The God Conspiracy.
The Path from Superstition to Super Consciousness.
Not believing, but only experiencing, says Osho in this inspiring book, is a way of finding truth and meaning. While Nietzsche's declaration that "God is dead, therefore man is free" was an incredible step in understanding, he argues, it is in itself a negative solution and does not bring freedom.
Simply removing God is not enough. In The God Conspiracy, Osho offers a solution beyond Nietzsche — meditation, a direct connection with existence itself. Here he shows how Zen and meditation allow us to find meaning and significance, creativity, receptivity, and a path to freedom.
Zen has no God, but it has a tremendous power to transform our consciousness, to bring so much awareness that committing evil becomes inconceivable. This book argues persuasively that transformation cannot be imposed, but must come from one’s innermost being and understanding
Excerpt: Two questions on the subject of God.
Is it possible for man to live without God?
Yes. In fact, it is only possible for man to live without God. A man with God does not live, he hesitates on every point of living, he is just half-hearted.
He is making love and worried about hell. How can he love a woman when the Bible goes on saying that the woman is the gateway to hell? He is making love, and thinking about the Bible and the sermon on Sunday: “The woman is the gateway to hell. What are you doing?” So neither can he love, nor can he live without love. God has made man very schizophrenic, half-hearted in everything.
You are earning money, and at the same time you know that your greed is a sin. If you don’t earn money you starve. Your whole nature rebels against starvation, forces you to earn something to feed yourself. Nature pulls one way, God and his representatives pull you the other way. You are in a strange position
You are asking, “Is it possible for man to live without God?” It is only possible without God to live totally, to live meditatively, to live fully.
Sigmund Freud’s statement is worth remembering. Because he worked his whole life on sex, he thought sex was the root of all problems. But he never understood that it is not sex that is the problem, it is the suppression of sex that is the problem. The priest is the problem, the God is the problem, the holy scriptures are the problem; sex is not the problem.
Sex is such a simple thing. All the animals are enjoying sex; none of them go to the couch of a psychoanalyst. I have never met any animal going to the psychiatrist because he is feeling schizophrenic. They are all living and enjoying, there is no problem.
The pagans lived very joyously before religions, particularly Christianity, destroyed them from the earth. They had no idea of any sin. They loved women, they danced, they drank, they played music. Their whole life was sheer joy.
But Sigmund Freud has this one statement I was going to tell you about: “The priests cannot destroy sex.” But they have succeeded in poisoning it. They could not succeed in destroying sex, otherwise there would have been no humanity. Sex is there, but they have destroyed the joy in it, they have made it a great sin. So you are committing the sin, and you think the woman is the cause.
The reality is totally different; it is God. But as God is only a fiction he cannot do anything. The priest is the representative, the spokesman of God, who goes on creating all kinds of guilt feelings in you. Those guilt feelings don’t allow you to live. Everything is wrong, everything is a sin.
So your question, “Is it possible for man to live without God?” – I say unto you, it is only possible for man to live if he is without God. But this is only half. The fictitious God has to be replaced by an actual experience of truth in meditation; otherwise you will go insane.
The second question:
All the religions are based on God. Their morality, their commandments, their prayers, their saintliness – everything points towards God, and you say that God is dead. Then what will happen to all these other things that are dependent on the concept of God?
All those things that are dependent on the concept of God are bogus; hypocrites are created by all those things. Your morality is not real, it is imposed out of fear, or out of greed. A true morality arises only in a meditator’s consciousness. It is not something imported from the outside, it is something arising in your very being. It is spontaneous.
And when morality is spontaneous, it is a joy, it is simply sharing your compassion and love.
All the qualities which are dependent on God will disappear with God disappearing. They are very superficial.
You all have back doors. At the front door you are one person, at the back door you are a different person. Have you ever watched it? At the front door you are a great Catholic, so religious, so pious, so prayerful, that anybody could think you were a saint. But this is only in your sitting room. At the back door you are just as human beings are supposed to be, with all their instincts, with all their sex, with all their greed, with all their anger. Just look at your God himself. Different religions have different ideas, but all ideas prove one thing, that God is the original sinner.
The Hindu God created woman and became infatuated – with his own daughter. And the woman became afraid, so she became a cow and God became the bull. She rushed and became somebody else, and God followed her – that’s how all the species have been created according to Hindu theology; it was God following the woman into different forms. The woman was changing forms, God was also changing forms. The woman was always the female, the God was always the male. That’s why there are so many millions of species. If the woman became a female mosquito, God became a male mosquito. It went on and on, perhaps it is still going on.
Do you think this god is a moral god? And the same is true about all gods of all religions. The Jewish god says in the Old Testament, “I am a very jealous god. I am not the one who is going to forgive you, I am a very angry god. You should not worship anybody else except me. And remember I am your father, not your uncle.” What kind of god is this, jealous, worried that you may worship another god? And finally he says, “I am your father, remember; I am not your uncle.” Uncles are always nicer people than fathers.
A German theology professor, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, has made the following statement: “The majority of Catholic bishops in the US are sexually disturbed. We must assume that German bishops will soon be calling a commission to see if they are sexually disturbed also.”
The Barnsberg church historian, professor George Denzler, commented: “The pope is responsible for a very painful, very terrible sexual morality.”
And a German Protestant pastor, Helga Frisch, said, “When celibacy was introduced in the tenth century, the priest killed the pope’s ambassador and threatened to murder the archbishop. I am amazed that priests today don’t resort to similar tactics.”
There is a morality which is imposed from the outside which is never in tune with your heart. And there is a morality that comes from within you, which is always in tune with your heart and in tune with the heart of the universe. That is authentic morality.
I don’t give you any discipline, any morality. I simply give you a clarity of vision. Out of that clarity whatsoever comes is good, is divine, is moral.
