There have been thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Schiller, Hegel, who say: If there is no God He has to be invented, because without God man will lose all significance. And they are also right: even if there is no God he has to be invented, for man’s sake. It is better to have an invented God than not to have any. At least He will give an appearance of significance to life, a certain rhythm. The noise will start looking at least like music. The accidental will not be accidental any more, some meaning will arise. Hence, they say if there is no God, He has to be invented.

And on the other pole, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud say: Even if there is God, He has to be killed, because if He remains man is reduced into an object. Man loses all freedom; man loses all will. But both are wrong, because both are thinking in terms of God as if God is the other.

Kabir says – just as all the mystics of all the ages have been saying – God is not the other. He is you. He is your inside. He is your subjectivity, so how can He reduce you into an object? He is not separate, so how can He take your freedom away? He need not be invented because He is already there. And He need not be killed, because in killing Him you will be simply committing suicide – and that is impossible; nobody can commit suicide. You can drop one body; you will immediately enter into another womb. Suicide is impossible. You can pretend the game of committing suicide but you can never succeed in it, because nothing can be destroyed. Not even a grain of sand can be destroyed.

Physicists say there is no possibility of destroying anything. Neither can something new be created nor can something existent be destroyed. If this is so even about a grain of sand, what to say about the being of man?’ – that is the highest flowering – how can it be destroyed? Life is eternal. Life is immortal. It changes forms, certainly, just like the waves in the ocean go on changing but the ocean remains. Bodies come and go, minds come and go, but your innermost witness remains always there. And that witness is God. Hegel, Kant, Schiller, are wrong; so is Freud, so is Nietzsche, so is Jean-Paul Sartre. They both accept the same premise: that God is the other. And God is not the other.

God is your very soul. God is already in you… just a little alertness. Wake up and see! You need not wait for the Guest. The Guest has already arrived in the very being of the host. The Guest is found in the host.

THE GUEST IS INSIDE YOU -says Kabir- AND ALSO INSIDE ME; YOU KNOW THE SPROUT IS HIDDEN INSIDE THE SEED. Exactly like that – just as in the seed the sprout is hidden – in you is hidden God. Ofcourse if you cut the seed, if you dissect the seed, you will not find the sprout – or will you? You can cut the seed; you will not find anything at all: no sprout, no foliage, no branches, no flowers, no fruits, nothing at all, because the seed is the unmanifest. It needs growth, it needs a right soil, it needs a gardener.

It needs great art to help the unmanifest to become manifest; to bring that which is hidden to the world, great skill is needed. Buddha has called religion nothing but skill, art, UPAYA, a methodology – a methodology to bring the unseen into the world of the seen, to bring the invisible into the world of the visible. In the seed the flowers are there, but they are invisible. A proper context will be needed where they can become visible.

Exactly in the same way, God is in you; you are the seed of God. God is not to be worshipped but revealed. You have to grow and become a God! You are not to seek and search for a God somewhere, already ready-made. You have to grow; growth is religion. You have to grow into a God. You are carrying the seed; you have to find a soil – you have to find a Buddha-field. You have to find a gardener, a Master.

You have to find a commune where many trees are blooming, so that hope can arise in the heart of the seed that “Yes, if other seeds can become trees, GREAT trees, why can’t I?”; so that longing can arise in the heart, so the heart becomes aflame, afire, athirst. In that very thirst, in that very longing, the seed has started moving towards the flowers.

It is a long journey, but an inner journey. You can make the whole journey by sitting silently, not going anywhere, because the going has to be something inner. It is not in space; it is in consciousness.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse series:

The Guest

Chapter #13
Chapter title: The guest is inside you
8 May 1979 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on eminent philosophers like Aristotle, Berkeley, Bukharin, Camus, Confucius, Descartes, Feuerbach, Hegel, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Huxley, Jaspers, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Moore, Nietzsche, Plato, Pythagoras, Russell, Sartre, Schiller, Socrates, Voltaire, Wittgenstein and others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. A Sudden Clash of Thunder
2. Be Still and Know
3. Dang Dang Doko Dang
4. Beyond Psychology
5. The Rebel
6. Philosophia Perennis Vol.1-2
7. Isan: No Footprints in the Blue Sky
8. The Invitation
9. Just Like That
10. One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green
11. Light on the Path
12. The Empty Boat
13. What Is, Is, What Ain’t, Ain’t
14. From Personality to Individuality
15. From Death to Deathlessness