REST IS WORK
Work is rest. And the rest is relaxation - no past, no future. Osho shatters the myths about work and rest, fathers and sons, past and future in this extract from 'A Cup of Tea'.
Love.
Rest is the supreme goal, work is the medium.
Total relaxation, with complete freedom from
effort, is the supreme goal.
Then life is a play, and then even effort becomes
play.
Poetry, philosophy, religion are the fruits of
repose.
This has not been available to everyone
but technology and science will make it so in the
near future.
That is why I am in favour of technology.
Those who attribute intrinsic value to labour
oppose the use of machines -- they have to.
For me, labour has no such intrinsic value: on the
contrary, I see it as a burden.
As long as work is a prerequisite for rest it
cannot be blissful.
When work flows out of a state of rest voluntarily
then it is blissful.
So I cannot call rest a sin.
Nor do I support sacrifice.
I do not want anyone to live for anybody else, or
one generation to sacrifice itself for another.
Such sacrifices turn out to be very costly -- those
who make them expect an inhuman return.
This is why fathers expect the impossible from
their sons.
If each father lives for his son who will live for
himself?
For every son is a potential father.
No, I want everyone to live for himself -- for his
own happiness, his own state of rest.
When a father is happy he does much more for his
son -- and easily, because it comes out of his
happiness.
Then there is neither sacrifice nor renunciation;
what he does comes naturally out of his being a
father --
and a happy father at that.
Then he has no inhuman expectations of his son and
where there is no pressure from expectations,
expectations are fulfilled -- out of the son being a
son.
In short, I teach each person to be selfish.
Altruistic teachings have taught man nothing but
suicide. and a suicidal man is always homicidal; the
unhappy sow their sorrow amongst others.
I am also against the sacrifice of the present for
the future, because what is is always present; if you
live in it totally the future will be born out of it --
and when it comes it too will be the present.
For he who has the habit of sacrificing the present
for the future the future never comes because whatever
comes is again always sacrificed for that which has not
yet come.
Finally, you ask why i too work for others and for
the future.
First of all, I do not work.
Whatever I do flows out of my state of rest.
I do not swim, I just float.
No one can ever do anything for another
but if something happens to others out of what I
am,
that is something else,
and there too I am not the doer.
As for the future --
for me, the present is everything.
And the past too is also a present -- that has
passed away;
and the future too -- that is a present that is yet
to come.
Life is always here and now
so I do not bother about past and future.
And it is amazing that ever since I stopped
worrying about them they have begun to worry about me!
Osho
A Cup of Tea
Friday, October 30, 2009
Osho's letters to his beloved disciples...
Osho, on Making Truth Secondary to Love Sometimes
Intro: It comes up again and again. Am i doing someone a favour by being brutally honest? Whole ideologies and personalities are built on answering yes to this question, or at least rationalized by it. It fits with a certain strain of rejection of spiritual bromides, but . . .
The question:
BELOVED OSHO,
WE CAN PRACTICE RIGHT BEHAVIOR, AND BEHAVIOR ACCORDING TO DUTY, BUT THEN WE WILL BE WEARING FALSE FACES, AS WE ARE INWARDLY, AS YOU SAY, A MADHOUSE. SO SHOULD WE ACT AS WE FEEL, OR ACT AS WE OUGHT?
The first thing to be understood: you have to be authentic to yourself -- sincere, honest. But that doesn't mean that you have to hurt others through your honesty and sincerity, that doesn't mean that you have to disturb others, that doesn't mean that you have to disturb the rules of the game. All relationships are just rules of the game, and many times you will have to act and wear masks, false faces. The only thing to remember is: don't become the mask. Use it if it is good, and keep the rules, but don't become the mask, don't get identified. Act it, don't get identified with it.
This is a great problem, particularly in the West for the new generation. They have heard too much; they have already been seduced by this idea: be sincere and be honest. This is good, but you don't know how cunning and destructive the mind is. Your mind can find excuses. You can say a truth, not because you love truth so much but just to hurt somebody; you can use it as a weapon. And if you are using it as a weapon it is not truth, it is worse than a lie.
Sometimes you can help somebody through a lie, and sometimes relationship becomes more easy through a lie. Then use it -- but don't get identified with it. What I am saying is: Be a good player, learn the rules of the game; don't be too adamant about anything.
It happened: I came back from the university and my father and my mother were worried; they were worried about me, about what I was going to do. They were worried about my marriage. So my father started sending messages through his friends asking my opinion whether I was ready to get married or not. So I told his friends, "This is between me and my father, don't you come in. Tell my father that he can ask me."
And he was afraid, because I have never said no to him for anything. So he was afraid, he was afraid because I would not say no. Even if I didn't want to be married I would say yes -- that was the worry in his mind. Even if I didn't want to get into a householder's life, I would not say no, I would say yes. And that yes would be false. So what to do? He couldn't ask me -- he has not asked yet -- because he knew well that I would not break any rule. I would have said yes.
Then he tried through my mother. She asked me one night; she came to my bed, sat there, and asked me what I thought about marriage. So I said, "I have not married yet, so I have no experience. You know well, you have the experience, so you tell me. Take fifteen days: think over it, contemplate, and if you feel you have achieved something through it, then just order me. I will follow the order. Don't ask about my opinion -- I have none, because I have no experience. You are experienced. If you were again given a chance, would you get married?"
She said, "You are trying to confuse me."
I said, "You take your time, at your own ease. I will wait for two weeks, then you order me. I will just follow... because I don't know."
So for two weeks she was worried. She could not sleep, because she knew if she said to marry I would obey. Then she would be responsible, not I. So after two weeks she said, "I am not going to say anything, because if I look to my own experience, then I would not like you to move into that life. But I cannot say anything now."
So this is how I remained unmarried. Sincerely, authentically, I was not ready to marry, I was not intending it at all. But I could have acted. And nothing is wrong, because every experience helps you to grow. No-marriage helps, marriage also helps; there is not much difference. Everything helps you to grow in its own way.
The one thing to remember is: life is a great complexity. You are not alone here, there are many others related to you. Be sincere unto yourself, never be false there. Know well what you want, and for yourself remain that. But there are others also; don't unnecessarily hurt them. And if you need to wear masks, wear them and enjoy them, but remember, they are not your original face, and be capable of taking them off any moment. Remain the master, don't become the slave; otherwise you can be violent through your sincerity, unnecessarily you can be violent.
I have seen persons who are cruel, violent, aggressive, sadistic -- but sincere, very true, authentic. But they are using their authenticity just for their sadism. They want to make others suffer, and their trick is such that you cannot escape them. They are true, so you cannot say, "You are bad." They are good people, they are never bad, so no one can say to them, "You are bad." They are always good, and they do the bad through their good.
Don't do that, and don't take life too seriously. Nothing is wrong in masks also, faces also. Just as in the drama on the stage they use faces and enjoy and the audience also enjoys, why not enjoy them in real life also? It is not more than a drama. But I am not saying for you to be dishonest. Be sincere with yourself, don't get identified. But life is great; there are many around you related in many invisible nets. Don't hurt anybody.
I will tell you one anecdote. It happened, Buddha became enlightened, and then he came back to his town after twelve years. He had escaped one night from his house without even telling his wife that he was leaving. He had gone to her room. She was sleeping with Buddha's child, the only child, who was just a few days old.
Buddha wanted to touch the small child, to feel, to love and embrace, but then he thought, "If the wife is awakened she may start crying and weeping and may create a mess. The whole house will gather, and then it will be difficult to leave." So he simply escaped from the door; he just looked in and escaped like a coward. Then for twelve years he never came back.
After twelve years, when he had become enlightened, he came back. His chief disciple was Ananda. Ananda was his elder cousin-brother, and before he took initiation with Buddha he had asked for a few promises. He took sannyas, he took initiation from Buddha, but he was older than Buddha, "So," he said, "before I take initiation give me some promises as your elder brother, because once I have been initiated you will be the master and I will be the disciple. Then I cannot ask anything. Now I can even order you."
