions. Enough exploitation has happened. It has to be stopped completely. You will be surprised to know that trees, birds, animals - science has improved upon God very much. There are so many beautiful dogs which God had not created in those six days. They have come through scientific breeding, crossbreeding. In Soviet Russia there are fruits which were not available in the Garden of Eden, because...

... which were not created by God. In animals we know crossbreeding has brought stronger, better generations. For example, in India the bulls are imported from outside. I told Indira Gandhi, "This is strange. You can import bulls because Spanish bulls are of course the best. And to those bulls are given your cows, which you have worshipped for centuries as mothers. Have you ever thought," I...

... Indian cow does not give enough milk, even enough to purchase grass for her. The Indian cow is just a burden. The Jersey cow can feed many families, the whole neighborhood. It is such a simple fact, it needs no argumentation, that if we have succeeded in fruits, in animals, proving ourselves better than your God... and in fact, the poor God - just in six days, how much could he do? Whatever he did in...

... six days is really too much. I had a Christian tailor who used to make my clothes. I was going on a journey, and I told him, "You have to make my clothes just in one week's time." He looked at me and he said, "I can do that, but then don't complain." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You can look at the world God created in six days: it is all in a mess! Your...

... clothes will be all in a mess. I need time. Six days are not enough even to create a dress, and God created the whole universe." Everything needs improvement, and everything can be improved. But religions come in the way, because if more intelligent people are born, people who never fall sick, people who are creative of wealth, art, who is going to the poor priest? His whole business will go...

... needs a religion which is scientific, and we are creating it. Nobody can have any dispute with my religion, for the simple reason that I don't give him any grounds to dispute. There is no God, so we don't have to be worried about proving the existence of God. Nobody has been able to prove it. Thousands of theologians and philosophers wasted their life in proving the existence of God. Strange - even...

... his existence is not proved, and you are searching for somebody whose existence has not been proved in thousands of years. You are praying to somebody who is not even a hypothesis. We don't have any God. We don't have any heaven and hell. We don't have our sannyasins walking on water and.... So there is no way to have a dispute with us. We are simply inquirers going deeper into our silence, into our...

... people - and the sceptical are superstitious. Deep down, both groups were the same because they both avoide - done by worshipping; one by saying that this WaS superstitious and useless. That's what has happened to the whole world. Theists and atheists - both have been avoiding meditation. One by saying that there is no God; one by saying that there is God and only worship is needed. Deep down they are...

... that you see things as they are - but you never see. Because once you see things as they are, things disappear - only God remains. Once you can see things as they are, only one remains. Millions of forms disappear into one: the formless. Then the tree is no more there. Then the rock is no more there. Then the river is no more there. One existence is there, throbbing everywhere in a thousand and one...

... criterion. Many is the world; one is God. A Hassid is one who has attained to the vision of the one. Now, look at, this beautiful story. ON A CERTAIN PASSOVER BEFORE THE SEDAR CELEBRATION, RABBI YISAKHAR BAER CALLED HIS GUEST, THE RABBI OF MOGIELNICA, A GRANDSON OF THE MAGGID OF KOZNITZ, TO THE WINDOW - AND POINTED TO SOMETHING OUTSIDE. An old man called a young man to the window and pointed to something...

... emphasis is not on the object of seeing; the whole emphasis is on: 'Do you see?' It is not a question of what you see; it is a question of whether you see. This emphasis has to be understood, because the whole thing is focused there. The whole secret key is there: 'Do you see?' People come to me and they ask: 'We hear you. We would ALSO like to see God. Where is He?' They are asking for the object and...

... God is not an object. If you can see, He is there. If you can't see, He is not there. It is not a question of what you see; it is a question: 'Do you see?' The emphasis is on the capacity to see, to perceive, to receive. The emphasis is on the eye, the capacity to see. 'DO YOU SEE,' said the old man to the Rav of Mogielnica.'DO YOU SEE?' There was nothing outside the window; it was just as ordinary...

... happened in your being. In that moment you become religious. If you go on paying too much attention to the object you may come to know many secrets of nature, but you will never come across God on any of the paths that you will travel. It will never be a pilgrimage, a TEERTHYATRA. You will wander and wander into the wilderness of the world and matter. That's why science cannot think that God is - it is...

... impossible. God is not an object. Your very approach is such that God is excluded from it. God is not an object! God is your withinness. It is not in the object of concentration. It is in the subjectivity of meditation. He is you. I have heard one beautiful story. There was a man, a great devotee of Buddha. He had a beautiful statue of Buddha, a wooden statue, a piece of art - an antique, very valuable. He...

... are you saying? Burn the statue of Buddha? - never!' Buddha laughed and said: 'If you see me in the statue you will miss me. I am in you, not in the statue. I am not in the worshipped, the object; I am in the worshipper. And I am shivering within you! Burn this statue!' God is your subjectivity. He is there within. When you focus outside, there are objects. When you become unfocused and look within...

... satisfied with THIS world. Rabbi Leib has said: 'I have such a discontent that it cannot be satisfied with this world. That's why I know there must be a God. Otherwise, who will satisfy my discontent? There must be another world, there must be another way of being.' The very discontent shows another way of being because it cannot be satisfied here. Nothing can satisfy here. A thirst which cannot be...

... quenched here is an indication that there must be some other type of water, some other type of quenching agent, some other world. Rabbi Leib says: 'I don't know that God is, but I know that in me there is a discontent which indicates that there must be some place, some space of being, where this discontent will disappear.' God is the possibility only for those who can see: the fourth, number four. With...

... deep content, and arrival. With number seven, even that disappears. No content, no discontent; no emptiness, no fullness. Number seven has become God Himself. Number seven we have called the AVATARA: a Buddha, a Mahavir, a Krishna, a Christ. They are number seven. This young man must have been of number four. And you should remember this: that I can go on talking to you - that talking is just...

... preparing a ground so that one day I can wake you up and bring you to my window. So the whole effort should be: how to see. The whole effort should be: how to increase the quantity and the quality of seeing, how to become eyes with your whole being. God is not to be searched. Vision has to be created. AFTER THE FEAST WAS OVER, THE RABBI DANCED AROUND THE TABLE AND SANG IN A LOW VOICE... Something has...

... enemies. One hesitates. That is the meaning of SANG IN A LOW VOICE. 'THE HOLY OLD MAN, OUR BROTHER...' The holiest - a Buddha, a Christ - but still, our brother. That is the beauty. Buddha may have gone beyond, may have become a god, but he remains a brother to us, because he was once a part. He travelled on the same path; he groped in the same darkness. He is of our family. He has become the holiesT...

... - THE HOLY OLD MAN, OUR BROTHER. God is so far away. He is the holiest of the holy - but to call God 'our brother' won't look right. That's why something unbridgeable, an abyss, exists between you and God. The bridge is no more there. Only a Buddha or a Jesus becomes a bridge, because the bridge is joined both to this shore and that shore. Jesus is called 'son of God' and 'son of man'. He is both. Son...

... of man, our brother; son of God, the holy old man. The bridge has two sides. One belongs to our shore; the other belongs to the other shore. That's why a Master is even more significant than God. Just a few days ago I was talking about a woman mystic, Sahajo. She says: 'I can leave God but I cannot leave my Master, because God has only given me this world, the bondage. My Master has given me...

... freedom, has given me God himself. I can leave God, but I cannot leave my Master. I can renounce God, but I cannot renounce my Master.' A very significant assertion. A great statement of love. And understanding! God is so far away. Jesus is both: near and far. God can be the goal, but Jesus is both: the path and the goal. How can you reach to the goal without the path? It will hang in emptiness. There...

... will be no bridge to reach it. Jesus is both the end and the means: son of man and son of God. Beautiful is this assertion: 'THE HOLY OLD MAN, OUR BROTHER, HAS SHOWN ME THE LIGHT.. What is that light he has shown? - the light that comes with the clarity of eyes, the light that comes with the awakening of the seer, the light that happens when you become a witness. Not that he has shown something! He...

... has simply shown you the capacity of your vision. that even God is possible with the right eyes. 'DO YOU SEE?' If you see, everything is possible. If you don't see, nothing is possible. The possibility opens with your opening eyes. 'THE HOLY OLD MAN, OUR BROTHER, HAS SHOWN MC THE LIGHT. GREAT IS THE LIGHT HE HAS SHOWN ME.' But he never forgets for a single moment that this light is something HE has...

... impatient; you are wrong. Many times you think you are impatient because you are such a great lover; you are wrong. Many times you think: 'My impatience simply shows my strong desire and longing.' You are wrong. Impatience simply shows that you are not ready to waste time because deep down you are afraid, suspicious: 'Maybe the whole thing is just foolish. God doesn't exist. The truth? - who knows whether...