The Path from Superstition to Super Consciousness.
Not believing, but only experiencing, says Osho in this inspiring book, is a way of finding truth and meaning. While Nietzsche's declaration that "God is dead, therefore man is free" was an incredible step in understanding, he argues, it is in itself a negative solution and does not bring freedom.
Simply removing God is not enough. In The God Conspiracy, Osho offers a solution beyond Nietzsche — meditation, a direct connection with existence itself. Here he shows how Zen and meditation allow us to find meaning and significance, creativity, receptivity, and a path to freedom.
Zen has no God, but it has a tremendous power to transform our consciousness, to bring so much awareness that committing evil becomes inconceivable. This book argues persuasively that transformation cannot be imposed, but must come from one’s innermost being and understanding
Excerpt: Two questions on the subject of God.
Is it possible for man to live without God?
Yes. In fact, it is only possible for man to live without God. A man with God does not live, he hesitates on every point of living, he is just half-hearted.
He is making love and worried about hell. How can he love a woman when the Bible goes on saying that the woman is the gateway to hell? He is making love, and thinking about the Bible and the sermon on Sunday: “The woman is the gateway to hell. What are you doing?” So neither can he love, nor can he live without love. God has made man very schizophrenic, half-hearted in everything.
You are earning money, and at the same time you know that your greed is a sin. If you don’t earn money you starve. Your whole nature rebels against starvation, forces you to earn something to feed yourself. Nature pulls one way, God and his representatives pull you the other way. You are in a strange position
You are asking, “Is it possible for man to live without God?” It is only possible without God to live totally, to live meditatively, to live fully.
Sigmund Freud’s statement is worth remembering. Because he worked his whole life on sex, he thought sex was the root of all problems. But he never understood that it is not sex that is the problem, it is the suppression of sex that is the problem. The priest is the problem, the God is the problem, the holy scriptures are the problem; sex is not the problem.
Sex is such a simple thing. All the animals are enjoying sex; none of them go to the couch of a psychoanalyst. I have never met any animal going to the psychiatrist because he is feeling schizophrenic. They are all living and enjoying, there is no problem.
The pagans lived very joyously before religions, particularly Christianity, destroyed them from the earth. They had no idea of any sin. They loved women, they danced, they drank, they played music. Their whole life was sheer joy.
But Sigmund Freud has this one statement I was going to tell you about: “The priests cannot destroy sex.” But they have succeeded in poisoning it. They could not succeed in destroying sex, otherwise there would have been no humanity. Sex is there, but they have destroyed the joy in it, they have made it a great sin. So you are committing the sin, and you think the woman is the cause.
The reality is totally different; it is God. But as God is only a fiction he cannot do anything. The priest is the representative, the spokesman of God, who goes on creating all kinds of guilt feelings in you. Those guilt feelings don’t allow you to live. Everything is wrong, everything is a sin.
So your question, “Is it possible for man to live without God?” – I say unto you, it is only possible for man to live if he is without God. But this is only half. The fictitious God has to be replaced by an actual experience of truth in meditation; otherwise you will go insane.
The second question:
All the religions are based on God. Their morality, their commandments, their prayers, their saintliness – everything points towards God, and you say that God is dead. Then what will happen to all these other things that are dependent on the concept of God?
All those things that are dependent on the concept of God are bogus; hypocrites are created by all those things. Your morality is not real, it is imposed out of fear, or out of greed. A true morality arises only in a meditator’s consciousness. It is not something imported from the outside, it is something arising in your very being. It is spontaneous.
And when morality is spontaneous, it is a joy, it is simply sharing your compassion and love.
All the qualities which are dependent on God will disappear with God disappearing. They are very superficial.
You all have back doors. At the front door you are one person, at the back door you are a different person. Have you ever watched it? At the front door you are a great Catholic, so religious, so pious, so prayerful, that anybody could think you were a saint. But this is only in your sitting room. At the back door you are just as human beings are supposed to be, with all their instincts, with all their sex, with all their greed, with all their anger. Just look at your God himself. Different religions have different ideas, but all ideas prove one thing, that God is the original sinner.
The Hindu God created woman and became infatuated – with his own daughter. And the woman became afraid, so she became a cow and God became the bull. She rushed and became somebody else, and God followed her – that’s how all the species have been created according to Hindu theology; it was God following the woman into different forms. The woman was changing forms, God was also changing forms. The woman was always the female, the God was always the male. That’s why there are so many millions of species. If the woman became a female mosquito, God became a male mosquito. It went on and on, perhaps it is still going on.
Do you think this god is a moral god? And the same is true about all gods of all religions. The Jewish god says in the Old Testament, “I am a very jealous god. I am not the one who is going to forgive you, I am a very angry god. You should not worship anybody else except me. And remember I am your father, not your uncle.” What kind of god is this, jealous, worried that you may worship another god? And finally he says, “I am your father, remember; I am not your uncle.” Uncles are always nicer people than fathers.
A German theology professor, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, has made the following statement: “The majority of Catholic bishops in the US are sexually disturbed. We must assume that German bishops will soon be calling a commission to see if they are sexually disturbed also.”
The Barnsberg church historian, professor George Denzler, commented: “The pope is responsible for a very painful, very terrible sexual morality.”
And a German Protestant pastor, Helga Frisch, said, “When celibacy was introduced in the tenth century, the priest killed the pope’s ambassador and threatened to murder the archbishop. I am amazed that priests today don’t resort to similar tactics.”
There is a morality which is imposed from the outside which is never in tune with your heart. And there is a morality that comes from within you, which is always in tune with your heart and in tune with the heart of the universe. That is authentic morality.
I don’t give you any discipline, any morality. I simply give you a clarity of vision. Out of that clarity whatsoever comes is good, is divine, is moral.
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