You are, God is not. Existence is, God is not.

IS IT DIFFICULT FOR PEOPLE TO DROP GOD BECAUSE HE IS THEIR ONLY HOPE AND THEY FOCUS ALL THEIR EXPECTATIONS ON HIM? IT SEEMS TO BE VERY HARD TO DROP AN EXPECTATION EVEN WHEN ONE CAN SEE IT AS SUCH AND CAN GUESS THAT MOST LIKELY IT WILL END UP IN DISAPPOINTMENT.

It is true. It is very difficult to drop an expectation, to drop a hope, because you don’t have anything real in your life. You are living only in the hope that tomorrow will be better. You are only living with the expectation that after death you will enjoy the pleasures of paradise eternally. Hence it is difficult to drop the idea of God.

But it is God who is preventing you from all the joys and blissfulness and ecstasy right now. You are missing the present in the hope of the future, and the future is not certain. Tomorrow never comes. Have you ever seen tomorrow coming? God is just like tomorrow, always hanging around. It just seems it is coming, it is coming, but what comes is today! Tomorrow never comes. All those hopes never come true. All those expectations finally become frustrations.

Why do you see rich people more frustrated than the poor? Just go into the interior parts of India where real poverty exists, and you will not find anybody disappointed. They are hoping for God, and they think their poverty is a fire test, and only the poor will enter into the kingdom of God.

That’s why Christianity has such great appeal to the poor people of the world. It gives great consolation. It gives you expectation, which helps you tolerate the present misery, the pain, the present poverty, slavery. Your eyes are focused on the future, and the present goes on passing in misery. But as your eyes are no more focused on the present, the consolation helps to keep you alive, but just alive; just like vegetables. It keeps you vegetating.

A life that cannot dance is not life. It is living at the minimum survival level. A life that cannot sing the song of love and joy is not life. So your expectations and your hopes may make it difficult to drop God, but you have to gather courage and understanding that your hopes and expectations are destroying your whole life, and God is just a fiction. It is not going to fulfill anything. God is nowhere.

You are, God is not.

Existence is, God is not.

So look into the isness of things, look into this moment now and here, into yourself. That is the closest door to the cosmos, it opens in your very center. All your expectations will look so poor, and all your hopes will look so ugly when you come to know your tremendous splendor, your godliness, when you will realize your freedom, and when you realize that the whole cosmos is related to you, deeply related to you, and you are just a great aspiration of the cosmos to reach to the highest point of consciousness.

I have told you that Vincent Van Gogh used to paint his trees... Nobody liked his paintings because they were very absurd. His trees went beyond the stars. And when asked, ”Where have you seen these trees?” he said, ”I have never seen these trees; I have just heard a whisper. I was lying in the shade of a tree, and I just heard the whisper. The earth was saying to the tree, ‘You are my ambition. You are my ambition to reach the stars.’ Since that moment I have started painting my trees going beyond the stars.”

He is really a genius. Certainly trees are ambitions of the earth. And what is man’s consciousness? The ambition of the whole of existence to reach to the highest peak, become a Gautam Buddha.

In your becoming a Gautam Buddha the whole existence rejoices. You have fulfilled the expectation of existence. You don’t need to expect anything, you are yourself an expectation of existence. You fulfill it, and you can fulfill it, because existence has given you every opportunity and all the potential to fulfill it. Everything is there, you just have to put everything in the right place. And suddenly you will see life is a sheer dance of ecstasy from birth to death, from death to birth. These are small episodes, birth and death, in the eternal flow of life.

But unless you drop God, you are going to remain miserable, and misery needs some support from hope, expectation, tomorrows. But this is not living. Do you think living in tomorrow can be called living?

Life knows only one moment, and that is the present. Life knows only one space, and that is here. Now and here: these two words are the most significant words in the human language; they represent reality.

Friedrich Nietzsche suggests that the hope of happiness is the instrument by which man is manipulated, more than any actual instance of happiness. Do you remember any moment of real happiness in your past? Just go backwards towards your childhood. When you were a child, you thought you would be happy when you were older. Every child wants to grow up quickly.

I used to live in a house eight or ten houses away from a post office. In front of my house was the public park, so it was a very quiet and silent place. I used to go for a walk early in the morning about three o’clock. One day I saw near the post office a little boy with a mustache. I could not believe it. It was dark, but it was full-moon night, so I could see the mustache. And he was smoking a cigarette.

I thought, ”Perhaps he is a pygmy.” Seeing me the boy moved behind a big tree by the side of the road. So I went behind the tree.

The boy said, ”Don’t tell my father.”