... passed in faith and trust; they can be passed in waiting. And I tell you, it will not be waiting for Godot! Because the trust has arisen. Now it is not that you don't know for whom you are waiting. You know exactly for whom you are waiting! You know absolutely for whom you are waiting! You are no more waiting for Godot; you are waiting for God. And that's the difference between Godot and God. Godot is...

... just something promised by your mind; God is something glimpsed through someone who has known. God is trust; Godot is belief. Godot is through scriptures and teachers; God is through Masters. 'WHO KNOWS HOW MANY YEARS MUST PASS...' But then one can wait. And, in fact, waiting becomes a deep delight. When you know that something is going to happen and shower on you, you wait with such tranquil...

... the Master's muscles when he was pulling the bow - and they were relaxed. So you cannot say that relaxation cannot happen. They were as relaxed as a child's hand and arm - no tension. The Master said: 'The arrow moves by itself when you are relaxed. Then God moves it; you are not the mover. You simply create the situation and then it happens. You are not the doer.' This is what tense relaxation is...

.... You are pulling the arrow tense, and yet you are totally relaxed. To long for God is to be tense. But to allow God to happen one needs to be absolutely relaxed. A tranquil excitement, a tense relaxation - waiting, as if it is going to happen right now, and the readiness to wait for eternity. Let me repeat: waiting as if it is going to happen right now, this very moment, and yet ready to wait for...

... nothing to do with you or your earning. 'THE HOLY OLD MAN, OUR BROTHER, HAS SHOWN ME THE LIGHT. GREAT IS THE LIGHT HE HAS SHOWN ME. BUT WHO KNOWS? - WHO KNOWS HOW MANY YEARS MUST PASS, HOW LONG WE STILL MUST SLEEP BEFORE IT COMES TO US, BEFORE IT COMES TO US?' This is the last thing to be understood about this anecdote: when you look through an enlightened man's vision, God doesn't come to you; you go...

... to God. When you yourself become alert and your sleep has gone, you don't go to God; God comes to you. That's the difference. You can look at the Himalayas from a window, far away in their majesty - the sun shining on the white snow. And even from thousands of miles away you can feel the coolness, you can feel the glory, the silence, the height, the sheer majesty, the magic. But it is your eyes...

... way around. It is not that you go on a faraway journey; the faraway comes closer. God comes to you. Whenever you are absolutely ready to receive, He rushes. The rush is natural, just as when it rains in the Himalayas the peaks cannot hold the water. The water rushes down. It rushes to the valley. Wherever it can find a low ground, a lake, it rushes. Whenever you are awake, you become a space...

... in a cocoon, dead inside. Once you are awake, you become empty. You become a nothingness, a nobody. God rushes to you from all directions; He comes and fills you. When the devotee is ready, the devotee does not travel at all. When the meditator is ready, he does not go anywhere. God comes. It is always God who comes. When we go to God, it is only a vision. For a moment clouds disperse and the sun...

.... (1044.1) 95:2.2 It was political and moral, rather than philosophic or religious, tendencies that rendered Egypt more favorable to the Salem teaching than Mesopotamia. Each tribal leader in Egypt, after fighting his way to the throne, sought to perpetuate his dynasty by proclaiming his tribal god the original deity and creator of all other gods. In this way the Egyptians gradually got used to the idea...

... of a supergod, a steppingstone to the later doctrine of a universal creator Deity. The idea of monotheism wavered back and forth in Egypt for many centuries, the belief in one God always gaining ground but never quite dominating the evolving concepts of polytheism. (1044.2) 95:2.3 For ages the Egyptian peoples had been given to the worship of nature gods; more particularly did each of the two-score...

... one God. But when the Salem missionaries first entered Egypt, they encountered this highly ethical culture of evolution blended with the modified moral standards of Mesopotamian immigrants. These early Nile valley teachers were the first to proclaim conscience as the mandate of God, the voice of Deity. 4. The Teachings of Amenemope (1046.2) 95:4.1 In due time there grew up in Egypt a teacher called...

... by many the “son of man” and by others Amenemope. This seer exalted conscience to its highest pinnacle of arbitrament between right and wrong, taught punishment for sin, and proclaimed salvation through calling upon the solar deity. (1046.3) 95:4.2 Amenemope taught that riches and fortune were the gift of God, and this concept thoroughly colored the later appearing Hebrew philosophy. This noble...

... generalized doctrines of the then existent Aton faith regarding the fatherhood and motherhood of Deity and created a religion which recognized an intimate worshipful relation between man and God. (1048.1) 95:5.7 Ikhnaton was wise enough to maintain the outward worship of Aton, the sun-god, while he led his associates in the disguised worship of the One God, creator of Aton and supreme Father of all. This...

... undertake the remodeling of the religion of his people. He had imbibed the Hebraic idea of a God of justice, the Mosaic concept of divinity. The idea of a supreme God was clear in his mind, and he set down all other gods as devils, consigned them to the ranks of the demons of which he had heard in Mesopotamia. He had learned of the story of the Seven Master Spirits as the tradition lingered in Ur, and...

... seventh day. The Jews carried back to Palestine many of the Mesopotamian taboos which they had found resting on the Babylonian observance of the seventh day, the Shabattum. (1042.4) 95:1.3 Although the Salem teachers did much to refine and uplift the religions of Mesopotamia, they did not succeed in bringing the various peoples to the permanent recognition of one God. Such teaching gained the ascendancy...

... Ishtar that the Babylonian priests turned anew to stargazing; astrology experienced its last great Mesopotamian revival, fortunetelling became the vogue, and for centuries the priesthood increasingly deteriorated. (1043.3) 95:1.8 Melchizedek had warned his followers to teach about the one God, the Father and Maker of all, and to preach only the gospel of divine favor through faith alone. But it has...

... Father, but they became entangled in the apparently worthy cause of reforming the mores, and thus was their great mission sidetracked and virtually lost in frustration and oblivion. (1043.4) 95:1.9 In one generation the Salem headquarters at Kish came to an end, and the propaganda of the belief in one God virtually ceased throughout Mesopotamia. But remnants of the Salem schools persisted. Small bands...

... separate tribes have a special group god, one worshiping the bull, another the lion, a third the ram, and so on. Still earlier they had been totem tribes, very much like the Amerinds. (1044.3) 95:2.4 In time the Egyptians observed that dead bodies placed in brickless graves were preserved — embalmed — by the action of the soda-impregnated sand, while those buried in brick vaults decayed. These...

... young god lost his eye, but after Set was vanquished, this eye was restored by the wise god Thoth, who spat upon the wound and healed it. (1044.6) 95:2.7 The Egyptians long believed that the stars twinkling in the night sky represented the survival of the souls of the worthy dead; other survivors they thought were absorbed into the sun. During a certain period, solar veneration became a species of...

... teacher believed that God-consciousness was the determining factor in all conduct; that every moment should be lived in the realization of the presence of, and responsibility to, God. The teachings of this sage were subsequently translated into Hebrew and became the sacred book of that people long before the Old Testament was reduced to writing. The chief preachment of this good man had to do with...

... acts of God.” In substance he taught: Man proposes but God disposes. His teachings, translated into Hebrew, determined the philosophy of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs. Translated into Greek, they gave color to all subsequent Hellenic religious philosophy. The later Alexandrian philosopher, Philo, possessed a copy of the Book of Wisdom. (1046.5) 95:4.4 Amenemope functioned to conserve the ethics...

... teachings of Ikhnaton. 5. The Remarkable Ikhnaton (1047.1) 95:5.1 The teachings of Amenemope were slowly losing their hold on the Egyptian mind when, through the influence of an Egyptian Salemite physician, a woman of the royal family espoused the Melchizedek teachings. This woman prevailed upon her son, Ikhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt, to accept these doctrines of One God. (1047.2) 95:5.2 Since the...

... disappearance of Melchizedek in the flesh, no human being up to that time had possessed such an amazingly clear concept of the revealed religion of Salem as Ikhnaton. In some respects this young Egyptian king is one of the most remarkable persons in human history. During this time of increasing spiritual depression in Mesopotamia, he kept alive the doctrine of El Elyon, the One God, in Egypt, thus maintaining...

... they were not slow to connect all of Egypt’s subsequent troubles with the establishment of monotheism during his reign. (1047.6) 95:5.6 Very wisely Ikhnaton sought to establish monotheism under the guise of the sun-god. This decision to approach the worship of the Universal Father by absorbing all gods into the worship of the sun was due to the counsel of the Salemite physician. Ikhnaton took the...