These are the rules of the game. So Buddha said, "Okay." He was enlightened, and this unenlightened man was saying, "I am your elder brother." So Buddha said, "Okay. What do you want?"
He said, "Three promises. One: I will always be with you, you cannot send me anywhere else; wherever you go I will be your shadow. Second: even in the night when you sleep in a room I can come in and out -- even while you are asleep. No rules will apply to me. And third: even at midnight when you are asleep, if I bring someone, a seeker, you will have to answer his questions."
Buddha said, "Okay. You are my elder brother, so I promise." Then Ananda took initiation, then he become a disciple, and Buddha followed these three things his whole life.
When he came back to his home, he said to Ananda, "Just make one exception, Ananda. My wife Yashodhara has been waiting for twelve years. She is bound to be very angry, and she is a very proud woman. Twelve years is a long time, and I have not been a good husband to her. I escaped from her like a coward, I didn't even tell her. And I know that if I had told her she would have accepted it because she loves me so much, but I couldn't gather the courage.
"Now after twelve years, if you come with me when I go to meet my wife, she will feel even worse. She will think that this is a trick; that I have brought you with me so that she cannot express her mind, her suppressed anger, and the many things of these twelve years. And she will behave in a ladylike way, because she belongs to a very good family, a royal family. She will not even cry, no tears will come to her eyes; she will keep the rules of the game. So please, Ananda, only one exception I ask you, and I will never ask any other exception. You just wait outside."
Ananda said, "Bhante, I think you are enlightened. You are no longer a husband and she is no longer a wife, so why play this game?"
Buddha said, "I am enlightened, she is not. I am no longer a husband, but she is still a wife, and I don't want to hurt her. Let her keep her mind a little while and I will persuade her. I will persuade her to take a jump and become a sannyasin. But give me a chance. I am enlightened, she is not."
So Buddha went inside the palace. Of course, Yashodhara was mad. She started saying things; she was angry, crying, weeping, tears coming down, and Buddha stood there, silent, listening to everything patiently, with deep compassion. When all her anger was out she looked at Buddha; when her tears were no more there in her eyes then she looked at Buddha. Then she realized that this man was no longer a husband and she had been talking to a ghost of her memory. The man who left her was no more there. This was totally a different man.
She surrendered, and she said to Buddha, "Why have you come? You are no longer a husband."
Buddha repeated again, "I may not be a husband, but you are still a wife, and I have come to help you so that you can also transcend this misery, this relationship, this world."
Others are there, consider them, and don't try to be violent through so-called good things. So when it is said, "right conduct," it means right relationship with others. You need not be false. When you can be true without hurting anybody, be true. But if you feel that your truth is going to hurt many and is unnecessary, it can be avoided, then avoid it, because it is not only going to hurt others, it will create patterns of cause, and those causes will return as effects on you, they will become your karmas. Then you will get entangled, and the more entangled you are the more you will have to behave in wrong ways.
Just stop. Just see the situation. If you can be true without hurting anybody, be true. To me, love is greater than truth. Be loving. And if you feel that your truth will be hurtful and violent, it is better to lie than to be true. Wait for the right moment when you can be true, and help the other person to come to such a state where your truth will not hurt him. Don't be in a hurry.
And life is a big drama; don't take it too seriously -- because seriousness is also a disease of the mind, seriousness is part of the ego. Be playful, don't be too serious. So sometimes you will have to use masks, because there are children around you and they like masks, they like false faces, and they enjoy. Help them to grow so they can face the real face, they can encounter it. But before they can encounter it, don't create any trouble. Right conduct is just consideration for others.
And look: there is a great difference. You may misunderstand what I am saying. When you lie, you lie for yourself. And I am saying: if you need, and if you feel the need to lie, only lie for the consideration of others. Never lie for yourself, don't use any mask for yourself. But if you feel it is going to help others, it will be good for them, use the mask. And inside remain alert that this is just a game you are acting, this is not real.
Sometimes you may need to be angry to your child, to your son, to your daughter. There are situations when anger helps. If you say something to your child coldly, it is not loving. If you say to your child, "Don't do this," in a cold manner, it is not loving, it is not going to help. When you say, "Don't do this!" to your child in anger, deep anger, it reaches the child, and he feels that you love him, that's why you are angry.
A father who has never been angry with his son has never been loving; anger means that you consider him, you can even be angry. You love him, you feel for him. Sometimes even when you are not feeling angry but you see the need, show the anger, have the face of anger -- but remain the master. And if you are the master, then the faces are beautiful, you can use them. But don't become the face; if you become the face you have become the slave. The whole thing is not to get identified. Remain aloof, distant, and capable at any time to put it on and off -- the face is just a device. It will be difficult and complex. It is easy to be untrue, it is easy to be true. The most difficult thing is to be the master of yourself to such an extent that if you want to be untrue you can be untrue, and if you want to be true you can be true.
Gurdjieff's disciples have written many books about him, and every disciple describes him in a different way. This is very mysterious, it has never happened with any other person in that way. Sometimes it happened that a person went to see Gurdjieff, then left, and then his friend went to see him. They would report to each other and would both give a different picture.
Gurdjieff was a master of changing faces. It is said that he had become so capable that a person sitting by his right side would feel one thing, and a person sitting by his left side would feel differently. He may have been very loving with his left eye, and that half-face was showing love, and with the other side he may have been angry. And both persons would report to each other outside: "What type of man is this? He was so loving." The other would say, "You are in some illusion... because he was so angry."
That is possible and such a mastery is beautiful. It is said that no one reported Gurdjieff's real face, because he never showed anybody his real face. He was always acting, but helping in a way; in many ways he was helping. He would show you the face that was needed by you for your consideration; he would never show you the face that was not needed by you.
To me, and to the Upanishads also, right conduct means just the right rules of behavior with others. You are not going to be here forever. You cannot change the whole world, you cannot change everybody; you can at the most change yourself. So it is better to change yourself inwardly, and don't try to be in a continuous fight with everybody. Avoid fight -- and faces can be helpful. Avoid unnecessary struggle, because that dissipates energy. Preserve your energy to be used for the inner work. And that work is so significant and it needs all your energy that you can give to it, so don't waste it in unnecessary things.
For the outside world remain an actor, and don't think that you are deceiving anybody. If they like deception, that's what they need, that's what should be given to them. If children like toys to play with, you are not deceiving them. Don't give them a real gun; let them play with the toy gun, because they like the toy. And don't think that the toy gun is false; don't think, "I must be true, I must give a real gun to the child. If he needs a gun, then I must give the true thing. How can I give the toy? This is a deception."
But the child needs the toy, there is no deception; he doesn't need the real gun. So just look at the other, at what he needs, and give him that which he needs. Don't give out of your own consideration, give out of consideration for him. Look at him, study and observe him, and behave in such a way that will be helpful to him and will not be unnecessary trouble for you. This is all that is meant by right conduct.
-- from Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, © Osho.com
Osho: Nature of Love
If somebody loves you, be thankful, but don’t demand anything—because the other has no obligation to love you.
Rather than thinking how to get love, start giving. If you give, you get.
Become individuals, that’s the first thing. The second thing is, don’t expect perfection and don’t ask and don’t demand. Love ordinary people. Nothing is wrong with ordinary people. Ordinary people are extraordinary! Each human being is so unique; have respect for that uniqueness. Third, give, and give without any condition—then you will know what love is. I cannot define it. I can show you the path to grow it. I can show you how to put in a rosebush, how to water it, how to give fertilizers to it, how to protect it. Then one day, out of the blue, comes the rose, and your home is full of the fragrance. That’s how love happens.
Love is the only religion, the only god, the only mystery that hs to be lived, understood. When love is understood, you have understood all the sages and all the mystics of the world.
