God Is Your Insecurity

THE MIND OF THE GREAT SAGE OF INDIA WAS INTIMATELY COMMUNICATED FROM INDIA TO CHINA. IN HUMAN BEINGS THERE ARE WISE MEN AND FOOLS, BUT ON THE WAY THERE IS NO NORTHERN OR SOUTHERN TEACHER. THE MYSTERIOUS SOURCE IS CLEAR AND BRIGHT, THE BRANCHING STREAMS FLOW THROUGH THE DARKNESS.

TO BE ATTACHED TO THE RELATIVE, THIS IS ILLUSION, BUT TO TAKE TO ONESELF THE ABSOLUTE IS NOT ENLIGHTENMENT.

EACH AND ALL THE ELEMENTS OF THE SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE SPHERES ARE RELATED, AND AT THE SAME TIME INDEPENDENT; RELATED, YET WORKING DIFFERENTLY, THOUGH EACH KEEPS ITS OWN PLACE.

FORM MAKES THE CHARACTER AND APPEARANCE DIFFERENT; SOUND, TASTE, SMELL, DISTINGUISH COMFORT AND DISCOMFORT.

THE DARK MAKES ALL THINGS ONE; THE BRIGHTNESS MAKES ALL THINGS DIFFERENT.

THE FOUR ELEMENTS RETURN TO THEIR NATURE, AS A CHILD TO ITS MOTHER.

FIRE IS HOT, WIND MOVES, WATER IS WET, EARTH HARD. EYES SEE, EARS HEAR; THE NOSE SMELLS, THE TONGUE TASTES, ONE SALT, ANOTHER SOUR.

EACH IS INDEPENDENT OF THE OTHER, BUT THE DIFFERENT LEAVES COME FROM THE SAME ROOT.

COULD ONE SUMMARIZE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOD-ORIENTED RELIGION AND THE QUALITY OF RELIGIOUSNESS AS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A JUDGE EXTERNAL TO US, A PROJECTED CONSCIENCE, AND A WITNESS WITHIN OUR CONSCIOUSNESS?

The difference between God-oriented religions and the religions without God is immense. The Godoriented religions are simply fiction. But lies told again and again and again start appearing to be almost true. God as the ultimate lie creates many lies around itself, because no lie can stand alone. Because no lie is self-evident, it needs other lies to support it; hence, all God-oriented religions have created many lies to support God.

Truth can stand on its own legs, but not a lie. Truth needs no argument, but not a lie; a lie needs many arguments, many fabricated proofs, many imaginary evidences. Truth is utterly naked – either you know it or you don’t.

God-oriented religions are a disease of the soul, a sickness of the mind, because God is only your fear, your dread, your anxiety, your insecurity. And then comes prayer, and then comes the priest, and then comes the organized religion, the church. True religiousness cannot be God-oriented. True religiousness is your own interiority, your own inner space.

And you can see the differences between these two kinds of people. Those who follow a Godoriented religion don’t show any compassion, don’t show any ecstasy, don’t show any blissfulness. On the contrary, they are very violent, they are very much against freedom. They are in constant fear that somebody will object to their lies and they will not be able to answer, because all that they have is only a belief system. A belief system can help you to forget your ignorance, but it does not destroy it. So the God-oriented man lives in ignorance and believes that he knows.

And mere words, theories, hypotheses, are not going to change your character. They can at the most make you a hypocrite. They can give you a beautiful mask but not the original face. They can create a very convenient personality, but they cannot create or discover your beautiful individuality. And the personality, however convenient, is a heavy weight on your chest, on your heart, because you are living a lie. Nobody can feel at ease when he is living a lie.

The man who has no belief system, but has encountered truth itself, suddenly finds himself changing into a new man. There is no effort involved. Grace comes by itself, compassion comes by itself, violence disappears, fear disappears, death and birth disappear. One starts feeling at home with the universe. There is no tension, one is absolutely relaxed.

This is our home. One stops searching and seeking, one starts living, dancing, loving. Knowing one’s own interiormost center is also knowing the center of the universe itself. Doors of all the mysteries open – not that you start getting answers, you become more mysterious.

All answers are mind products. Questions arise out of the mind, and answers are also from the same mind. Neither the questions lead you towards the truth, nor the answers. Answers only repress your questions, but they will surface again and again.

A man without God finds himself in total aloneness. He has nowhere to go except withinwards. All roads leading out are meaningless; they don’t lead you anywhere because there is nobody outside, no God, no paradise. Removing God is a great rebellion, and an absolute necessity to be awakened, to be enlightened.