... young teacher-king was a prolific writer, being author of the exposition entitled “The One God,” a book of thirty-one chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly destroyed. Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty-seven hymns, twelve of which are now preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to Hebrew authorship. (1048.2) 95:5.8 The supreme word of Ikhnaton’s religion...

... in daily life was “righteousness,” and he rapidly expanded the concept of right doing to embrace international as well as national ethics. This was a generation of amazing personal piety and was characterized by a genuine aspiration among the more intelligent men and women to find God and to know him. In those days social position or wealth gave no Egyptian any advantage in the eyes of the law. The...

... Egypt. He sets all in their place and provides all with their needs.” These concepts of Deity were high and exalted, but they were not nationalistic. Such sentiments of internationality in religion failed to augment the morale of the Egyptian army on the battlefield, while they provided effective weapons for the priests to use against the young king and his new religion. He had a Deity concept far...

... above that of the later Hebrews, but it was too advanced to serve the purposes of a nation builder. (1048.4) 95:5.10 Though the monotheistic ideal suffered with the passing of Ikhnaton, the idea of one God persisted in the minds of many groups. The son-in-law of Ikhnaton went along with the priests, back to the worship of the old gods, changing his name to Tutankhamen. The capital returned to Thebes...

... flaming disc of the heavens with the creator God, and this idea continued to flame up in the hearts of men, even of the priests, long after the young reformer had passed on. Never did the concept of monotheism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt and in the world. It persisted even to the arrival of the Creator Son of that same divine Father, the one God whom Ikhnaton had so zealously proclaimed for...

... was supposed to have been miraculously resurrected from a cruel death at the hands of Set, the god of darkness and evil. (1049.1) 95:5.13 The teaching of immortality for all men was too advanced for the Egyptians. Only kings and the rich were promised a resurrection; therefore did they so carefully embalm and preserve their bodies in tombs against the day of judgment. But the democracy of salvation...

... and resurrection as taught by Ikhnaton eventually prevailed, even to the extent that the Egyptians later believed in the survival of dumb animals. (1049.2) 95:5.14 Although the effort of this Egyptian ruler to impose the worship of one God upon his people appeared to fail, it should be recorded that the repercussions of his work persisted for centuries both in Palestine and Greece, and that Egypt...

..., accordingly, he created a galaxy of seven supreme gods with Ahura-Mazda at its head. These subordinate gods he associated with the idealization of Right Law, Good Thought, Noble Government, Holy Character, Health, and Immortality. (1049.6) 95:6.3 And this new religion was one of action — work — not prayers and rituals. Its God was a being of supreme wisdom and the patron of civilization; it was a militant...

... was spread by the sword. And Zoroaster heroically died in battle for that which he believed was the “truth of the Lord of light.” (1050.1) 95:6.5 Zoroastrianism is the only Urantian creed that perpetuates the Dalamatian and Edenic teachings about the Seven Master Spirits. While failing to evolve the Trinity concept, it did in a certain way approach that of God the Sevenfold. Original Zoroastrianism...

... century before Christ to keep the light of Salem from being fully and finally extinguished as it so dimly burned to show man in his darkened world the path of light leading to everlasting life. 7. The Salem Teachings in Arabia (1050.6) 95:7.1 The Melchizedek teachings of the one God became established in the Arabian desert at a comparatively recent date. As in Greece, so in Arabia the Salem missionaries...

... Christ. Never was one concept able fully to displace the others. (1051.1) 95:7.3 Here and there throughout Arabia were families and clans that held on to the hazy idea of the one God. Such groups treasured the traditions of Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, and Zoroaster. There were numerous centers that might have responded to the Jesusonian gospel, but the Christian missionaries of the desert lands were...

... became to their Arabic cousins. (1051.4) 95:7.6 The strength of Islam has been its clear-cut and well-defined presentation of Allah as the one and only Deity; its weakness, the association of military force with its promulgation, together with its degradation of woman. But it has steadfastly held to its presentation of the One Universal Deity of all, “who knows the invisible and the visible. He is the...

... merciful and the compassionate.” “Truly God is plenteous in goodness to all men.” “And when I am sick, it is he who heals me.” “For whenever as many as three speak together, God is present as a fourth,” for is he not “the first and the last, also the seen and the hidden”? (1051.5) 95:7.7 [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.] What are you going to do about it? Your browser does not support iframes. var...

... Osho God has Got a Thing About you: Darshan 14 September 1978 Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho God has Got a Thing About you   Next > Darshan 14 September 1978 From: Osho Date: Fri, 14 September 1978 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: God's Got a Thing About you Chapter #: 14 Location: pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive Code: N.A. Short...

... Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. Anand means bliss, vishram means relaxation - a blissful relaxation. The simple word "relax" contains my whole philosophy of life. To be in a relaxed state is to be in God. To be utterly relaxed is to disappear from the circumference and appear at the center. That is the only transformation; there is none other. When you...

... are tense you remain tethered to the circumference of your life; when you relax you sink to the deeper levels of your being. And when the relaxation is total, suddenly you find yourself at the very core... and that's what God isl But man lives in a kind of constant tension, man is tension; a chronic state of tension, that's what man is. Man is not a being. Trees have more being, rocks too; animals...

... hands are so small. Wavering, moving between these two non-existential states, man lives in misery. To be relaxed means to be in the present. The pendulum has stopped exactly in the middle, and when the pendulum stops, the clouds stop. When you stop in the middle, the mind disappears, time disappears. The clock really stops and suddenly the door opens for the infinity, for God, for nirvana. Hence I...

... rocks and the birds and the animals. But if a man can enter into this moment, this herenow, then the Buddha arises in him, the Christ-consciousness wells up. Then he is God himself, because to know God is to be God. In that knowing the knower becomes the known; in that state the lover becomes the beloved. This is the meaning of your name. And you will have to watch more and more how many tensions you...

... give you your first taste of oneness. And then you will drop it with others more and more and more, and one day you will be capable of dropping the whole nonsense totally. Then only God is. "Samarpito" is one of the most beautiful words... very pregnant, has great meaning in it. Just the understanding of it can take you into new heights of experiences. So keep this in your heart from this...

... with God, because that is our only connection. Seriousness is the greatest barrier between man and God, and it has to be dropped. It is very paying - that is the problem - to be serious in the world is very paying. It makes you more successful, more efficient, more respectable. All that is true, but the more you succeed in the world, the more you fail in the inner; the more respectable you become in...

... take you into a totally different dimension: the dimension of the non-serious, the dimension of the festive, because unless one can celebrate life one cannot be grateful to God. And only in gratefulness is God known. The only proof that God exists is in the gratefulness of people who know how to celebrate. Hence down the ages it has been told: If you wish to seek God then seek the people who can...

... laugh, who can enjoy, who can celebrate. There you will find the first glimpses of the divine humor. Particularly in the East we have not made God very serious. He plays a flute and sings a song and dances. He is a dancer and a painter and a poet and this world is his painting, his song, his dance. We don't think of God as a creator - that word is bombastic. We think of him as a player, and existence...

... we call leela, a play. And that word "play" is the sense of humor. We are participating in a great drama so there is nothing to be serious about... nothing at all. This has to be your fundamental insight. It will transform you and that will bring many many experiences, insights, blessings, to you. That will become the opening of the door. Veet means beyond, anubhavo means experience. God...

... is beyond all experience. You cannot experience God because he is not separate from you. You can live God, you can be God, but you cannot experience him. We can experience things only when they are separate from us. You cannot see yourself, and God is your innermost core - you cannot see God either. So people who search for God as if God is an object are on a wrong journey from the very beginning...

... standing before you, and that is just an hallucination. If you are a Christian you see Christ. The Christian never sees Krishna, the Hindu never sees Christ; the Mohammedan is blissfully unaware of both. You see only that which you are projecting. Because down the ages God has been thought of as a person, hallucinations become possible. Because he was thought of as something that can be experienced...

..., people went on wrong journeys and wasted their lives. God cannot be experienced, cannot be searched for, cannot be seen, because you are it. You are already it, so what is needed is not search; all that is needed is to start celebrating. You are God! There is no need to postpone your celebration even for a single moment, because in the next moment also you will be God, as much as you are right now...

.... Yesterday also you were as much a God as you are right now or will ever be. You are the same God always. Just a little daring is needed to celebrate it, a little daring to accept this tremendous truth of "I am God!" It is very difficult because the so-called saints have been teaching you that you are a sinner, that you are unworthy, that you will be thrown into hellfire - that's where you belong...

.... How can you suddenly believe that you are a God? It seems outrageous, outlandish, but it is the truth, and truth is always outlandish. Lies are conventional, truth is always outlandish. People live in lies, they accept lies because lies are very consolatory. Truth is very shattering. To recognize yourself as God does not mean that you are God and others are not God. To recognize yourself as God...