If you understand that it will change, that once in a while your partner may become interested in somebody, and you have to be understanding and loving and caring and allowing her to go the way her being feels—this is a chance for you to prove to your partner that you love her. You love her; even if she is going to love somebody else, that is irrelevant. With understanding, it is possible that your love may become a lifelong affair, but remember it will not be permanent. It will have its ups and downs, it will have changes.
The flower of love can blossom only when there is no ego, when there is no effort to dominate, when one is humble, when one is trying not to be somebody but is ready to be nobody. Then awareness will come of its own accord and this is the most beautiful way…this love will not be falling in love; I call it rising in love.
The moment your love is without any jealousy, without any conditionings, but just a sharing of the dance of the heart, you will experience centering…love is their science, centering is their result.
Love never hurts anybody. And if you feel you have been hurt by love, it is something else in you, not your loving quality, that feels hurt.
Love in its purest form is a sharing of joy.
Osho: Living The Truth
At least don’t corrupt love. It is not corrupted by hatred, remember; it is corrupted by falsity. It is not destroyed by anger, never, but it is destroyed by an inauthentic persona, a false face. Love is possible only when there is freedom to be oneself without any guarding, without any reserve.
Live more authentically. Drop the masks; they are a weight on your heart. Drop all falsities. Be exposed.
Once you are true, everything else becomes possible.
Risk is there. If you become true, nobody know whether this relationship will be capable of understanding truth, authenticity; whether this relationship will be strong enough to stand in the storm.
At the most, the relationship can break, at the most. But it is better to be separate and to be real rather than being unreal and together because then it is never going to be satisfying. Remember, being never happens comfortably; otherwise it would have happened to all. It cannot happen conveniently; otherwise everybody would have their own, authentic being without any problem. Being happens only when you take risk, when you move into danger. And love is the greatest danger there is. It demands you totally. So don’t be afraid, go into it. If the relationship survives truth, it will be beautiful.
Osho: Love and Fear
Fear is never love, and love is never afraid.
People ordinarily think hate is the opposite of love. That is wrong, absolutely wrong. Fear is the opposite of love.
Love is outgoing, fearlessly reaching to the other, tremendously trusting that it will be received—and it is always received. Fear is shrinking within yourself, closing yourself, closing all the doors, all the windows so that no sun, no wind, no rain can reach you, you are so afraid. You are entering into your grave alive.
Be afraid of your ego, be afraid of your lust, be afraid of your greed, be afraid of your possessiveness; be afraid of your jealousy—but there is no question of being afraid of love. Love is divine! Love is like light. When there is light, darkness cannot exist. When there is love, fear cannot exist.
I don’t see that anything in life has the quality of being permanent. Love cannot be an exception. So don’t expect that love has to be permanent. It will make your love life more beautiful, because you know today you are together, tomorrow perhaps you will have to depart.
No relationship can truly grow if you go on holding back. If you remain clever and go on safeguarding and protecting yourself, only personalities meet, and the essential centers remain alone. Then just your mask is related, not you. Whenever such a thing happens, there are four persons in the relationship, not two. Two false persons go on meeting, and the two real persons remain worlds apart.
When change disturbs you, all your inner disturbances are stirred up. When you are both feeling disturbed and both are trying to throw the responsibility on the other, just try to see it. Inside yourself, try to see it; the other is never responsible. Remember that as a mantra: The other is never responsible.
Osho: Love and Freedom
Love can be sacrificed for freedom, but freedom cannot be sacrificed for love.
Love should be an absolute act of freedom.
For a lighter life, for a more playful life, you heed to be flexible. You have to remember that freedom is the highest value and if love is not giving you freedom then it is not love.
Love allows freedom; not only allows, but strengthens freedom…both are essential needs.
It as if we are trying to fly in the sky with one wing. A few people have the wing of love and a few people have the wing of freedom, but both are incapable of flying. Both the wings are needed.
If you love there is no need to destroy your freedom. They both can exist together; there is no antagonism between them.
Love the person, but give the person total freedom. Love the person, but from the very beginning make it clear that you are not selling your freedom.
Love is a basic need, as basic as freedom, so both have to be fulfilled. And a person who is full of love and free is the most beautiful phenomenon in the world. And when two persons of such beauty meet, their relationship is nota a relationship at all. It is a relating. It is a constant, riverlike flow. It is continuously growing towards greater heights.
If love cannot give freedom, then it is not love. Love as much as you can. Never think of the next moment; and if your lover goes somewhere else, you are also free. Keep freedom as a higher value than love itself. And if it is possible--and it is possible because it is natural--your life will not be a misery. Love each other totally, and occasionally allow each other freedom. But it has to be on both sides. Don’t have any secret, be absolutely open, and allow the other person also to be absolutely open, and respect openness. Never, even by your gestures, make the other person feel guilty.
When you fell in love with the woman, she was free; you fell in love with freedom. When you bring her home you destroy all possibilities of being free, but in that very destruction you are destroying the beauty.
Love means to give all that is beautiful to the beloved. Freedom is the most beautiful, the most cherished goal of human consciousness; how can you take it away? If you love a woman really, or a man, the first present, the first gift, will be the gift of freedom.
Osho: Love and Aloneness
When you are separated from your lover, look at it as a great opportunity to be alone. Then the vision changes. Look at it as an opportunity to have your own space. So in these days when you are alone, be a narcissist; love yourself, enjoy yourself! Delight in your body, in your mind, in your soul. And enjoy the space that is empty around you and fill it with love. Enjoy this space, aloneness. Don’t fill it with past memories and don’t fill it with future imagination and fantasy. Let it be as it is--pure, simple, silent. Delight in it; sway, sing, dance. A sheer joy of being alone. If you are not happy when you are alone, how can you be happy when you are together?
What is needed is not something in which you can forget your loneliness. What is needed is that you become aware of your aloneness, which is a reality…Look for your aloneness…the method is the same: just watch your mind, be aware. Become more and more conscious, so finally you are only conscious of yourself. That is the point where you become aware of aloneness.
Human growth requires that one moves from one polarity to another. Sometimes being alone is perfectly good: one needs one’s own space, one needs to forget the whole world, and to be oneself. One needs sometimes to be perfectly alone so that all boundaries disappear, as if the other does not exist at all, and the whole universe and the whole sky exists only for you. In that moment of aloneness one realizes for the first time what infinity is. But then if you live in it too much, by and by the infinity bores you, it becomes tasteless. There is purity and silence, but there is no ecstasy in it. Ecstasy always comes through the other. One then starts feeling hungry for love, and wants to escape for this aloneness, this vast expanse of space. One wants a cozy place surrounded by others, so that one can forget oneself.
Never make anywhere your home, neither relationships nor aloneness. Remain flowing and homeless, and don’t abide at any polarity. Enjoy it, delight in it, but when it is finished move to the other: make it a rhythm.
Lovers are alone, and a real lover never destroys your aloneness. He will always be totally respectful toward your individuality, toward your aloneness. It is sacred. He will not interfere in it, he will not try to intrude on that space…Aloneness means the feeling that you are complete…Lovers become alone. Through love you touch your inner completeness. Love makes you complete. Lovers share each other, but that is not their need, that is their overflowing energy.
Osho: Love and Meditation
A woman and a man in love can move into meditation very easily. Meditation and love are such close phenomena that if you move into meditation, your love energies start overflowing. If you really fall in love with someone who loves you, your meditative energies start growing; they are very deeply joined experiences.
Remember, only one thing is going to help you, and that is awareness—nothing else. Growth will remain painful if you don’t accept life and love in all its ups and downs. The summer has to be accepted and the winter too.
Work or sit or walk, but one thing has to be a continuous thread: make more and more moments of your life luminous with awareness. Let the candle of awareness burn in each moment, in each act. The cumulative effect is what enlightenment is.
Love alone is not enough. Love alone is blind; meditation gives it eyes. Meditation gives it understanding. And once your love is both love and meditation, you become fellow travelers. Then it is no longer an ordinary relationship. Then it becomes a friendliness on the path thowards discoering the msyteries of life…without meditation, love is destined to fail…meditation gives you the qualities of silence, awareness, a patient listening, a capacity to put yourself in the other’s position.