God is holding millions of people outside their own consciousness. And God being a fiction, your prayer is false, and your religiousness is imposed. Hence, all these religions demand: ”Do this, don’t do that." Everything is imposed from the outside. And whenever something is imposed from the outside, your dignity is destroyed, your individuality is crushed. Your freedom turns into slavery, and the ugliest slavery is spiritual slavery.

With God you can only be a slave. With God you can never be liberated. Liberation begins with liberating yourself from God and all the lies that surround him.

Liberation brings you to your own very center, and there you find a totally different experience that is not of the mind; it is of pure silence, truth and beauty, of eternity, of life as a constant festival.

And because you experience this festivity inside you, it starts overflowing you. In your actions you become graceful, your eyes start shining with love, with depth, your very movement shows a centered, balanced, harmonious being. Your words carry something of that which is beyond words. Your silence is no longer the silence of a cemetery, it is not dead. It is very alive, throbbing, it has a heartbeat, it is a silent dance of pure awareness. It is a silent song without any sounds, but it is immensely alive.

Anything imposed from outside destroys you, your freedom, your individuality. Your inner space is completely closed, and it is closed in such a beautiful way that you never think that your parents, your teachers, your priests, your leaders, politicians – all kinds of so-called wise men – are poisonous. With all good intentions they are poisoning every child. And God is the original sin, original sin because we created a great lie, the ultimate lie.

Once I was in a court for the first time, in a strange case. There used to be a Christian church, a very beautiful church with a vast ground around it, huge ancient trees... You will be surprised that Indian Christianity is the oldest Christianity in the world. One of Jesus Christ’s closest disciples, Thomas, came to India directly. His gospel is not included in the Bible, because his gospel was written in India, but it is the most beautiful gospel. Those four gospels included in the New Testament are nothing compared to it.

Thomas became a transformed man here, because he started seeing the difference between Godoriented religion and a religion without a God. A religion without a God gives man dignity, because man becomes the ultimate evolved consciousness in the whole of existence. It gives man freedom from a burden imposed by the priest in the name of God.

And you have asked, ”Could one summarize the difference between a God-oriented religion and the quality of religiousness as the difference between a judge external to us...?”

There is no judge, and there is no religiousness in a God-oriented religion. It is mere theology, it is a mind-projection. It is not existential, it is not experiential.

And you are asking, ”Could one summarize the difference between a God-oriented religion...?” First remember, the God-oriented religion is only a name. God is fiction, so anything oriented in God cannot be anything else but a lie.

And secondly, you are asking, ”and the quality of religiousness...?” The God-oriented so-called religion has no religiousness in it. It has a certain morality, it has a certain discipline imposed against nature.

God is the enemy of nature, because nature is truth and God is a lie. But the lie is dominating millions of people and telling them to withdraw from nature, which is the only truth. So there is no religiousness in a God-oriented person. What he has is a morality, which is nothing but a social convenience. It differs from place to place, from country to country, from race to race. What seems to be religious to one fragment of humanity is not religious to another fragment of humanity, because every society has its own climate, its own heritage, its own past – which is different from other societies.

For example, the Hindu concept of heaven is that of a centrally air-conditioned place. Not that they have used the centrally air-conditioned word, but they say, ”The whole day a cool breeze, fragrant, blows; it is never hot in heaven.” Obviously, it shows that the people who have projected this lie are living in a hot country, and they don’t want to live eternally in a hot place.

The Tibetans have their heaven very warm, no snow at all; no winter ever happens in their heaven. They suffer from cold and winter and snow. They are projecting something which they can tolerate eternally. This life is small, but to suffer the same thing eternally would be too much. The human mind is too frail, too weak.

Just watch what each country thinks of as religious. In India, you have to take a morning bath before sunrise, and do your prayer, and only then can you eat anything, your breakfast – not before that. In the religious scriptures of Tibet it says you should take a bath at least once a year. But the trouble is that people go on carrying their concepts even though they move into different climates.

One of my friends, a very scholarly brahmin, wanted to go to Tibet. He was very interested in the Tibetan language and Tibetan scriptures.

I said to him, ”All that literature is available. You don’t have to go to Tibet. And you will not be able to remain there for more than two days.”

He said, ”Why not?”

I said, ”How will you manage a bath before sunrise? And without a bath you cannot take your breakfast. You cannot eat anything unless you do your prayer, but the prayer needs – an absolute necessity – that you take a bath.”