I said, ”I’m not going to tell anybody. Who are you? I don’t know your father.”

He said, ”My father is the postmaster here; that is the post office.”

I said, ”What are you doing? You have got a good mustache.”

He just pulled the mustache off. He said, ”It is not real, but my father has a real mustache and I always want to grow one quickly. But how to grow it quickly? I even shave my mustache when my father is out, but nothing grows. And he shaves twice a day. So I got this mustache from a shop which sells things for people who are playing in a drama in a college gathering or somewhere.”

And I said, ”You are smoking a cigarette, too.” He was hiding it behind him.

He said, ”My father always smokes, and while smoking he really looks like a man. So I just thought to give it a try.”

In that small boy I saw all the children of the world. Every child wants to grow fast, because what is childhood? Being ordered by the mother, by the father, being ordered by the teacher, beaten by the parents, beaten by the teacher... Every boy wants, every girl wants, just to grow as quickly as possible... Just remember your own childhood.

It is absolutely false, the saying, ”My childhood was the most beautiful period of my life.” If your childhood was the most beautiful period of your life and out of your childhood grows your youth, it should be more beautiful. Out of your youth grows old age, which should be perfection. But that is not the case. When you are young you start looking embarrassed. You are young and where is the happiness? Perhaps it is hidden in a woman, or hidden in a man. Find the soul mate!

Just today I have received information that in Europe there is now a great New Age movement for finding your soul mate. In their pamphlet they mention my name, because once I told you you cannot find your soul mate. It is a big world, and I don’t think God creates soul mates, or existence creates soul mates. Where are you going to find each other? People find each other just in their neighborhood, or in their college. How is existence going to manage to put you and your soul mate in the same college? So that pamphlet condemns me because I am not saying the right thing: everybody has a soul mate. That is a good consolation; but just look at those who have found their soul mates...

Here is Zareen. She had found a soul mate, and since she has found the soul mate I have never seen her as happy as she was before. And I know her soul mate. He keeps himself locked in his room, because he wants, poor fellow, some time to himself. But Zareen is not going to let him be alone – you have to be careful when you have found your soul mate – so she goes on knocking on his door. She jumps balconies to reach the poor fellow. And not to make a fuss – ”Everybody will know” – he has to open the door. And then the meeting of the soul mates begins. Both are miserable since they have met.

Anando was telling me, because I was asking her why Zareen does not look as happy as she used to. She said, ”She has found a soul mate.” I said, ”She should be more happy. If the soul mate is not right, bring a group of sannyasins and put them in a queue before Zareen – ‘Choose your soul mate!’”

And you can change every day. Why get bored with one? Just the same sari, the same sari... One gets bored, that is absolutely natural. All soul mates create boredom and nothing else.

And here in this place where freedom is the absolutely total value, ultimate value, where change is accepted as life’s way, why should you bother about one soul mate when there are so many soul mates available? Just go on changing, and life will be a joy. And Zareen will again be laughing and smiling. Because of this soul mate she has become hard and dictatorial at the gate. On whom to take revenge because the soul mate always goes to Bombay? And I know why he goes to Bombay – just to have a little freedom.

Unnecessary misery.

In youth people start thinking, ”Perhaps in old age life will be peaceful.” In old age life becomes a constant anxiety. Death is coming closer and closer. So your whole life is wasted just looking ahead.

I am reminded of a famous Greek astrologer. Even kings of the different countries of Europe used to consult him about their fate. One night he was walking, looking at the stars. But when you look at the stars you cannot look at the road. You cannot manage one eye looking up and one eye looking down; I don’t think it is possible. They both go up, or they both go down. So he fell in a well, and then he shouted, screamed, ”Save me!”

An old woman, living nearby in her farm, came. She was too old, but somehow she managed to pull him out with a rope. And the astronomer said to her, ”Do you know who I am? I am the royal astrologer. Almost all the kings and queens of Europe come to me. All the richest people discuss with me their fate, their future. And my fee is very high, but because you have saved me you can come to me. I will tell your future without any fee.”

The old woman laughed. She said, ”You cannot even see that the well is ahead of you. Just feel ashamed. Those who have been coming to you must be fools. I am not going to come. You cannot see the well ahead, what can you see about my future?”

The future is just your hope, expectation. And when this life is not fulfilling you start looking further, beyond death. All these are fictions just for you to survive somehow. But this survival is not how you are supposed to be. Existence has not given you birth just to live in hopes. You can be really ecstatic this moment, and there is no other moment.

Meditation is, Zen is living now and here

God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth 73 ♡♥Osho♡♥