Just as man and woman are halves of one whole, so are love and meditation. Meditation is man; love is woman. In the meeting of meditation and love is the meeting of man and woman. And in that meeting, we create the transcendental human being, which is neither man nor woman.
If you meditate deeply, sooner or later you will start feeling a tremendous love arising in you that you have never known before: a new quality to your being, a new door opening. You have become a new flame and you want to share now. If you love deeply, by and by you will become aware that your love is becoming more and more meditative.
Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone. Slowly, you start feeling anew quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence, which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you. It has roots in your existence. And if you are not a coward, it will come to fruition, to flowering. If you want great things--things that are beyond the small reach of human hands, human mind, human abilities--then you will have to learn the art of non-doing. I call it meditation.
Meditation simply means the process of unconditioning the mind. Whatever the society has done to you has to be undone. When you are unconditioned you will be able to see the beauty of love and freedom together; if you really love the person you will give him or her absolute freedom--that’s the gift of love.
Osho: True Intimacy
If your intimacy is helping you to grow and become mature then it is positive and good and healthy, wholesome.
Intimacy means that there is no privacy. You don’t carry anything private now, at least with the person you are intimate with, you drop your privacy. You are nude and naked--good, bad, whatsoever you are, you open your heart. And whatever the cost you pay for it; whatever the trouble you go through with it. That brings growth.
If you are growing more and becoming an individual, if life is happening more to you, if you are becoming more open, if more beauty is felt in existence, if more poetry is arising in your heart, if more love flows through you, more compassion, if you are becoming more aware, then the relationship is good. Carry on. Then it is not a marriage. Then it is intimacy.
Relating means you are always starting, you are always trying to become acquainted. Again and again, you are introducing yourself to each other. You are trying to see the many facets of the other’s personality. You are trying to penetrate deeper and deeper into his realm of inner feelings, into the deep recesses of her being. You are trying to unravel a mystery which cannot be unraveled. That is the joy of love: the exploration of consciousness. And if you relate and don’t reduce it to a relationship, then the other will become a mirror to you. Exploring the other, unawares you will be exploring yourself too. Getting deeper into the other, knowing his feelings, his thoughts, his deeper stirrings, you will be knowing your own deeper stirrings too. Lovers become mirrors to each other, and then love becomes a meditation.
Let your woman be your mirror; let your man be your mirror. Look into your partner’s eyes and see your face; move into your partner to know yourself. Then one day the mirror will not be needed….then, transcendence happens.
In fact, the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes. Then love is a constant adventure.
Osho: Boredom and Jealousy
Boredom is an indication of sensitivity. Boredom is the consciousness of repetition.
Either have no consciousness, then you cannot feel the repetition, or, have so much consciousness that in each repetition you can see something new. These are the two ways to get out of boredom.
Be more watchful of your jealousy. When it arises next time, rather than getting angry, close your doors, sit silently, sit in meditation and watch your jealousy. And I’m not saying repress it, because tat is again doing something. People are either expressive or repressive, and both ways are wrong. I’m not saying you can just drop it right now. You will have to meditate over it. Whenever it possesses you, meditate over it. Slowly, the meditation will create the distance between you and the jealousy.
To be a monk or a nun is very easy, but to love and not to be jealous, to love and not to be possessive, to love and let the other have all their freedom, is really a great achievement. Only then will you experience love and its fragrance.
Osho: Love and Friendliness
It is something to be understood: the girlfriend you get or the boyfriend you get, you deserve. You don’t get any boyfriend or girlfriend whom you don’t deserve; those kinds of relationships only last for one or two days.
The other person has to be different, distant, a mystery that invites you to explore. With two mysteries meeting together, once they drop the idea that they have to agree on everything, there is no question of any fight. The fight arises because you want agreement.
Harmony is not something very great, it is boring. Once in a while, even if you fight, once in a while even if you get really hot, that does not mean that love disappears; that simply means love is capable of absorbing even disagreements, fights, overcoming all these hindrances.
Love has to be a friendly affair in which nobody is superior, in which nobody is going to decide about things, in which both are fully aware that they are different, that there approach towards life is different, that they think differently, and still, with all these differences, they love each other.
Be human, accept the other person’s humanity with all the frailty humanity is prone to. Your partner will commit mistakes just as you commit mistakes, and you have to learn. To be together is a great learning: of forgiving, forgetting, understanding that the other is as human as you are. Just a little forgiveness.
Out of freedom meet with each other, and the moment you feel that you have explored the whole topography of the woman and the woman knows that she has experienced whatever is possible to experience in the man, then it is time to say good-bye to each other in deep friendliness. There is no need to hang around each other’s neck. A world completely free from any contracts between man and woman will be immensely lovely, beautiful, unboring, interesting.
If you are just friendly and don’t make your friendliness a legal affair of husband and wife, things will be far better because then you are not a burden to anybody, not a bondage. There will be no question of having to fit with each other. You can have your individuality totally free from each other, and yet be in love. And really to be totally different in your individuality creates the best possibility of love.
Transforming Sex into Love by Osho
It is very important to understand one thing in this context. Human beings can never be separated from sex. Sex is the very source of one’s life; one is born out of it. Existence has accepted the energy of sex as the starting point of creation, and your holy men call it sinful… something that existence itself does not consider a sin! And if you think of God as the creator, and if God considers sex to be a sin, then there is no greater sinner than God in this world, no greater sinner than God in this universe.
You see a flower in bloom– have you ever considered that the blossoming of a flower is an act of passion, a sexual act? What is happening as the flower blossoms? The butterflies will sit on it and carry its pollen, its sperm, to another flower. A peacock dances in full glory– a poet will sing songs to it, your saints will also be filled with joy at the sight of it. But aren’t they aware that the dance is an overt expression of passion, that it is primarily a sexual act? The peacock is dancing to seduce its beloved. The peacock is beckoning to his beloved, his spouse. The bird is singing, the peacock is dancing, the boy has become an adolescent, the girl has grown into a beautiful woman– these are all expressions of sexual energy. These are all different manifestations of sexual energy. All life, all expression, all flowering is basically sex energy. And it is against this sex energy that religions and cultures are pouring poison into the minds of human beings. They are trying to engage human beings in a fight against it. They have entangled people in this battle against their own basic energy, so they have become wretched, pathetic, devoid of love, false, nobodies.
One has not to fight with sex, but to create a friendship with it, and elevate the stream of life to the heights.
While blessing a newlywed couple, an Upanishadic sage said to the bride, May you be the mother of ten children and, ultimately, may your husband become your eleventh child. If passion is transformed, the wife can become the mother; if lust is transformed, sex can become love. It is only sexual energy that flowers into the energy of love.
But we have filled humans with antagonism toward sex, and the result is that not only has love not flowered in them– because love is an evolution beyond sexual energy, and can come only through acceptance of it– but their minds have become more and more sexual because of the opposition to sex. All our songs, all our poetry, all our art and paintings, all our temples and the statues in them have directly or indirectly become centered around sex. Our minds revolve around sex. No animal in the world is sexual like human beings are. Human beings are sexual around the clock– awake or asleep, sitting or walking, sex has become everything to them. Because of the enmity toward sex, because of this opposition and suppression, it has become like an ulcer to their being.
One cannot be free from something that is the very root of one’s life. But in the process of this constant inner conflict, one’s entire life can become sick– and it has. Your so-called religions and cultures are basically responsible for the excessive sexuality that is so evident in humankind. It is not "bad people" but "good people" and saints who are responsible for this. Until the entire human race frees itself from this wrongdoing by religious leaders and "good people," there is no possibility of the birth of love.
I want to say to you that sex is godly. The energy of sex is divine energy, godly energy. That is why this energy creates new life. It is the greatest, most mysterious force of all.
Drop this antagonism toward sex. If you ever want love to shower in your life, renounce this conflict with sex. Accept sex blissfully. Acknowledge its sacredness. Acknowledge its benediction.