But he didn’t listen to me. He went to Tibet, and after just two days he was back. He could not even reach Lhasa, he returned back from Ladakh, which is just in between Tibet and India. Even Ladakh gave him too much trouble.

Taking an early morning bath in Ladakh can kill you. It is ice cold. So he came back, he did not go further.

I said, ”What happened? It is just two days and you are back?”

He said, ”You were right. I am a brahmin and I follow my religion. I cannot remain without a bath.”

Tibetan lamas came with the Dalai Lama as he escaped from Tibet when China invaded it. So hundreds of lamas came with him.

I was holding a camp in Bodhgaya, the place where Gautam Buddha became enlightened. In the same campus, by the side of the same tree exactly, I was taking a meditation camp. And a group of Tibetan lamas came to pay their respects to the tree under which Gautam Buddha had become enlightened.

You will not believe it, even from far away they stank. They were still following the idea that you should take one bath every year – in India! It was a hot summer and they were perspiring.

And they were still using the same kind of clothes as they used in Tibet – layer upon layer. There are many layers of clothes, and these were so dirty, so oily, and dust had gathered on the oily clothes. They were good in Tibet, they prevented any cold reaching to the person’s body, but in India...!

They had not changed. I asked them, ”Do you understand that all kinds of so-called religions are social conveniences. It was good in Tibet but here you are being stupid. So many layers of clothes upon clothes, you are being insane!”

But they said, ”Our religion says one bath a year is absolutely necessary. More than that is luxury. More than that is condemned, it is dangerous.”

And to make people afraid that if you go against the dictates of your scriptures you will fall into hell, they said, ”It is better to stink than to fall into hell.”

I said, ”That’s right. You are already in hell. I don’t think that the devil is even going to allow you into hell, because in no scripture of the world is it said that the devil stinks; he is a gentleman, a nice fellow.”

I said to those people, ”You just keep these clothes on in India and they will save you from hell. As the devil starts sniffing you, he will close the doors: ‘Tibetan lamas no longer allowed! You go to the other place.’”

Jesus used to drink alcohol. Now in India no religion can conceive that a man of understanding, a man who is enlightened, could drink alcohol.

I don’t see any problem, because if the body is illusory, the alcohol is going into the body, not into the soul. It is called spirit, but don’t think that it is spiritual. It does not go into your spirit. It may affect your mind, and you may fall unconscious, but still it is not touching your consciousness at all, because the mind and brain are part of the body. Mind is the program and the brain is the computer that is programmed.

When a child is born, he has a brain but no mind. Mind is nothing but the whole collection of information, knowledge; it is the programming. So the brain will be affected by alcohol, but not your spirituality.

So what is the problem? To me there is no problem. Even a buddha can once in a while have a little drink, enjoy a little party – Italian style.

In Italy, ”party” means something absolutely different to what you understand. It is a real party, with two partners. But why prohibit a buddha from enjoying a little party, a little spaghetti, a little wine?

All these things are material, and they don’t touch your spiritual being. But in India nobody can conceive that a buddha would drink – even tea he will not drink. One cannot think of Mahavira...

The reason is simple. In this hot climate, drinking alcohol is not needed, but in a cold climate, alcohol is absolutely necessary. It keeps you warm; it does not make you intoxicated, it only keeps you warm. And there is no harm in feeling warm when snow is falling all around you.

So in a cold country the morality will be different. In a hot country the morality will be different. This is just an example. On every point, different climates will create different moralities.

Mohammed said to the Mohammedans, ”You can marry four women.” The reason was that in Saudi Arabia at that time, fourteen hundred years ago, the proportion of men to women was four women to one man. And it happened because the men were continuously fighting. It was a tribal world, and every tribe was fighting with another tribe. Of course, men were being killed, and women remained. So the proportion became such that there were four women to one man.

So I don’t condemn Mohammed, he was making it convenient for the society. Otherwise, what will three women do? They will disturb the whole society. They will start having love affairs with married people; they will become prostitutes. And such a vast number of prostitutes will create so much ugliness and perversion. It was better that a man married four women.

And strangely enough... I have been in deep contact with a few Mohammedans who have been my friends. I was amazed. I used to think, theoretically, that one woman was enough to drive a man either insane or enlightened – the only two alternatives. What will four women do to a man? But my actual experience, when I came into contact with Mohammedans who had four wives, was totally different.

That’s what I always say, that theoretically something may look logical, but life has no obligation to follow your logic.

I was surprised that the Mohammedan house has no quarrel the way one man and one woman are continuously nagging and fighting and jealous. The reason is, those four women are fighting amongst themselves, the man is simply out of it. They are not much concerned about the man, the whole question is about four women. So the man is far happier than anybody who lives with one woman.