... means that everything is divine, even your enemy. Not only is Jesus God but Judas too! That is very shattering... that is very difficult. Not only is the beautiful person God, but the ugliest, he too is God because nothing else exists. God is synonymous with existence. So never search for experiences. All experiences are false and of the mind. It makes no difference whether you go into an experience...

... consciousness? Sometimes it feels sad, sometimes it feels happy; sometimes it is so high, flying in the sky, and sometimes so down. Who is this watcher of all these games? - high and low, happy, unhappy, in heaven and hell. Who is this watcher? To know this watcher is to know God. And you are already it - just a little awakening is needed... no search but only awakening. [A sannyasin says she is afraid of...

...God has Got a Thing About you...

... last supper which Mithras celebrated with the sun-god before he ascended into the heavens. This sun-god, or Sol Invictus, was a degeneration of the Ahura-Mazda deity concept of Zoroastrianism. Mithras was conceived as the surviving champion of the sun-god in his struggle with the god of darkness. And in recognition of his slaying the mythical sacred bull, Mithras was made immortal, being exalted to...

... the gods became more of a work in art than a matter of worship. (1078.4) 98:1.6 The Olympian gods illustrate man’s typical anthropomorphism. But the Greek mythology was more aesthetic than ethic. The Greek religion was helpful in that it portrayed a universe governed by a deity group. But Greek morals, ethics, and philosophy presently advanced far beyond the god concept, and this imbalance between...

... the reformation of Greek religion. They elevated its ideals, but they were more artists than religionists. They failed to develop a technique for fostering and conserving supreme values. (1079.3) 98:2.6 Xenophanes taught one God, but his deity concept was too pantheistic to be a personal Father to mortal man. Anaxagoras was a mechanist except that he did recognize a First Cause, an Initial Mind...

... were they much interested in, the Greek philosophy of self-realization and an abstract Deity; they rather craved promises of salvation, coupled with a personal God who could hear their prayers. They exiled the philosophers, persecuted the remnants of the Salem cult, both doctrines having become much blended, and made ready for that terrible orgiastic plunge into the follies of the mystery cults which...

... priests of the state religion told Augustus of the earlier attempts of the Salem teachers to spread the doctrine of one God, a final Deity presiding over all supernatural beings; and this idea took such a firm hold on the emperor that he built many temples, stocked them well with beautiful images, reorganized the state priesthood, re-established the state religion, appointed himself acting high priest...

... culminated in the Christian church. (1077.2) 98:0.2 For a long time in Europe the Salem missionaries carried on their activities, becoming gradually absorbed into many of the cults and ritual groups which periodically arose. Among those who maintained the Salem teachings in the purest form must be mentioned the Cynics. These preachers of faith and trust in God were still functioning in Roman Europe in the...

... Europe and the East. These Hellenic invaders brought along with them anthropomorphic God concepts similar to those which their Aryan fellows had carried to India. This importation inaugurated the evolution of the Greek family of gods and goddesses. This new religion was partly based on the cults of the incoming Hellenic barbarians, but it also shared in the myths of the older inhabitants of Greece...

.... (1078.1) 98:1.3 The Hellenic Greeks found the Mediterranean world largely dominated by the mother cult, and they imposed upon these peoples their man-god, Dyaus-Zeus, who had already become, like Yahweh among the henotheistic Semites, head of the whole Greek pantheon of subordinate gods. And the Greeks would have eventually achieved a true monotheism in the concept of Zeus except for their retention of...

... the overcontrol of Fate. A God of final value must, himself, be the arbiter of fate and the creator of destiny. (1078.2) 98:1.4 As a consequence of these factors in religious evolution, there presently developed the popular belief in the happy-go-lucky gods of Mount Olympus, gods more human than divine, and gods which the intelligent Greeks never did regard very seriously. They neither greatly loved...

... belief in the Salem doctrine of “the Intelligence of the universe,” “the idea of God,” and “the Great Source.” In so far as the Greek philosophers gave recognition to the divine and the superfinite, they were frankly monotheistic; they gave scant recognition to the whole galaxy of Olympian gods and goddesses. (1079.2) 98:2.5 The Greek poets of the fifth and sixth centuries, notably Pindar, attempted...

... morality and Greek thought. (1079.6) 98:2.9 In Palestine, religious dogma became so crystallized as to jeopardize further growth; in Greece, human thought became so abstract that the concept of God resolved itself into a misty vapor of pantheistic speculation not at all unlike the impersonal Infinity of the Brahman philosophers. (1079.7) 98:2.10 But the average men of these times could not grasp, nor...

... salvation, these emotional and fiery ceremonials. No nation ever attained such heights of artistic philosophy in so short a time; none ever created such an advanced system of ethics practically without Deity and entirely devoid of the promise of human salvation; no nation ever plunged so quickly, deeply, and violently into such depths of intellectual stagnation, moral depravity, and spiritual poverty as...

... welded into a meaningful unity by the conjoined action of wisdom, faith, and experience. 3. The Melchizedek Teachings in Rome (1080.3) 98:3.1 Having grown out of the earlier religious forms of worship of the family gods into the tribal reverence for Mars, the god of war, it was natural that the later religion of the Latins was more of a political observance than were the intellectual systems of the...

... the highly intellectual and artistic worship of the Greeks had gone down before the fervid and deeply emotional worship of the mystery cults. The greatest of these devastating cults was the mystery religion of the Mother of God sect, which had its headquarters, in those days, on the exact site of the present church of St. Peter’s in Rome. (1080.8) 98:3.6 The emerging Roman state conquered...

... politically but was in turn conquered by the cults, rituals, mysteries, and god concepts of Egypt, Greece, and the Levant. These imported cults continued to flourish throughout the Roman state up to the time of Augustus, who, purely for political and civic reasons, made a heroic and somewhat successful effort to destroy the mysteries and revive the older political religion. (1081.1) 98:3.7 One of the...

... of all, and as emperor did not hesitate to proclaim himself the supreme god. (1081.2) 98:3.8 This new religion of Augustus worship flourished and was observed throughout the empire during his lifetime except in Palestine, the home of the Jews. And this era of the human gods continued until the official Roman cult had a roster of more than twoscore self-elevated human deities, all claiming...

... blood,” commemorating the self-inflicted death of Attis. After three days of the celebration of the sacrifice and death of Attis the festival was turned to joy in honor of his resurrection. (1082.1) 98:4.8 The rituals of the worship of Isis and Osiris were more refined and impressive than were those of the Phrygian cult. This Egyptian ritual was built around the legend of the Nile god of old, a god...

... who died and was resurrected, which concept was derived from the observation of the annually recurring stoppage of vegetation growth followed by the springtime restoration of all living plants. The frenzy of the observance of these mystery cults and the orgies of their ceremonials, which were supposed to lead up to the “enthusiasm” of the realization of divinity, were sometimes most revolting. 5...

... Zoroaster’s teachings. It was chiefly through the Mithraic cult that Zoroaster’s religion exerted an influence upon later appearing Christianity. (1082.4) 98:5.3 The Mithraic cult portrayed a militant god taking origin in a great rock, engaging in valiant exploits, and causing water to gush forth from a rock struck with his arrows. There was a flood from which one man escaped in a specially built boat and a...

... the station of intercessor for the human race among the gods on high. (1082.5) 98:5.4 The adherents of this cult worshiped in caves and other secret places, chanting hymns, mumbling magic, eating the flesh of the sacrificial animals, and drinking the blood. Three times a day they worshiped, with special weekly ceremonials on the day of the sun-god and with the most elaborate observance of all on the...

... of moral and social values. 7. The Christian Religion (1083.6) 98:7.1 A Creator Son did not incarnate in the likeness of mortal flesh and bestow himself upon the humanity of Urantia to reconcile an angry God but rather to win all mankind to the recognition of the Father’s love and to the realization of their sonship with God. After all, even the great advocate of the atonement doctrine realized...

... something of this truth, for he declared that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” (1084.1) 98:7.2 It is not the province of this paper to deal with the origin and dissemination of the Christian religion. Suffice it to say that it is built around the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the humanly incarnate Michael Son of Nebadon, known to Urantia as the Christ, the anointed one. Christianity...

... informed of this impending event by angels. (1084.7) 98:7.8 5. The historic fact of the human life of Joshua ben Joseph, the reality of Jesus of Nazareth as the glorified Christ, the Son of God. (1084.8) 98:7.9 6. The personal viewpoint of Paul of Tarsus. And it should be recorded that Mithraism was the dominant religion of Tarsus during his adolescence. Paul little dreamed that his well-intentioned...