Go on searching deeper and deeper into it, and you will be amazed that the more you accept sex with a quality of sacredness, the more sacred it will become. And the more you are in conflict with it, as if it were something sinful and dirty, the more sinful and ugly it will become.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
God: The Imaginary Puppeteer (Osho article)
All the religions believe that God created the world and also mankind. But if you are created by someone, you are only a puppet, you don't have your own soul. And if you are created by somebody, he can uncreate you any moment. He neither asked you whether you wanted to be created, nor is he going to ask you: "Do you want to be uncreated?"
God is the greatest dictator, if you accept the fiction that he created the world and also created mankind. If God is a reality, then man is a slave, a puppet. All the strings are in his hands, even your life. Then there is no question of any enlightenment. Then there is no question of there being any Gautam the Buddha, because there is no freedom at all. He pulls the strings, you dance; he pulls the strings, you cry; he pulls the strings, you start murders, suicide, war. You are just a puppet and he is the puppeteer.
Then there is no question of sin or virtue, no question of sinners and saints. Nothing is good and nothing is bad, because you are only a puppet. A puppet cannot be responsible for its actions. Responsibility belongs to someone who has the freedom to act.
Either God can exist or freedom, both cannot exist together.
That is the basic implication of Friedrich Nietzsche's statement: God is dead, therefore man is free.
No theologian, no founder of religions thought about this, that if you accept God as the creator, you are destroying the whole dignity of consciousness, of freedom, of love. You are taking all responsibility from man, and you are taking all his freedom away. You are reducing the whole of existence to just the whim of a strange fellow called God.
But Nietzsche's statement is bound to be only one side of the coin. He is perfectly right, but only about one side of the coin. He has made a very significant and meaningful statement, but he has forgotten one thing, which was bound to happen because his statement is based on rationality, logic and intellect. It is not based on meditation.
Man is free, but free for what? If there is no God and man is free, that will simply mean man is now capable of doing anything, good or bad; there is nobody to judge him, nobody to forgive him. This freedom will be simply licentiousness.
There comes the other side. You remove God and you leave man utterly empty. Of course, you declare his freedom, but to what purpose? How is he going to use his freedom creatively, responsibly? How is he going to avoid freedom being reduced to licentiousness?
Friedrich Nietzsche was not aware of any meditations -- that is the other side of the coin.
Man is free, but his freedom can only be a joy and a blessing to him if he is rooted in meditation.
Remove God -- that is perfectly okay, he has been the greatest danger to human freedom -- but give man also some meaning and significance, some creativity, some receptivity, some path to find his eternal existence.
Zen is the other side of the coin. Zen does not have any God, that's its beauty.
But it has a tremendous science to transform your consciousness, to bring so much awareness to you that you cannot commit evil. It is not a commandment from outside, it comes from your innermost being. Once you know your center of being, once you know you are one with the cosmos -- and the cosmos has never been created, it has been there always and always, and will be there always and always, from eternity to eternity -- once you know your luminous being, your hidden Gautam Buddha, it is impossible to do anything wrong, it is impossible to do anything evil, it is impossible to do any sin.
Friedrich Nietzsche in his last phase of life became almost insane. He was hospitalized, kept in a mad asylum. Such a great giant, what happened to him? He had concluded: "God is dead," but it is a negative conclusion. He became empty, but his freedom was meaningless. There was no joy in it because it was only freedom from God, but for what? Freedom has two sides: from and for. The other side was missing. That drove him insane.
Emptiness always drives people insane. You need some grounding, you need some centering, you need some relationship with existence. God being dead, all your relationship with existence was finished. God being dead, you were left alone without roots. A tree cannot live without roots, nor can you.
God was non-existential, but it was a good consolation. It used to fill people's interior, although it was a lie. But even a lie, repeated thousands and thousands of times for millennia, becomes almost a truth. God has been a great consolation to people in their fear, in their dread, in their awareness of old age and death, and beyond -- the unknown darkness.
God has been a tremendous consolation, although it was a lie.
Lies can console you, you have to understand it. In fact lies are sweeter than the truth.
Gautam Buddha is reported to have said: "Truth is bitter in the beginning, sweet in the end, and lies are sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end" -- when they are exposed. Then comes a tremendous bitterness, that you have been deceived by all your parents, by all your teachers, by all your priests, by all your so-called leaders. You have been continuously deceived. That frustration brings up a great distrust in everybody. "Nobody is worthy of trust...." It creates a vacuum.
So Nietzsche was not insane in this last phase of his life, it was the inevitable conclusion of his negative approach. An intellect can only be negative; it can argue and criticize and be sarcastic, but it cannot give you any nourishment. From no negative standpoint can you get any nourishment. So he lost his God, and he lost his consolation. He became free just to be mad.
And it is not only Friedrich Nietzsche, so it cannot be said that it was just an accident. Many intellectual giants find themselves in mad asylums or commit suicide, because nobody can live in a negative darkness. One needs light and a positive, affirmative experience of truth. Nietzsche demolished the light and created a vacuum in himself and in others who followed him.
If you feel deep down a vacuum, utter emptiness with no meaning, it is because of Friedrich Nietzsche. A whole philosophy has grown in the West: Nietzsche is the founder of this very negative approach to life.
Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and Marcel, and Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger -- all the great giants of the first half of the 20th century -- were talking only about meaninglessness, anguish, suffering, anxiety, dread, fear, angst. And this philosophy has been called in the West existentialism. It is not. It is simply non-existentialism. It destroys everything that has consoled you.
I agree with the destruction because what was consoling man was only lies. God, heaven, hell -- all were fictions created to console man. It is good they are destroyed, but you are leaving man in an utter vacuum. Out of that vacuum existentialism is born, that's why it talks only about meaninglessness: "Life has no meaning." It talks about no significance: "You are just an accident. Whether you are here or not does not matter at all to existence."
And these people call their philosophy existentialism. They should call it accidentalism.
You are not needed; just by accident, on the margin, somehow you have popped up. God was making you a puppet, and these philosophers from Nietzsche to Jean-Paul Sartre are making you accidental.
And there is a tremendous need in man's being to be related to existence. He needs roots in existence, because only when the roots go deep into existence will he blossom into a Buddha, will he blossom into millions of flowers, will his life not be meaningless. Then his life will be tremendously overflowing with meaning, significance, blissfulness; his life will be simply a celebration.
But the conclusion of the so-called existentialists is that you are unnecessary, that your life has no meaning, no significance. Existence is not in need of you at all!
So I want to complete Friedrich Nietzsche's work; it is incomplete. It will lead the whole of humanity to madness -- not only Friedrich Nietzsche, but the whole of humanity. Without God certainly you are free, but for what? You are left with empty hands. You were with empty hands before also, because the hands that looked full were full of lies. Now you are absolutely aware that the hands are empty and there is nowhere to go.
I have heard about one very famous atheist. He died, and his wife brought his best clothes, best shoes, before he was put in the coffin -- the best tie, the costliest possible. She wanted to give him a good farewell, a good send-off. He was dressed as he had never dressed in his whole life.
And then friends came, and neighbors came. And one woman said: "Wow! He's all dressed up and nowhere to go." He was an atheist, so he did not believe in God, he did not believe in heaven, he did not believe in hell -- nowhere to go, and so well-dressed! But this is the situation any negative philosophy is going to leave for the whole of mankind: well-dressed, ready to go, but nowhere to go! This situation creates insanity….
Unless your freedom becomes your very flowering of awareness, and the experience of freedom leads you into eternity, leads you into the roots, into the cosmos and existence, you are going to be mad. Your life will be meaningless, with no significance. Whatever you do it does not matter.
Existence according to the so-called existentialists, who are all following Friedrich Nietzsche, the founder, is absolutely unintelligent. They have taken away God, so they think -- according to logic it seems apparently true -- if there is no God, existence also becomes dead, with no intelligence, with no life. God used to be the life, God used to be the consciousness. God used to be the very meaning, the very salt of our being. With God no longer there, this whole existence becomes soulless, life becomes just a by-product of matter. So when you die, everything will die, nothing will remain.