I asked those friends, ”What is the matter? One woman drives people either insane or they renounce the world – really it is renouncing the woman – and they become enlightened.”

In India it is a game. You just catch hold of somebody’s wife... and Hindus are very fussy about it. Once the wife has remained one night outside the house, she is finished. She cannot enter the husband’s house again, the husband won’t allow it. She cannot enter her parents’ home again, the parents will throw her out because she has degraded their respectability, their prestige: ”Just go and commit suicide, there is no other way.” Rather than committing suicide the woman returns to the Mohammedan. That seems to be saner and more logical.

A woman has to be out of the house just for one night. It does not matter whether she has made love to anybody or not. This is how Indian Mohammedans go on increasing their population. Obviously, one man with four wives, can give at least four children per year. The same is not possible for four husbands and one wife. They may not even give one child – the four husbands may kill the child before it is born.

So remember, your God-oriented religions are only conveniences for the society. They should not be called religions, they are only moral precepts to keep the society together, and in the least inconvenient way. It is not religiousness. Religiousness arises only as a blossoming of your own consciousness.

God-oriented religions certainly create a conscience, but not consciousness. And many people have the false notion that conscience and consciousness are one. Their root is one, but they are two separate branches moving in different, diametrically opposite directions. Conscience is forced on you by others. Consciousness is an evolution rising from your own depths to the ultimate heights. Conscience is just like a plastic flower.

Once I had a neighbor. I had a beautiful garden with all kinds of flowers and all kinds of trees. And of course, he was jealous. So what he did... I could see only one of his windows. I could not see his whole house from my house. Tall trees hid the house from my garden, but one window was available for me to see – he brought a pot and arranged plastic flowers in it. And just to deceive me, because plastic flowers don’t need watering, he would water them every day just to show me that he also had flowers. But I saw that the flowers remained the same – six months passed and the same flowers. I said, ”He has found a great flowering tree!”

So one day I jumped over my boundary wall and went close to the window. And I could not believe what kind of idiot he was. He had brought plastic flowers with plastic leaves and planted them in a flowerpot. And just to deceive me that they were real, he had to water them. He would only water when I was there to show me that his flowers were real.

Plastic flowers are very permanent flowers. In fact, scientists are worried that plastic is one of the things the earth cannot absorb. And now so many plastic things are being thrown into the ocean, into the earth, that they are destroying the whole ecology. Plastic is something eternal.

A tree grows out of the earth, a man grows out of the earth; you put the tree back into the earth and it will disappear into its basic elements. But plastic is man-made. You can put it into the earth and after many years you can dig and find the plastic exactly the same, nothing has changed.

It is because of the American idea of using a thing once and throwing it away. It is cleaner, but it is dangerous. The whole bottom of the ocean around America is full of plastic things: plastic bags, plastic syringes; everything is plastic: plastic covers, plastic toys.

And those layers of plastic have created something strange. Millions of fish have died because the plastic has made the water poisonous. Its aliveness has gone, it has become dead. And the fear is growing every day that more plastic thrown into the oceans, into the rivers, into the earth, will make everything dead; everything will be plastic.

I knocked on his window. He came, and I said, ”You have got great flowers. I have got very poor flowers; in the morning they blossom, by the evening they are gone. Although you have got only one pot, it is better than my whole garden.”

He was very much embarrassed. And I said, ”You are a very intelligent man. You have been watering these plastic flowers.” He had not a single word to say. His wife came behind him and said, ”You are saying he is intelligent. He is an idiot. I have been telling him that plastic flowers don’t need water.”

I told his wife, ”You don’t know. He was not watering the plastic flowers, he was trying to deceive me. And that’s why I had to climb over the wall, committing an illegal act, to make him aware that he cannot deceive. These plastic flowers have been there for six months, and they will remain forever. This man will die, you will die,” I told his wife, ”but these plastic flowers will remain. They are immortal beings. But they are dead, that’s why they are immortal – already dead.”

You cannot kill a dead man, can you? Once a man is dead he becomes immortal. You cannot kill him twice. Resurrection has happened only once, and that was also false. Once a man dies there is no more death.

This is the difference between imposed morality and religion, and an inner growth of consciousness. They are totally different. Perhaps only in the French language are conscience and consciousness equivalent. But I am not certain, I don’t know French. But I have a certain feeling that in French those two words are not different: conscience is used for both conscience and consciousness, but it is absolutely wrong. The French linguists have to change it.