... letters to his converts would someday be regarded by still later Christians as the “word of God.” Such well-meaning teachers must not be held accountable for the use made of their writings by later-day successors. (1084.9) 98:7.10 7. The philosophic thought of the Hellenistic peoples, from Alexandria and Antioch through Greece to Syracuse and Rome. The philosophy of the Greeks was more in harmony with...

... Jesus as the Christ, the Messianic anointed one from God, but has largely forgotten the Master’s personal gospel: the Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of all men. (1085.1) 98:7.12 And this is the long story of the teachings of Machiventa Melchizedek on Urantia. It is nearly four thousand years since this emergency Son of Nebadon bestowed himself on Urantia, and in that time the...

... teachings of the “priest of El Elyon, the Most High God,” have penetrated to all races and peoples. And Machiventa was successful in achieving the purpose of his unusual bestowal; when Michael made ready to appear on Urantia, the God concept was existent in the hearts of men and women, the same God concept that still flames anew in the living spiritual experience of the manifold children of the Universal...

...Religion: Allowing God to Find Us...

... Osho Hallelujah: Religion: Allowing God to Find Us Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Hallelujah   Next > Religion: Allowing God to Find Us From: Osho Date: Fri, 4 August 1978 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Osho - Darshan - Hallelujah! Chapter #: 4 Location: pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available...

...: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. Deva means god, svarupo means self-nature. God is our self nature. God is not separate - god is our very being. He has not to be attained, only discovered. He is hidden in us; there is no need to go anywhere else to find him. One has to be silent enough and relaxed enough to feel him. It is not a journey, it is already the case: we are in god, god is in us...

.... And god is not a person - you cannot worship him; there is nobody to be worshipped. The worshipper is the worshipped. The arrow has to turn inwards. We are focussed outwards, so god has fallen in the shadow, and the obvious has become impossible and the impossible has become our very search. God is very obvious. 'One does not even have to go outside one's room,' says Lao Tzu, 'to find him.' And I...

... say 'One does not even have to go outside one's body.' One is it. That is the meaning of svarupo: it is your very nature, your very ground. 'Thou art that' - when this recognition arises, all misery disappears and all darkness, and one is transported into a totally different kind of reality. With the change of vision, the whole world changes. So don't look for god in the churches, in the temples, in...

... mosques; he is not there. Look for him within. And god is not a goal somewhere in the future. He is our very source. We have just to be a little calmer to feel him. The turmoil in the mind does not allow us to feel, the noise in the being does not allow us to hear the still, small voice within. Deva means divine, asangato means inconsistent, self-contradiction - divine inconsistency or divine...

... consistency - then it has to choose. And whenever you choose, you can only choose half and the other half has to be denied. That's what has happened down the ages: those who choose the body deny the soul; they have to, to be consistent. Those who choose the soul have to deny the body; they have to deny the body to be consistent, otherwise they look inconsistent. If god is, then they have to say that the...

... world is illusory, 'maya'. If the world is true, as Marxists say, as Communists say, then god is just an illusion. The whole of philosophy up to now has been a kind of choice: either/or. My whole teaching is not of either/or, but of both/and. Don't choose. Choice makes a person lopsided. One becomes a materialist, another becomes a spiritualist, and both are half-half: half dead, half alive. Both are...

... happens that you have put yourself totally into it, the second step is taken, and that second step is the real experience of meditation. Before that is only preparation. Man can only prepare; the real thing happens through god or through the whole. Man can open up... then god descends in that emptiness, in that opening. That is the meaning of your name. It will remind you again and again to put all that...

... descends in you. You disappear and god is. That is the moment of deva dhyano. Deva means god, layo means dissolved in - dissolved in god... just like a river dissolves into the ocean or sugar dissolves into water. Man is not an island, but people think of themselves as separate from reality, and the very idea of separation creates nightmares because it is against the truth. Anything against the truth is...

... that brings joy and celebration into life comes through this understanding that we are not separate from existence, that we are part of the continent, not islands. In deep love sometimes that moment comes like lightning. Love is the experience when two persons feel that they are no more separate. That's the beauty of love, and that's its religious quality. That's why Jesus says 'God is love.' He says...

... 'God is love'; I say 'Love is god.' It is only for a few moments in deep love that one feels that the idea of being separate is false, pseudo, absurd. But those moments come and go and we are again separate. In meditation that moment slowly becomes our whole being. That becomes our very climate - that we are one with the whole. Then trees and the mountains and the stars are not separate. Then we are...

... all manifestations of one reality. In that vision of oneness is bliss, is benediction. All fear disappears, because there is nobody else to be afraid of, and love wells up, tremendously, because all is ours. 'I' becomes false, and 'we' takes its place. And the 'we' includes not only men and women; 'we' includes all - the rocks, the rivers.... That vision of unity, of oneness, is what god is all...

... about. Deva means divine, nadama means sound, melody, music - divine melody, divine music, divine harmony. And there is a music which is constantly present in everybody's being. But we can hear it only when all inner talk stops. Once it is heard, you have heard god. God does not speak in language - he speaks in music. Music is a pure message... truth uncontaminated. You need not interpret it, you need...

... not analyse it. You need not bring in your intellect to understand it, still you understand. Music does not say anything in particular, but it still says a lot. It speaks to your guts, to your very cells, to the very fibres of your being. It is cosmic language, without words, because words can be misinterpreted And words are always misunderstood. It is a wordless message. God has always spoken in...

...The Taste of God is Love...

... Osho Hallelujah: The Taste of God is Love Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Hallelujah   Next > The Taste of God is Love From: Osho Date: Fri, 12 August 1978 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Osho - Darshan - Hallelujah! Chapter #: 12 Location: pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video...

... Available: N.A. Length: N.A. Kusum means flower, swarna means gold - a golden flower. It is still in the seed but it can come; it has to be provoked, it has to be ca]led forth. One should not dissect the seed. If you dissect the seed you will not find the flower. That's what people are doing all over the world. If you dissect man you will not find god... and then they think there is no god. Man is a seed...

..., god is a flowering. You cannot find the flower in the seed if you search for it directly. You have to give the seed the right soil, the right climate, and you have to work on it for years; then one day, the miracle. And that is the greatest miracle - when a seed becomes a sprout. Just those two small leaves coming out of the earth is the greatest miracle in the world, the greatest revolution. That...

... which was dead has become alive. That which was potential has become actual. That which was invisible has become visible. Now the journey has started... but it happens only when the seed disappears. You cannot find god in man: god happens only when man disappears. And to allow oneself to disappear is what sannyas is all about. It is an effort to efface oneself. to empty oneself of oneself, and when...

... one is not, suddenly god takes possession. Those first two leaves start growing. Now the flower will not be far away; the real thing has happened. Now the flower is only a question of time. The spring will be coming and the tree will bloom. Don't go and cut a tree to see where the flowers are hidden; wait for the spring. If you cut the tree and its branches to find the flowers, you will not find...

... them. And that's what science goes on doing: cutting branches looking for flowers, and there are no flowers; hence the conclusion. It looks very logical that there are no flowers at all. Wait for the spring, and then out of nowhere, thousands of flowers will be arriving. That arrival is the kingdom of god. Begin by dropping the seed into the soil; help the seed to die, don't hinder its death. Let the...

... don't give any indication of the red flowers, but one day the flowers come and there is all joy. That flowering is known as the golden flower. It is golden because it is the most precious thing in the world. Deva means divine, pantho means path - divine path. Sannyas is a divine path. You are not to do much on it; you only have to allow god to do something to you. The path on which you have to do much...

... and god is just a spectator is a human path. And the path on which you are just a spectator and the god has to do much is a divine path. The human path is a path of will, and the divine path is a path of surrender. All that is needed from your side is vulnerability, openness, let-go. So if god wants to do something to you, he is not hindered... and god certainly wants to do something with you. He...

... wants to do something with everybody! It is not only that man is seeking god; far truer is vice versa: god is intensely seeking and searching for man. Man has forgotten god: god has not forgotten man. Man is not an abandoned project, yet. God still hopes, god still enquires, tries to reach each human being, because the failure of man is his failure. Man is his project after all. Your name is an...

... indication for you to learn let-go, to surrender, to just go with the river wherever it leads, to go with the wind like a dry leaf, with no resistance... effortlessly. joyously, dancingly. Dhyana means meditation, yogesh means god of the yoga: god of the yoga of meditation. Meditation is the ultimate yoga. All that is known in the name of yoga is just introductory. Those body postures, asanas, breathing...