And there is no question of being good or bad. Existence is absolutely indifferent, it does not care about you. God used to care about you. Once God is removed, a great strangeness starts happening between you and existence. There is no relationship, existence does not care, cannot care because it is not conscious anymore. It is no longer an intelligent universe, it is simply dead matter, just as you are. And the life that you know is only a by-product.
A by-product disappears immediately when the elements that were creating it separate….
Once you know that a certain balance is needed between the negative and the positive, then you have your roots in existence.
It is one extreme to believe in God; it is another extreme not to believe in God, and you have to be just in the middle, absolutely balanced. Atheism becomes irrelevant, theism becomes irrelevant. But your balancing brings a new light, a new joy, a new blissfulness to you, a new intelligence which is not of the mind. That intelligence which is not of the mind makes you aware that the whole existence is tremendously intelligent. It is not only alive, it has sensitivity, it has intelligence.
Once you know your inner being is balanced and silent and peaceful, suddenly doors that have been closed by your thoughts simply move, and the whole existence becomes clear to you. You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it.
That's what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth -- everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody except you. This gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.
You are the highest evolution of existence, of intelligence, and it is dependent on you. If you grow higher than the mind and its intelligence, towards no-mind and its intelligence, existence is going to celebrate: one man again has reached to the ultimate peak. One part of existence has suddenly risen to the highest possibilities of the intrinsic potential in everybody….
And a man who knows his relation, his deep relation with existence, cannot commit anything against existence, against life. It is simply impossible. He can only pour as much blissfulness, as much benediction, as much grace as you are ready to receive. But his sources are inexhaustible. When you have found your inexhaustible sources of life and its ecstasy, then it does not matter whether you have a God or not. It does not matter whether there is a hell or a heaven. It does not matter at all….
I am teaching you how to come in contact with existence, how to find out where you are connected, wired with existence. From where are you getting your life moment to moment? Where is your intelligence coming from? If existence is unintelligent, how can you be intelligent? Where will you get it from?
When you see the rose flowers blossoming, have you ever thought that all this color, all this softness, all this beauty was hidden somewhere in the seed? But the seed alone was not enough to become a rose, it needed the support of existence -- the soil, the water, the sun. Then the seed disappeared into the soil and the rosebush started growing. Now it needs air, it needs water, it needs the earth, it needs the sun, it needs the moon. All these together transform the seed which was almost like a dead piece of stone. Suddenly a transformation, a metamorphosis. These roses, these colors, this beauty, this fragrance, cannot come from it unless existence has it already. It all may be hidden, it may be covered in the seed. But anything that happens means it was there already -- maybe as a potential. You have intelligence....
Osho meets Mahatma Gandhi
Hundreds of times we had discussed Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy, and I was always against. People were a little bit puzzled why I was so insistent against a man I had only seen twice, when I was just a child. I will tell you the story of that second meeting….
I can see the train. Gandhi was traveling, and of course he traveled third class. But his "third class" was far better than any first class possible. In a sixty-man compartment there was just him and his secretary and his wife; I think these three were the only people. The whole compartment was reserved. And it was not even an ordinary first-class compartment, because I have never seen such a compartment again. It must have been a first-class compartment, and not only first class, but a special first class. Just the name plate had been changed and it became "third class" so Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy was saved.
I was just ten. My mother—again I mean my grandmother—had given me three rupees. She said, "The station is too far and you may not be back in time for lunch, and one never knows with these trains: it may come ten hours, twelve hours late, so please keep these three rupees." In India in those days, three rupees was almost a treasure. One could live comfortably for three months on them.
She had made a really beautiful robe for me. She knew I did not like long pants; at the most I wore pajama pants and a kurta. A kurta is a long robe which I have always loved, and slowly slowly the pajama has disappeared, only the robe remains. Otherwise one has not only divided the upper body and the lower body, but even made different clothes for each. Of course the higher body should have something better, and the lower body is just to be covered, that's all.
She had made a beautiful kurta for me. It was summer and in those parts of central India summer is really difficult because the hot air going into the nostrils feels as if it's on fire. In fact, only in the middle of the night can people find a little rest. It is so hot in central India that you are continuously asking for some cold water, and if some ice is available then it is just paradise. Ice is the costliest thing in those parts, naturally, because by the time it comes from the factory, a hundred miles away, it is almost gone. It has to be rushed as quickly as possible.
My Nani said I should go to see Mahatma Gandhi if I wanted to and she prepared a very thin muslin robe. Muslin is the most artistic and the most ancient fabric too, as far as clothes are concerned. She found the best muslin. It was so thin that it was almost transparent. At that time gold rupees had disappeared and silver rupees had taken their place. Those silver rupees were too heavy for the poor muslin pocket. Why am I saying it?—because something I'm going to say would not be possible to understand without it.
The train came as usual, thirteen hours late. Almost everybody was gone except me. You know me, I'm stubborn. Even the stationmaster said, "Boy, you are something. Everybody has gone but you seem ready to stay the whole night. There is no sign of the train and you have been waiting since early this morning."
To come to the station at four o'clock that morning I had to leave my house in the middle of the night. But I had not yet used those three rupees because everybody had brought so many things with them, and they were all so generous to a little boy who had come so far. They were offering me fruits, sweets, cakes and everything, so there was no question of feeling hungry. When the train finally arrived, I was the only person there—and what a person! Just a ten-year-old boy, standing by the side of the stationmaster.
He introduced me to Mahatma Gandhi and said, "Don't think of him as just a boy. The whole day I have watched him, and I have discussed many things with him, because there was no other work. And he is the only one who has remained. Many had come but they left long ago. I respect him because I know he would have stayed here till the last day of existence; he would not leave until the train arrived. And if the train had not arrived, I don't think he would ever have left. He would have lived here."
Mahatma Gandhi was an old man; he called me close and looked at me. But rather than looking at me, he looked at my pocket—and that put me off him forever. And he said, "What is that?"
I said, "Three rupees."
He said, "Donate them." He used to have a box with a hole in it by his side. When you donated, you put the rupees in the hole and they disappeared. Of course he had the key, so they would appear again, but for you they had disappeared.
I said, "If you have the courage you can take them. The pocket is there, the rupees are there, but may I ask you for what purpose you are collecting these rupees?"
He said, "For poor people."
I said, "Then it is perfectly okay." And I myself dropped those three rupees into his box. But he was the one to be surprised, for when I started leaving I took the whole box with me.
He said, "For God's sake, what are you doing? That is for the poor!"
I said, "I have heard you already, you need not bother repeating it again. I am taking this box for the poor. There are many in my village. Please give me the key; otherwise I will have to find a thief so that he can open the lock. He is the only expert in that art."
He said, "This is strange…." He looked at his secretary. The secretary was dumb, as secretaries always are; otherwise why should they be secretaries? He looked at Kasturba, his wife, who said, "You have met your equal. You cheat everybody, now he is taking your whole box. Good! It is good, because I am tired of seeing that box always there, just like a wife!"
I felt sorry for that man and left the box, saying, "No, you are the poorest man, it seems. Your secretary does not have any intelligence, nor does your wife seem to have any love for you. I cannot take this box away—you keep it. But remember, I had come to see a mahatma, but I saw only a businessman."
That was his caste. In India, baniya, businessman, is exactly what you mean by a Jew. India has its own Jews; they are not Jews, they are baniyas. To me, at that age, Mahatma Gandhi appeared to be only a businessman. I have spoken against him thousands of times because I don't agree with anything in his philosophy of life. glimps45
There was an earthquake in Bihar, in India, and Mahatma Gandhi said that the earthquake happened because God was punishing the sinners. I was very young, but I wrote him a letter that it is very strange that God should punish the sinners only in Bihar. What about the whole rest of the world? Do you consider that only Bihar consists only of sinners, and the whole world consists of saints?
