The No-Mind or Something Else?

IT SEEMS THE THOUGHT OF GOD ARISES FROM THE FEELING THAT THERE IS SOMETHING GREATER THAN OURSELVES. IS THIS ”GREATER” THE NO-MIND OR SOMETHING ELSE?

There is nothing greater than yourself, because you are the universe. You are existence, there is nothing greater than you. This idea is also implanted in you, that the saints are holier than you. And what are they doing that they have become holier? Because they eat only one time a day? But look at their bellies. One time they eat, but how many calories?

I don’t think any saint has eaten sixteen hundred calories – that is what I am eating, only sixteen hundred calories. Even your breakfast could be two thousand calories! In twenty-four hours I eat only sixteen hundred calories. In twenty-four hours your calories must go beyond four or five thousand – if you are not an American. If you are an American, then a thousand more.

And they condemn me, that I am a hedonist. Food with sixteen hundred calories and a hedonist! Each time, just two small slices of bread and a cup of soup. The same breakfast, the same lunch, the same supper, the same dinner – those two slices of bread and one cup of soup.

No saint of yours has ever lived on sixteen hundred calories. But I am a hedonist, I am a materialist, I am characterless! And only you know my character. People who have never seen me, people who have never been here, who don’t have the intelligence or the courage or the guts to enter the gates of this campus, they think I am characterless because I am not living according to their scriptures.

I am living according to my own consciousness. And my understanding is that all the great people of the world – Socrates, or Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Chuang Tzu, or Rinzai, or Sekito – lived according to their own light. That’s what makes them great and brings a great splendor to their life. Their contemporaries were as much against them as my contemporaries are against me.

But I have more enemies than anybody else, because they were very local people. Sekito was not known outside Japan. Buddha was not known outside Bihar, a small state of India. Mahavira was not known outside Bihar. I am a world-notorious buddha – for the first time. And I live in my room the whole day. I just come to see you in the evening.

But I can understand what the problem is for these people. It is the same old problem: they cannot accept a lion; they are sheep, they are poor little men, hungry for money, power, prestige. They cannot tolerate a man who lives according to his own insight, according to his own awareness, who does not follow anybody, who has no scriptures and no religion. Such a man creates a great inferiority complex in millions of people. Otherwise, what harm am I doing to anybody?

But because I have been known around the world – I am not a local person, a local buddha – I have enemies all over the earth. I have friends also, all over the earth. Obviously, the friends are going to be very few chosen ones who can understand my insight and who are ready to live on their own, without looking for any God, and without looking for any scripture, without looking for any leader, who have guts and courage to go alone, dancing joyously.

But there is nothing greater than you. Your religions are teaching that you are sinners, saints are holier, and God is greater, and you are just small creatures crawling on the earth. Religions have given you an inferiority complex. That inferiority complex is always looking for somebody who must be greater. But it is not a natural thing, it is implanted, programmed, conditioned. You have been reduced to a subhuman species. Your whole pride, your dignity, your honor, has been taken away. You are left without honor, without self-respect, without dignity. Naturally you think that somebody must be greater.

And then you have all kinds of frauds. You know only their outside, you don’t know their inside. On the outside they behave as unnaturally as possible, which gives you the idea that all these saints are very superior – because religions have been teaching you, ”Unless you go beyond nature you cannot realize God.”

All they are doing is self-torture. To me they are masochists who need psychiatric help. But religions have been praising them as saints. They are in the middle between you and God, but God is the highest, of course; he lives above you in the skies. Have you ever thought that the earth is round? When I was in America, God used to live just above my head, but America is just exactly below my feet. If you dig here, you will reach Rajneeshpuram in the USA. I keep my feet exactly over Ronald Reagan’s head.

God is above, but the earth is round, so what is above and what is below? People who live on the other side of the earth, their god is below your feet, and your god is below their feet. So when you raise your hands in prayer, just think – you are living on a round earth. Don’t be stupid. There is nobody higher, nobody lower, it is one existence.

That’s what triggered the enlightenment of Sekito – reading the sutra of an ancient master, that one who feels oneness, one life in all things, one who is in tune with existence is absolutely one with existence. No one is higher than you, no one is lower than you. There is only one existence, one life. We are different expressions of one life, and it is good that there are so many different expressions. It makes existence beautiful, it gives variety, it gives color. It makes it a rainbow. It is not monotonous, it is immensely interesting.

Go on exploring and you will always find something new coming up. Outside, science comes every day upon some new truth. Inside, those who have been exploring, they come every moment as they go deeper, into new bliss, into new ecstasies. Doors upon doors, doors upon doors, and there is no end to this mystery.

I love this mysterious universe, and I love all that has come out of this mystery. It is unfathomable, hence it is inexpressible.

God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth 157 ♡♥Osho♡♥