... it. Prem means love, anurodh means invitation - a loving invitation... a loving invitation to the unknown. We don't know its name - it has none. All our names are just inventions. You can call it 'god' or 'tao' or anything else that you like, but it is nameless and it is formless. And it is not only unknown; it is unknowable. One can live it but one cannot know it. One can love it but one cannot...

... and wonder; they no longer know what awe is. They have become smug - smug about their knowledge. They have become snobbish, they have lost the innocence of the child. God cannot be known but can be loved, lived. Invite him: you be the host, let him be the guest. That's the meaning of your name. Become a loving invitation to god. Prem means love; hassid is a Hebrew word it means 'the in-dwelling...

... but when it passes through a spectrum, through a prism, then the seven colours of the spectrum are created. The rainbow is nothing but the white ray broken into seven colours. The whole world is a rainbow - god is the white ray. And another thing to be remembered: Gora was a great Indian mystic. He was a poor potter but one of the greatest mystics the world has ever known. Pottery was his method...

... but for no purpose. One has to take hold of oneself very consciously. And that is the purpose of sannyas: to start working consciously upon your being. Then great is the treasure. The name of that treasure is love. You can call it god or enlightenment or what you will, but love seems to be the most beautiful name for it - unpretentious, simple. That is the meaning of your name: you are a seed, but...

... both. And I tell you, everybody is both. From one side: son of man; from another side: son of God. You are born to man, but you are not born only to be man. You are born to man, but you are born to be a god. Humanity is your form; divinity is your being. Humanity is your clothing; divinity is your soul. Jesus goes on using both expressions. Whenever he says 'son of man', he says that "I am...

...Go thou and preach the kingdom of god...

... Osho Come Follow To You, Vol 1: Go thou and preach the kingdom of god Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Come Follow To You, Vol 1   Next > Go thou and preach the kingdom of god From: Osho Date: Fri, 29 October 1975 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Come Follow To You, Vol 1 Chapter #: 9 Location: am in Buddha Hall Archive Code: N.A. Short...

... Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. LUKE 9 CERTAIN MAN SAID UNTO HIM, LORD, I WILL FOLLOW THEE WHITHERSOEVER THOU GOEST. AIR HAVE NESTS; BUT THE SON OF MAN HATH NOT WHERE TO LAY HIS HEAD. SUFFER ME FIRST TO GO AND BURY MY FATHER. GO THOU AND PREACH THE KINGDOM OF GOD. FIRST GO BID THEM FAREWELL, WHICH ARE AT HOME AT MY HOUSE. PLOUGH, AND LOOKING BACK, IS FIT FOR THE...

... KINGDOM OF GOD. ONCE A MAN owned a very big pond. A small lily plant was growing on it. The man was very happy; he had always liked the white flowers of lilies. But then he became very concerned because the plant was doubling itself every day: sooner or later it would cover the whole pond. He had trout in the pond and he loved to eat those trout. Once the pond was covered by the lilies all the life...

... divine. When you have lost contact with Jesus you may start thinking whether this man was a god or not, but in his presence he's so much, he's so powerful in his inner poverty, his humbleness has such a glory.... His poverty is a kingdom: he's enthroned. He's in the highest of consciousnesses. He suddenly surrounds you, envelops you, wraps you from everywhere like a cloud. You forget yourself in it...

... encounter Buddha you have to call him 'Bhagwan'. It has to be so, because you cannot find any other expression. All other words seem to be insignificant - only 'Lord', 'God'. LORD, I WILL FOLLOW THEE - and when you say to somebody 'Lord', it immediately follows that you have fallen in love. I WILL FOLLOW THEE WHITHERSOEVER THOU GOEST. What a commitment! - made in a moment of ecstasy. You may repent of it...

... else. This earth may be a sojourn, but it is not a home. Maybe we are staying here for a time being: a CARAVANSERAI, but not a home. In the morning, we have to go. Jesus' saying has many meanings, and I would like you to enter them all. One: man is not rooted. Because he is not rooted he is always in search: where to find a home? God is nothing but the search to find a home where we can feel at ease...

... talking, who are they calling 'Allah'? To whom are they bowing their heads? - nobody seems to be there." God is not visible, God is somewhere in the mind of man. Prayer is a monologue; it is not a dialogue. A man from another planet would think that something had gone wrong in the nervous system of humanity. He would think that it must be a failure of the nerves: millions of people gesticulating to...

... go to the same church, you believe in the same party, you believe in the same flag - familiarity. Then you think you know about each other. These are just tricks. Jesus says, "The son of man is homeless." Jesus uses two words again and again for himself: sometimes he uses 'son of God' and sometimes he uses 'son of man'. 'Son of God' he rarely uses; 'son of man', more often. It has been a...

... problem for Christian theology. If he is the son of God, why does he go on saying 'son of man'? Those who are against Christ say, "If he is a son of man, then why does he insist that he is the son of God also? You cannot be both. If you are the son of man - everybody is the son of man. But if you are the son of God, then why use the other expression?" But Jesus insists on both because he is...

... joined with you. I am just as you are - plus. I am just as you are, and more." To indicate that MORE, sometimes he says 'son of God'. But rarely does he use that - rarely, because very few people will be able to understand it. When he says 'son of man', he is not saying something only about himself. Just look at this sentence - he is saying something about every man, that the essential man is...

... passage, a journey, but this cannot be the goal. And once you feel homeless in this world, then the search starts. That certain man said:LORD, I WILL FOLLOW THEE WHITHERSOEVER THOU GOEST.He may be thinking that Jesus is going to the east or the west or the south or the north. "I will follow him.'' But he does not know the direction where Jesus is going. Jesus is going God-ward and that is not north...

..., that is not east, that is not west, that is not south; that is neither up nor down - it is none of these. To go God- ward is to go within. In fact, that is not a direction at all. It is to lose all directions: north, east, south, west, up, down - to lose all directions. To go within-ward means to move in the dimensionless, directionless. He doesn't know what he is saying: LORD, I WILL FOLLOW THEE...

... WHITHERSOEVER THOU GOEST. In his WHITHERSOEVER, the God- wardness is not implied. He does not know what he is saying. Jesus is not going anywhere. He is going within himself - which is not a point in space. To go within is to go beyond space. That's why the soul can never be found in any experiment. An experiment can find anything which belongs to space. You can kill a man, cut and dissect him, and bones will...

... homeless. With me, you will never find rest; with me, you will always be on the way. I am a wanderer, a vagabond. With me, you will always be on the road. And my journey is such that it starts, but never ends. "You don't know where I am going. I am going towards God. I am moving away from things and the world of things: I am moving towards consciousness. I am leaving the visible and moving towards...

..., what are you going to teach these students?" He said, "Two things, basically: to fear God, and to wash the back of the neck." I couldn't see the relationship: to fear God and to wash the back of the neck? I said, "It is okay as far as teaching them to fear God goes, but I cannot see the relevance of why to learn to wash the back of the neck!" He said, "If they can do...

... that, they can cope with the invisible!" - the back of the neck is the invisible because you cannot see it. "If they can do that, they can cope with the invisible." Your invisible can be just like the back of your neck: it is also part of the world. Your God is also part of the world; that's why your temples become part of the market and your scriptures become commodities. Your...

... doctrines are just like things you purchase and sell. The God of Jesus or Buddha is not your God. Your God is not Jesus' God. His God is a withinness, a beyondness; his God is a transformation of your being, a mutation, a birth of a new being with a new consciousness. Your God is something to be worshipped; Jesus' God is something to be lived. Your God is in your hands; Jesus' God is one to whom you leave...

... yourself, in whose hands you surrender. Your God is right in your hands; you can do whatsoever you want with your God. Jesus' God is one to whom you surrender - and surrender totally. That man did not know what he was saying. Jesus prohibited him by saying this. AND HE SAID UNTO ANOTHER, FOLLOW ME. To the one who was ready to follow, he said, "Wait, please. You don't know what you are doing, you...

... attain to life. In fact, you are born to die, you are born to death. The father is dead. The man said, "Suffer me, Lord, to go and bury my father - a formality, but let me do it." JESUS SAID UNTO HIM - one of the most poignant, penetrating sayings of Jesus - LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEAD: BUT GO THOU AND PREACH THE KINGDOM OF GOD. It looks a little harsh, it does not show compassion. The...

... be worried about it. Let the dead bury the dead; you go and preach the kingdom of God." What manner of man is this Jesus? Some man's father is lying dead and he wants to make him a preacher of the king dom of God? Is this the moment to go and become a preacher of God? But it is symbolic. He's saying, "Don't be worried about death, be worried about God. And don't be worried about the...