And he had neither guts nor a gentleman's attitude. He never gave any answer. I wrote a letter to Ramdas, his son—because he was my friend—I wrote to Ramdas asking him whether his father had received my letter or not. He said he had received it, "but he has no answer to give so he is keeping quiet." last202
In India they say, "Even a leaf of a tree moves only if God wants to move it." So even the murderer is not really responsible, he is simply doing what God wants to do. That's the whole teaching in the Gita of Krishna, and the Gita is worshipped by Hindus and even by non-Hindus. And one cannot believe…even people like Mahatma Gandhi, who pretend to be non-violent, call the Gita their mother. Gandhi used to say that Hindus and Mohammedans are one.
I was not more than seventeen when I wrote him a letter and asked him, "If Hindus and Mohammedans are one, if the Gita is your mother, what about the holy Koran? Is the holy Koran your father?" He was so angry—his son was my friend and he told me that he simply threw the letter out the window. Ramdas, his son, told him, "What he is asking is relevant. If you can call the Gita your mother…. If you cannot call the Koran your father, you can call it step-father, uncle, but some relationship has to be there, otherwise how are Hindus and Mohammedans one?" I never received any letter. Ramdas informed me, "You will never receive any answer."
I wrote Gandhi another letter: "On the one hand you say you are non-violent, and on the other hand you worship the Gita, which teaches simply violence and nothing else." The whole book is a teaching for violence. Krishna, to his disciple Arjuna, is teaching, "You go to the war, fight, because that's what is the will of God, because without his will nothing happens. So if this big war is happening, it cannot happen without his will." Krishna tries in every way to persuade Arjuna. Arjuna argues but he is not a great logician, otherwise it was so simple.
If I was in his place, I would have simply got out of the chariot and walked towards the forest, and told him, "This is what God wills. What can I do? I am simply following his will. Nobody can do anything against his will, so if I am going to the forest to meditate and not to fight, it is his responsibility." There was no need for any argument. And the whole Gita is just an argument: Arjuna trying to argue or non-violence and Krishna imposing violence because God wants it. His sole argument is, "You should surrender to God's will and do whatever He wants." Arjuna must have been stupid. I would have accepted in the very beginning—there would have been no need for the Gita—that "You are right, I surrender and now I will do only that which God wants." And I would have walked into the forest. last321
GOD.....
"I had no need for that hypothesis" (Laplace to Napoleon about god)
Contents
- Introduction
- Definition of the word "god"
- The qualities of an omnipotent god
- Reasons not to believe in god
- Epilogue
- References
- Additional reading
- Similar pages
Introduction
Some people falsely believe that it is impossible to prove the unexistence of anything, but they are wrong. It can, for example, be proved that there is no even prime number greater than two. Other people use to say that there is no way to prove if there is a god or not, or even that we cannot get any knowledge of god (agnosticism). My opinion as a strong atheist, is that we can in fact prove that god does not exist in the physical world. This document is my attempt to do so.
Definition of the word "god"
To prove the non-existence of god we first need to define the word "god". When christians talk about god they mean an almighty being. This, I think, is the only god that holds, since it is the only god that can be logically justified.
I think it makes most sense if god is female, because only women can give life. Something that even people in the Stone Age understood. Later when wars affected the cultural evolution, and men took control of society, god became male, but the female god still lives on in the expression "Mother earth". It should also be pointed out that an omnipotent god must be either androgyne or sexless. However, in most religions god is male so I will refer to god as 'he', 'him' etc.
Some people (Einstein for instance) believe in a god who is not a personal god, but a Spinozan kind of god. I claim that this god is not a god! To say that god is universe - by getting knowledge of the universe we get knowledge of god - is to redefine the meaning of the word god. This has nothing to do with the word god as it was defined by the "primitive" cultures which preceded our present civilization. He can be excluded with Occam's razor, and most important: Such a god does not hear prayers.
If god is not omnipotent there is nothing that prevents him from being a product of the universe. If that is the case, what makes god divine? Then god would only be an alien, a being of matter; probably containing flesh, blood and DNA like all life we know of. Everything god is able to do would be things that human beings also will be able to do, all his knowledge would be knowledge we will also achieve. In fact humans would be gods, which should lead to some strange kind of humanism!
Many people justify their faith with god as an explanation. What is the meaning of life? Where does time and space come from? Who created the physical constants? et cetera. Because we lack knowledge of these things - and maybe never will, since they are questions like "what is the color of a second?" or "how does sound taste?" - god is there as an explanation.
Let's say that god is the meaning of life, what then is the meaning of god? If god has a nature, who created that nature? If god created time and space, how can god exist without it? Since creation is an event in time, how could god create time? and who created god? To answer these questions god must be almighty, or else you can't explain them. In fact you can if you say god stands above time and space and so on (which he indeed does if he is almighty), but to be able to prevent god from being tied to future phenomena, you must give him the quality of omnipotence so he can stand above everything.
The qualities of an omnipotent god
If god is almighty there are several qualities he must have. They are as follows:
- He must know everything. Everything that is, everything that has been and everything that will be. To be able to know everything that will be he must know every position and every momentum of every particle in cosmos (Laplace's "World Spirit").
- He must be worth our worship. A being that is not worth worshipping is no god.
- He must be able to do anything. If there are things that god can't do, he certainly is not omnipotent.
- He must be above time. Something that even St. Augustine deduced. But not only that, god must stand above all possible dimensions.
- He cannot be 'good' or 'evil' or, indeed, have any subjective characteristica. If god is all good, he cannot do evil things and cannot be almighty. Most people would object and say that good can do evil but chooses not to do it. Well, if god is all good he can't choose to do evil things, can he?
The theodicé problem
We also have the theodice problem, stated by David Hume:
If the evil in the world is intended by god he is not good. If it violates his intentions he is not almighty. God can't be both almighty and good. There are many objections to this, but none that holds since god is ultimately responsible for the existence of evil. Besides, if only god can create he must have created evil. If somebody else (the devil) created evil, how can one know that god, and not Satan created the universe?For a good look at the Theodicé problem try The problem of natural evil
Reasons not to believe in god
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
I have refuted this argument myself. See Refuted proofs for an explanation
The ontological evidence against gods
Neccesary a god is a being that is worth worshipping, so if there is no being worth worshipping there cannot be a god.
Not any of the existing religions can provide such a god. How do we know if there are no undiscovered beings worthy our submission? Well if there is a being that has either failed or not tried to communicate with us that being is not worth worshipping either, so the ontological evidence against god holds, even without complete knowledge of the world.
There is a test, based on the ontological evidence against god, that you can do to try the existence of god. Pray, and ask god to provide you with a clear proof for his existence within a week. After that week, if you have got a proof that god exists, send me the evidence. If not, there are only three reasons I can think of that are plausible: (1) God does not exist, (2) God does not want to or (3) God can't give you this evidence. Because of the ontological evidence, alternative (2) and (3) are not worth your worship and thus they equal alternative (1). So if you get no response there is no god.
The meaning of the word existence
What do we mean by existence? The very definition for existence is that a thing is said to exist if it relates in some way to some other thing. That is, things exist in relation to each other. For us, that means that something is part of our system ('The known world'). God is defined to be infinite, in which case it is not possible for there to be anything other than god because "infinite" is all-inclusive. But if there is nothing other than god then either god cannot be said to exist for the reason just explained, or god is the known world, in which case, by definition, god is not a god.
Occam's razor
Occam's razor was formulated by William of Occam (1285-1349) and says: "Non est ponenda pluralites sive necessitate" or in english: "Do not multiply entities unless necessarily". It is a principle for scientific labour which means that one should use a simple explanation with a few explanatory premises before a more complex one.
Let's say that everything must be created, and that was done by an omnipotent god. A god which stands above time, space, moral and existence, which is self containing and in it self has it's own cause. This entity can surely be replaced by the known world. The world stands above time, space, moral, existence, is self containing and in it has it's own meaning. Most theists agree that god has a nature. Then we must raise the question, who created god's nature? If we just accept that god has a nature and exists without a cause, why not say that the known world just is and that the laws of physics are what they are, without a cause?