Conscience is God-oriented; consciousness is your own innermost being flowering. Then you have a spontaneous response to situations. The God-oriented morality cannot have a spontaneity in it. It consults what the holy scripture is saying, what Moses is saying, what Jesus is saying, it has to consult its memory system. But spontaneity has not to consult anybody – Manu, Moses, Mohammed, nobody. Spontaneous action simply arises in you, and because it arises in you it has an authenticity, an honesty. Then you are functioning as an individual, not as a sheep. You are functioning as a human being with dignity and splendor and honor.

A God-oriented religion takes away everything that is beautiful in you and leaves behind just a dilapidated human being, crippled in every possible way, exploited by all kinds of parasites. God is the ultimate parasite. He goes on threatening you.

Of course, because there is no God the priest is the spokesman, and he goes on threatening you: ”You will be thrown into hell if you don’t listen to me. I represent God.” It is a pure invention of the priesthood all over the world, to dominate man, to exploit man. And what they are saying to the people, they themselves don’t believe. How can they believe? They know it is a fiction. But it is a very good profession, it is a good business.

Just the other day, the archbishop of Jerusalem – which is a holy land for three religions, Jews, Christians, Mohammedans – the archbishop of this holy city was arrested in London because he was misbehaving in the railway station public toilet, exposing himself, exhibiting his sexual machinery to other people. And this is the archbishop of Jerusalem! One cannot believe that these people go on teaching celibacy to others, and they themselves behave in such stupid ways.

I have told you, three bishops were going to Pittsburgh. But the woman at the window where they had to get their tickets had such beautiful tits....

The youngest bishop was sent to purchase the tickets. When he saw the tits of the woman, he forgot everything. He said, ”Just give me three tickets for Tittsburgh.” The woman was very angry, and the bishop felt very ashamed, so he came back. He said, ”Forgive me, but I forgot myself completely.”

So the second one said, ”Don’t be worried. I will go.” As he gave the money, he told the girl, ”Give me the change in dimes and nipples.”

The girl was furious. She said, ”You are all idiots of the same type! Can’t you behave like human beings?”

He ran away. And the oldest bishop said, ”Don’t be worried. I will take care.” He went there, and he said, ”Woman, you will be in trouble... If you go showing your tits like this, at the pearly gates Saint Finger will show his Peter to you!”

What to do with these people? Once you repress something it is bound to come up. You simply become a fool. Now all three bishops proved to be utterly foolish and absolute idiots. But they are victims of a constant harassment by religion, by their abbots, by their popes – against nature.

All moralities are against nature, and in favor of a certain social structure. And the social structure is man-made, it is not perfect, it needs to be changed. But all moralities, God-oriented religions, are protective of the social structure. They are against any revolution.

They don’t have any consciousness. They have created in place of consciousness a bogus conscience that is plastic consciousness. What they call conscience is simply implanted, it is programmed in you. So you have to act accordingly, but your inner being is not in favor. So when you want to say, ”Pittsburgh,” your inner being says, ”Tittsburgh.” When you want to say, ”Saint Peter,” your nature says, ”Saint Finger will show his Peter.” This dichotomy is created by your God-oriented religions.

Man is suffering from schizophrenia, neurosis, psychosis – all kinds of mental diseases – because of one fiction that he cannot drop. Just drop God, and you will find yourself saner, natural, and a certain beauty will come to you which only comes to natural beings.

If you believe in a God, you are bound to be afraid of his judgment. But if there is no God, there is no judgment. You have only a witness, and a witness is not a judge. A witness is only a mirror. It shows you clearly the situation, and it gives you a spontaneous response.

Then it has tremendous beauty and harmony, and your life is without any regret. You don’t look back, you remain constantly in the present, just a witness, acting, responding to whatever encounters you according to your own consciousness.

And remember one thing. Even if you fall in hell, but you have lived spontaneously and according to your consciousness, you will not regret it. On the other hand, if you enter heaven because others forced you to act according to certain precepts, certain commandments, you will regret even in heaven that you have not lived your life according to your own nature.

There is only one blissfulness in the world, and that is to be in accordance with your nature, with your existence. Don’t bother about any commandments, don’t bother about any disciplines, don’t bother about any morality. Just live according to your own consciousness, and go on growing your consciousness. Soon you will see the spring and all the flowers will bring a clarity of vision, and a certainty of action, a totality to every response. And your every response will be beautiful, because it will be coming out of a growing consciousness.

God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth 114 ♡♥Osho♡♥