... father who gave birth to your body; think about the father, go and preach about the father, who has given your soul to you." BUT GO THOU AND PREACH THE KINGDOM OF GOD. In a way. if you watch the death of anybody who has been very intimate to you - a father, a mother, a wife, a husband, a friend who has been very intimate to you and is dead - only in that moment is conversion towards God possible...

... dead in the home, the family must be crying and weeping - this is no time to go and preach the kingdom of God. It looks absurd, looks harsh. Jesus looks too hard. He is not. It is because of his compassion that he says this. He knows that if this moment of death is missed - in burying the dead body - then there will be no possibility to awaken. Maybe that's why he turned to this man and said, "...

... intimate? Jesus must have watched: this man was ready. Let me tell you, unless you have experienced death, you are not ready. Life is very superficial; it is just on the periphery, just on the surface. Death is deep - it is as deep as God - so only from death is the conversion possible. Only in the moment of death do you change. Your outlook changes, your attitudes change, the old world becomes...

.... Otherwise sooner or later you disperse because life goes on calling you back; there are a thousand and one things to be fulfilled yet. You will continually be going backwards. Only when death cuts the bridge, breaks all the ties with life, is there a possibility that you will turn - turn your back to the world and face God. That's why, in one sentence, Jesus says two things which on the surface look...

... irrelevant: LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEAD: BUT GO THOU AND PREACH THE KINGDOM OF GOD. This man is not even a disciple - he is a stranger standing by the side of the road - and Jesus says, "Go and preach the kingdom of God." This is my observation also: that the best way to learn a thing is to teach it. The best way to learn a thing is to teach it, I repeat it, because when you start teaching, you...

... are learning. When you are simply learning you are too self- centered and that very selfcentering becomes a barrier. When you start teaching you are not self-centered: you look at the other; you look at the need of the other. You watch and observe HIS problem. You are completely aloof, detached - a witness. And whenever you can become a witness, God starts flowing from you. There is only one way to...

... many things will happen, but the greatest will happen only when you are able to teach meditation to somebody else. In that moment you become completely detached - - and in that detachment, you are complete]y silent. You are so filled with compassion - that's why you're helping the other - that something immediately happens to you. Jesus said: ... BUT GO THOU AND PREACH THE KINGDOM OF GOD. AND ANOTHER...

... THE KINGDOM OF GOD. No man who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God - why? Because no man who looks in the past can be capable of being in the present. A Zen seeker came to Rinzai, the great Master. He wanted to meditate and he wanted to become enlightened, but Rinzai said, "Wait, a few other things first. First things first. From where are you coming?" The man said, "I always...

... is coming, he is not worthy. Whatsoever you carry from the past is a burden, a barrier; it will not allow you to be open to the present. Jesus said: NO MAN, HAVING PUT HIS HAND TO THE PLOUGH, AND LOOKING BACK, IS FIT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD. "If you want to follow me, follow me. There is no way of going back. There is no need: what is the point of saying goodbye? What is it going to serve? If...

... you belong to is the second imprisonment... then the nation that you belong to is the third imprisonment. One has to break them all, one has to go beyond them all. Only then can one find the source: the source which is freedom, the source which is God. NO MAN, HAVING PUT HIS HAND TO THE PLOUGH, AND LOOKING BACK, IS FIT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD. One has to renounce all that is futile to gain that which...

... hope, fiction. Reality is only in the present. That reality is God, that reality is the kingdom of God. Jesus said: NO MAN, HAVING PUT HIS HAND TO THE PLOUGH, AND LOOKING BACK, IS FIT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD. Just this is to be understood; nothing else has to be done. Just listen to me: you know well that the past is past; it is no more, nothing can be done about it. Don't go on ruminating about it...

.... And you will never have the pain that you had to pass through in the past. This is what future is. Once the past disappears, it does not disappear a]one. It also takes the future with it. Suddenly you are here, now - time stops. This moment which is not of time I call meditation... this moment which is not of time Jesus calls 'the kingdom of God'. Just remember it more and more. Nothing is to be...

... done, only remembrance - a deep remembrance which follows you like breathing whatsoever you are doing, which remains somewhere in the heart. Just a deep remembrance that the past has to be dropped - and future goes with it. Here/now is the door; from here/now you pass from the world into God, you pass from the without to the within. Suddenly, in the marketplace, the temple descends: the heavens open...

... and the spirit of God descends like a dove. It can happen anywhere. Every place is holy and sacred; only ripeness, your maturity, your awareness, is needed. The word 'awareness' is the master key. We will come across many situations in the gospel where Jesus goes on saying: "Awake! Be alert! Be conscious! Remember! " Buddha goes on saying to his disciples: "Right mindfulness is needed...

.... Anand means bliss; jacques means God is the protector - be blissful, God is the protector. Feel blessed that you are not alone; God is always with you, and not as a judge, but as a protector. This insight can transform a man. It is a very small insight in the beginning, like a seed, but it can grow into a big tree. Thousands of birds can rest on the tree and thousands of travelers can take shelter...

... under its shade. But the seed is very small. This is a seed idea, that God is continuously caring for you; you are never left uncared for; that God is not indifferent to you, that he loves; that he is interested in your destiny; that he would like you to grow, to blossom, to come to an optimum experience of life, joy, love. Start feeling it, and whenever your name is said by anybody, remember again...

...: God is the protector. In fact in the old days all names were given with a certain purpose, with a certain device in them. New names, modern names, have lost that quality, and in the future they are thinking to drop names completely and to give numbers to people. That will be the ugliest thing possible, mathematical, logical - they do it in the army right now - but that will transform the whole world...

..., cold, mathematical, has no love in it. The farther back you go in history, the more you will find names becoming significant. In fact, all ancient names are somehow concerned with God. All Jewish old names - Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian - they are all in some way connected with God, because God is our search. And the name has to be used so much: you will be signing it, you will be called by the name...

..., you will become identified with your name. If you can remember its meaning it can become a subtle climate around you. Let this be the climate: feel blissful because God is continuously protecting you. He is like an umbrella: when it is raining he is protecting you; when it is hot he is protecting you. God is protection, and we are not unprotected; hence we can dare to adventure, we can enquire into...

... truth. We need not be afraid of death. If God is, then there is no death. Only one of the two can exist: either death or God. If death is, then there is no God; if God is, then there can be no death. This is the ultimate choice. A few people choose God; millions have chosen death. No wonder they suffer, no wonder they are miserable. Becoming a sannyasin means: choose God; forget all about death. It is...

... the greatest lie there is. Prem Tim. Prem means love; tim is a short form of timothy. In Hebrew it means honoring God. Your full name will mean love is the way to honor God. Be loving: that's the only way to honor God - not by going through empty rituals, not by going to the church and repeating parrotlike certain prayers, but by actually being in love with existence: with the clouds and the stars...

... and the trees and the people and all that is, because God iS spread all over the space. He is the cloud and he is the star and he is the trees and he is the pebble. It is stupid to seek and search for him in any particular place - Kashi or Kaaba. It is foolish to go in search of him in a temple or in a church or in a mosque, because there is not a single place where he is not. You cannot find a...

... impossible." The Master said, "Why is it impossible?" He said, "I was present, the parrot was not alone - one thing. I closed my eyes, I blindfolded myself, I put the parrot behind me, but the parrot was present! I drugged the parrot, I made the parrot unconscious, but then suddenly I became aware that God is present and he is present everywhere. I have tried hard for three years; I...

... history before Buddha and after Buddha, not before Christ and after Christ, because Christ is not a breakthrough; he is a continuity. He represents the past in its tremendous beauty and grandeur. He is the very essence of the whole search of man before him. He is the fragrance of all the past endeavors of man to know God, but he is not a breakthrough. In the real sense of the word he is not a rebel...

... Krishna; there would not have been much difference. Remove Buddha and something of tremendous importance is lost; but his rebellion is very invisible, very subtle. Before Buddha, the search - the religious search - was fundamentally a concern with God: a God who is outside, a God who is somewhere above in the heavens. The religious search was also concerned with an object of desire, as much as the...

... worldly search was. The worldly man sought money, power, prestige, and the otherworldly man was seeking God, heaven, eternity, truth. But one thing was common: both were looking outside themselves, both were extroverts. Remember this word, because this is going to help you understand Buddha. Before Buddha, the religious search was not concerned with the within but with the without; it was extrovert, and...

... when the religious search is extrovert it is not really religious. Religion begins only with introversion, when you start diving deeply within yourself. People had looked for centuries for God: Who is the builder of the universe? Who is the creator of the universe? And there are many who are still living in a pre-Buddha time, who are still asking such questions: Who is the creator of the world? When...

... did he create the world? There are some stupid people who have even determined the day, the date and the year when God created the world. There are Christian theologians who say that exactly four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ - Monday, 1st January! - God created the world or started creating the world, and he finished the job in six days. Only one thing is true about it: that he must...