God is not really an explanation, only a non-explanation. It is impossible to gain information from non-information so God as an explanation is a dead end. When we have said that the reason for something is that 'god did it that way' there is no way to understand it any further. We just shrug our shoulders and accept things as they are. To explain the unknown by god is only to explain how it happened, not why. If we are to investigate the world and build our views of life from the world, we cannot assume a god. Because adding god as an explanation leaves as many, if not more questions than it explains, god has to be removed with Occam's razor if we are serious in investigating the world.
Some things are impossible to do
There are things that are impossible to do. For example nobody can cover a two-dimensional surface with two-dimensional circles, without making them overlap. It is impossible to add the numbers two and two and get 666. You can not go back in time (without passing an infinite entropy barrier). The number of things that are impossible to do are almost infinite. If god were to be almighty he would be able to do them, but it's impossible to do so.
Some people say that he can only do things that are logically possible to do, but what is? Is it logically possible to walk on water? Is it logically possible to rise from the dead? Is it logically possible to stand above time, space and all other dimensions - and still exist? I'd say that everything which violates the laws of physics are logically impossible and thus omnipotence is logically impossible. Besides if omnipotence is a relative quality there is no way to tell omnipotence from non-omnipotence. For omnipotence to be a valid expression it must be absolute, but we have no objective criteria to measure omnipotence so the word itself is useless.
Omnipotence is impossible due to paradoxes
Another way to disprove the almighty god is that omnipotence leads to paradoxes. Can god make a rock that is too heavy for him to carry? Can god build a wall that even he can't tear down?
Also, if god knows everything, he knows what he will do in the "future" (in any dimension, not necessary the time dimension). He must have known that from the very start of his own existence. Thus god's actions are predestined. God is tied by faith, he has no free will. If god has no free will god is not omnipotent. Another way to put it is that to be able to make plans and decisions one must act over time. If god stands above time he can not do that and has no free will. Indeed, if god stands above all dimensions god is dimensionless - a singularity, nothing, void!
Besides there can exist no free wills at all if god is almighty. If you had a free will, god wouldn't know what you would do tomorrow and wouldn't be omnipotent.
The void creator
If everything must have been created, then god must have been created as well. If god is not created, then everything mustn't have a creator, so why should life or cosmos have one?
Besides this argument has another leap. If everything has a source and god is that source, then god must have existed without it before he created it. So if god created time and space, he must live outside of time and space. Thus he is non-existent. If all life must come from something and that is god, god is not alive and hence non-existent. If moral must come from god, god lacks moral. If logic comes from god, god is illogic. If nature comes from god, god is unnatural. If existence comes from god, god is non-existent. If god is the cause of everything, god is void
We would never notice god
This is not an evidence against god, but rather describes the lack of sense in praying to a god who stands above time.
If god stands above time and created time and space he can not be the first link in a time dependent chain of events. Rather he would affect every step in all chains, and we would only see god in the laws of physics (Davies, 1983, chapter 4). This god is an unnecessary entity to describe the world and should be removed with Occam's razor
If somebody would pray to god and god would listen, the laws would change to achieve the desired result. Thus the world would be different and the prayer would never have been said. Besides god would already (in an "above time" sense of view) know that you would pray, and already have changed the world. Prayers would be totally meaningless. We would already live in the best world possible, and any prayer would be to doubt the wisdom of god.
Even worse: For every prayer said, god has not acted, or else the prayer had been undone. This means that the more people have prayed, the more bad things in the world have persisted. Therefore, the more you pray, the more evil persist (provided god exists and stands above time).
A much better way to change the world is to do it yourself. Then you would know that it was you who made the world better. The effect of prayers are not scientific provable, whilst the effect of actions are. Instead of praying you should set to work at improving your situation. This is what humanism is about.
Nobody really believes in god
Schopenhauer once said something like:
"Man can do anything he wants, but he can not want whatever he wants."
My thesis is that people who claim to believe in god do not really do so. They just wish to believe in god. They somehow feel that their lives are meaningless without god, so they choose to close their eyes to evidence against the existence of god. The christian view is well expressed by Cardinal Ratzinger:
"Religious liberty can not justify freedom for divergence. This freedom does not aim at any freedom relative truth, but concerns the free descicion for a person to, according to his moral inclinations accept the truth." (The times, June 27 1990, p9) [Translated to Swedish in the Swedish version of (Baigenth, Leigh, 1991) and then translated back to english by me]
It's as clear as it can be! For a christian you accept the "truth" according to your moral, and then have to be strong in your faith to keep your believes. You decide a priori what to believe and then try to convince yourself and others that it is true. But theists don't really believe, because to believe something is to take it for true, and just like in Nazareth's song Sold my soul there is no sign of god in the world. When you have the evidence for and against something your sub-conscious works on it and makes a conclusion. The process can't be affected by your will, only delayed or suppressed, which will lead to psychoses, and those are far more common among (catholic) priests than any other group..
I have personal experience of this believing what you want to believe. When I was a child I believed in a lot of crazy things. I thought my stuffed animals were intelligent. I believed in Santa Claus. I thought there were monsters under my bed at night. I even believed in god after I heard some of the tales from the old testament. Then I became older and realized that these things weren't true. When I look back I don't understand how I could believe in them, it must have been that I wanted to do so. (Except for the monsters, which had to do with fear of the dark)
When many religious people are confronted with criticism of their religion they convert to atheism or agnosticism. Examples of people who became critical to the dogmas of christianity are Charles Darwin (Darwin, 1958), Dan Barker (Barker, 19??), Ernest Renan plus many former "Catholic modernists" in the 19th century such as Alfred Loisy and Antonio Fogazzaro (Baigenth, Leigh, 1991). The Catholic modernism evolved in the late 19th century and was banned in 1907 by the Vatican (Baigenth, Leigh, 1991). These people are to me clear evidence that an enlightened person will after considering the facts, reject christianity and other religions that contain deities.
Note: This is not the "Plead to authority" fallacy. I'm talking people here, who were trying to prove the existence of god and turned atheists. They did not want to do this, but had to after reading a lot of books and doing a lot of thinking on the subject.
Epilogue
I have tried to define the only god that can be philosophically justified and show some examples why this god cannot exist. After reading this document you may object and say that god is beyond human understanding and can't be defined in scientific terms. This is the view of agnosticism.
If god is so mysterious, how can we know anything about him? Through the Bible? How do we know that the Bible and not the Koran or the Vedha books, for example, are the words of god? (or the bible if you believe in any of the other two books). Considering the cruelties that have been made in the name of god, how do we know that not all religions are made by Satan?
If there is no way to know this but to trust people who claim they have had "divine experiences" there is no way to tell true from false prophets. One has to give up his free mind and follow the authority of a dictator. Remember also that it is the person making a positive claim who has to prove it.
"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true." -- Bertrand Russell
"We shall not believe anything unless there is reasonable cause to believe that it is true" -- Ingemar Hedenius
References
- Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991)
- Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith - From preacher to atheist (19??)
- Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882. With original omissions restored. Edited with appendix and notes by his grand-daughter Nora Barlow. The only complete edition. (1958)
- Paul Davies, God and the new physics (1983)
Additional reading
- The Atheism web
- Bible contradictions #1
- Joseph C. Sommer, Some reasons why Humanists reject the bible
- Does God exist? a debate between John P. Koster and Frank Zindler
- The Internet Infidels
- Julian Huxley, Religion without revelation (New York, NY: Mentor Books, l957)
- Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (Temple University Press, 1984)
- John Stuart Mill, The Religion of Humanity (1874)
- George Smith, The Case Against God
Similar pages
- Why the Christian God is Impossible, by Chad Docterman A superb rejection of the christian god - a must read!
- Brett Lemoine's Atheism information
- Why Rich Daniel believes there are no gods