Professional Documents
Culture Documents
www.stmartins.com
The material in this book are questions and Osho’s responses selected from
various talks by Osho given to a live audience. All of Osho’s talks have been published in full
as books, and are also available as original audio recordings. Audio recordings and the
complete text archive can be found via the online OSHO Library at www.osho.com .
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Belief Is Not the Answer
questions. Nobody asks me, “Do you believe in the rose flower?”
There is no need, you can see that the rose flower is there, or it is
not there. Only fictions, not facts, have to be believed.
God is the greatest fiction that man has created; hence you have
to believe in him. And why does man have to create this fiction of
God? There must be some inner necessity. I don’t have that neces-
sity, so there is no question, but let me explain to you why people
have believed in God.
One of the significant things to understand about man’s mind is
that the mind is always seeking and searching some meaning in life.
If there is no meaning, suddenly you feel . . . then what are you do-
ing here? Then why go on living? Then why go on breathing? Then
why tomorrow morning do you have to get up again and go through
the same routine—the tea, the breakfast, the same wife, the same
children, the same phony kiss to the wife. Then the same office, the
same work, and the evening comes, and bored, utterly bored, you are
back home—why go on doing all this? The mind has a question: Is
there any meaning in all this, or are you just vegetating?
So man has been searching for meaning. He created God as a fic-
tion to fulfill his need for meaning. Without God, the world be-
comes accidental. It is no longer a creation of a wise God who creates
it for your growth, for your development, or for something. Remove
God, and the world is accidental, meaningless. And the mind has an
intrinsic incapacity to live with meaninglessness, so it creates all
kinds of fictions— God, nirvana, heaven, paradise, another life be-
yond death—and makes a whole system. But it is a fiction to fulfill
a certain psychological need.
I cannot say, “There is God,” and I cannot say, “There is not God.”
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Belief Is Not the Answer
years old, and even man’s fossilized bodies, thousands of years old.
But what has the last pope said about it? He said, “The world was
created exactly as it is said in the Bible.” Four thousand and four
years before Jesus, that means six thousand years ago.
All the evidence goes against it. In India we have found cities
that are seven thousand years old. In India we have the Vedas, which
are at least ten thousand years old, according to a very scientific
approach. According to the Hindus they are ninety thousand years
old, because in the Vedas there is a mention of a certain state of the
stars which happened ninety thousand years ago. Now, how can that
be described in the Vedas if they are not ninety thousand years old?
But what has the last pope said? He said, “God created the world
with all these things. Everything is possible for him; he created the
world four thousand and four years before Jesus, with animal bodies
looking millions of years old.” Everything is possible for God! One
fiction, then you have to support it with another fiction, and you
can go to the point of absurdity. And why? Again and again man has
asked this question.
A simple, very simple argument has been behind it. You see an
earthen pot. You know it cannot be created by itself; there must
have been a potter. This has been the simple argument of all these
religions: that if even a single earthen pot cannot be created by itself
and needs a potter to create it, this vast universe needs a creator.
And it has satisfied the simple human mind. But it cannot satisfy a
sophisticated, rational mind.
If you say the universe needs a God to create it, then the question
is bound to arise, “Who created God?” And then you fall into a re-
gress absurdum. Then God one is created by God two, and God two
is created by God three, and God three by God four, and then there
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Belief, Doubt, and Fanaticism
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Belief Is Not the Answer
your eyes. Then you live in darkness, and in darkness you ask, “Does
light exist?”
I am reminded of a small story in Buddha’s life. A man was
brought to Gautam Buddha who was blind, but was a very logical
man. He was so logical that his village and the pundits of the vil-
lage became utterly fed up with his logic. They could not prove to
him that light exists. The whole village knew; everybody saw it, only
the blind logician was unable to see it. But he was a very logical
man. He said, “Anything that exists can be touched. Bring light—I
would like to touch it. Anything that exists, you can hit it with
something, it will make sound. Let me hear the sound of your light
being hit by something. If it has any smell, bring it to my nose, I can
smell it. If it has any taste, I can taste it. These are the four possi-
bilities with me.”
Now, you cannot taste light, and you cannot create a sound out
of it, and you cannot smell it, and you cannot touch it. And the blind
logician would laugh and he would say, “You just want to prove me
blind, hence you have created this fiction of light. There is no light.
You are all blind just like me; you are befooling yourself.”
Buddha was passing by the side of the village, so the villagers
thought, “It is a good opportunity; let us take this logician to Gau-
tam Buddha, perhaps he may be able to help.” Buddha listened to
the whole story and he said, “The blind man is right, and you are all
wrong, because what he needs is not argumentation; he needs medi-
cine for his eyes to be cured. And you have brought him to the
wrong person. Take him to a physician.”
Buddha had his own personal physician, who was provided by a
great king, Bimbisara, to take care of Buddha’s body. So Buddha
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Belief, Doubt, and Fanaticism
said, “You need not go far to find a great physician, I have one with
me. You can show the blind man to him.” He left the physician
behind in the village, and he moved on. In three months the blind
man’s eyes were opened. He was not really blind—just a small dis-
ease; a small, thin layer was covering his vision. It was removed. He
came dancing. He fell at Buddha’s feet and he said, “If they had not
brought me to you, my whole life I would have argued against light,
and they would not have been able to prove it.”
Godliness is not something that argument can prove or dis-
prove. It is something that you can experience.
You will be surprised to know that the word medicine and the word
meditation come from the same root. Medicine cures the body, medita-
tion cures your being; it is the inner medicine.
I have experienced godliness everywhere, because nothing else ex-
ists. But there is no God. And if you want to experience godliness—
just a little bit of meditation, a little bit of becoming thoughtless
and remaining aware. When your awareness is there, and thoughts
start dropping like leaves in the fall, and when there is only aware-
ness and there is not a single thought there, you will have the taste,
the very taste on your tongue, of what I am saying. And unless you
have tasted, don’t believe me; don’t believe anyone, because belief
can become a beggar. You may become satisfied with the belief, and
you may never try.
I just heard the other day that President Ronald Reagan wants
one minute of silence in every school, college, and institution. The
idea is great, but I don’t know whether Reagan understands what it
means, one minute of silence. He must mean simply one minute
keeping quiet, not speaking. Not speaking is not silence. You may
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Belief Is Not the Answer
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