... Christians say, "No, he has not forgotten. Look! He sent Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, to save the world. He is still interested." That is the only interest Christians say he has shown, in sending Jesus Christ... but the world is not saved. If that was the purpose of sending Jesus Christ to the world, then Jesus has failed and through him God has failed - the world is the same. And what...

... created once and for all; it is not an object. It is a growing phenomenon, it is a river flowing. Each moment it is passing through new territory. "Who is creating this life, this energy, this mind, this body, this consciousness, that I am?" His question is totally different. He is transforming religion from extroversion into introversion. The extrovert religion prays to God; the introvert...

... religion meditates. Prayer is extrovert; it is addressed to some invisible God. He may be there, he may not be there - you can't be sure or certain; doubt is bound to persist. Hence every prayer is rooted somewhere in doubt, in fear, in uncertainty, in greed. Meditation is rooted in fearlessness, in greedlessness. Meditation is not begging anything from anybody, it is not addressed to anybody. Meditation...

... is a state of inner silence. Prayer is still noise, you are still talking - talking to a God who may not be there. Then it is insane, neurotic; you are behaving in a mad way. Mad people go on talking; they don't bother much whether there is anybody to listen to them or not. That is a sure sign that they are mad - they imagine that somebody is there; not only that, they can almost see the other...

... God. Meditation is not a dialogue, or even a monologue - meditation is pure silence. People ask me, "What should the object of meditation be?" They are asking a wrong question, but I can understand why they are asking it. They have lived in the religions of prayer, and prayer cannot be without somebody there to pray to. Prayer needs an object of worship; prayer is a dependence. The...

... and my death? He is not concerned with the universe. He says: We should start from the beginning, and anything, to have a real significance in life, has to be concerned with me MYSELF: who am I and why am I? What are the causes that go on creating me? His first sutra is: VAINLY I SOUGHT THE BUILDER OF MY HOUSE THROUGH COUNTLESS LIVES. He is saying, "I have been seeking and searching for God for...

... countless lives. It was all in vain, it was futile. I could not find any God, because in fact God is not a person and you cannot find him. God is not a 'he'." Now there is great controversy whether God is a he or a she. He is neither. And if you insist that we have to choose between these two words, 'he' and 'she', I will suggest that 'she' is far better because she contains he, but he does not...

... contain she. But in truth, God is not a person at all; hence the question of whether he is he or she is irrelevant. 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...

..., we cannot see that which we are not. This is Buddha's great contribution: he dropped prayer, he dropped the idea of God, and he gave a new approach - that new approach is meditation. He says: VAINLY I SOUGHT THE BUILDER OF MY HOUSE THROUGH COUNTLESS LIVES. I COULD NOT FIND HIM.... Not because something was lacking in his effort, not because his effort was partial and not total, no. He was not that...

..., following others. It is better, it is time, that I should dive deep within myself, that I should seek and search alone." And that's how meditation was born. Buddha dropped all extrovert efforts, became totally introverted, his whole energy turning in. He started tuning himself to his innermost core. 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. God is not a noun but a verb. Let this sink deeply into your heart: that God is not a noun but a verb. In fact, the whole existence is a verb. Change all your nouns into verbs and you will be on the right track, because everything is alive and flowing...

... - how can you call it a noun? A noun gives a fixed idea. A noun is always dead and a verb is always alive. And God is alive. He is alive in you, he is alive in me, he is alive in the birds. Wherever life is, God is; God is synonymous with life. VAINLY I SOUGHT THE BUILDER OF MY HOUSE THROUGH COUNTLESS LIVES. It was a misunderstanding and, unfortunately, a misunderstanding which still persists. Rather...

... than searching for their own selves, people go on searching for God. They will not find God, and meanwhile they are missing the opportunity of finding themselves. The very word 'God' has created trouble. Start using 'godliness', 'divineness', 'love'. Drop that God! The word 'God' looks like a dead rock: no flow, no movement, no growth. Let your God become a river. Remember Herman Hesse's Siddhartha...

... forgotten the world of the trees, the world of the rivers, the world of the mountains and the stars. THERE they don't know of any nouns, they have not heard about nouns; they know only verbs. Everything is a process. God is not a thing but a process. But words can mislead you. This word 'God' has misled millions of people. It gives you an idea, a very childish idea of course, but once it settles in you...

..., you carry it your whole life. You have an idea of God: some very ancient- looking man with a long white beard, sitting on a golden throne up in the skies, ruling, ordering, commanding the whole world. And whoever disobeys him has to suffer much - a very dictatorial father. He has not yet forgiven Adam and Eve because they disobeyed him. In the Garden of Eden there were two trees: one was known as...

... the tree of knowledge and the other as the tree of life. God had said, "Don't eat from these two trees." But children are children - if you prevent them from doing something they are bound to do it. The serpent is not needed; that is just a strategy, an ancient strategy of man, to throw the responsibility on somebody else. It was Eve herself who became curious. They disobeyed God and God...

..., and a wise man is bound to seek and search for immortality. Being afraid that they would become like gods, God threw them out of the Garden of Eden and closed the doors. Now there are naked swords preventing the re-entry of man into paradise. This is a very childish concept of God, anthropocentric. But millions of people are still living with this idea of God. It is a sheer misunderstanding...

...!" said the M.D. "How old are you?" "Seventy-six." "Well, at seventy-six, don't you think you should stop after the first?" "But Doctor," exclaimed old Lindley, "how can I stop after the first when I live on the fifth?" Words can be very deceptive - and the word 'God' has deceived millions. Buddha is the first to recognize this fallacy. Hence I say...

... we should divide history by Buddha, not by Christ - before Buddha, after Buddha - because he brings such a total and new vision to humanity. He brings a new idea of God: the idea of godliness. With Buddha, humanity becomes mature; it drops its childhood concepts. I COULD NOT FIND HIM.... Of course there was no possibility of finding him. Nobody has ever found God; many have found godliness but...

... nobody has ever found God. HOW HARD IT IS TO TREAD LIFE AFTER LIFE! And Buddha says: Without knowing who I am, without knowing the significance of life, without knowing the meaning, the goal and the destiny... HOW HARD IT IS TO TREAD LIFE AFTER LIFE. It is hard, it is tiring, it is boring, it is a burden. Socrates says: A life unexamined is not worth living. Buddha would have agreed with him. Yes, a...

... was one of the most sensitive men who has ever walked on the earth. BUT NOW I SEE YOU, O BUILDER! AND NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU BUILD MY HOUSE. This is one of the most important sutras. Meditate over it, ponder over it, because it has been misunderstood also. When Buddha says: BUT NOW I SEE YOU, O BUILDER! many have thought that he means he has seen God. That is a total misunderstanding. He is not...

... talking about God. When he says: BUT NOW I SEE YOU, O BUILDER! AND NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU BUILD MY HOUSE... he is not talking about God, he is talking about desire. His word is TANHA; tanha means unconscious desire. He says, "It is because of my own unconscious desiring that I have been creating these lives. Nobody else is responsible." He takes the whole responsibility on his own shoulders...

.... This is the beginning of a really religious man; you are no longer throwing responsibility on others - fate, God, this and that. In that sense, Marx is as immature as any other so-called saint, and so is Freud - because they all agree on one point. Marx says: Man is in suffering because of the economic structure of society. The responsibility is thrown on the economic structure of society. Hegel says...

...: Man is suffering because of a wrong history, a wrong past. This is throwing responsibility on the god named "History." And for Hegel, history was almost God: he used to write History with a capital H - for him history is the most determining factor. And to Freud, the unconscious is responsible. What can you do? You are utterly helpless. All these people are saying that you are utterly...

... money, power, prestige, God, paradise, nirvana...." It is desiring, always desiring, projecting yourself into the future, that is creating your wheel of life and death. And you are crushed between these two rocks: life and death. You have to be free from life and death. That is Buddha's meaning of nirvana: to be free from life and death, to be free from desire. The moment you are free from all...

... the key and he opened his shop again. The whole year had been like a long long nightmare. And he said, "Enough is enough! I will never ask for money again." But just out of old habit he started purchasing one ticket every month again. And after one year the same car stopped... he said, "My God! do I have to go through all that again?" If you have money, you will know the misery...

... that's how it goes on changing. If you are a man, you must have been a woman in your past life; if you are a woman, you must have been a man. You started desiring the other and then the desire has brought a new mechanism for you. Buddha says it is desire, not God, which has to be looked into, which has to be examined, which has to be observed. SAD IS THE MAN WHO IN HIS YOUTH LIVED LOOSELY AND...