God Is Beyond Hypothesis - Osho

On the path of dhyana, or Zen, there is no hypothesis, no God. And it is not a question of love. A man of Zen is very loving, but he has not practiced love; it has come as a by-product of his realization. He simply realized his own buddhahood. There is no question of another, a God somewhere else in heaven. He has simply reached his own center of life, and being there, he explodes into love, into compassion. His love comes after his enlightenment; it is not a method for enlightenment.

The effort on the path of Zen is to go beyond the mind, to attain no-mind, to be utterly empty of all thoughts, love included. Zen is the path of emptiness – no God, no love, nothing is to be allowed; just a pure nothingness in which you also disappear.

There have been only two religions that are not hypothetical, Buddhism and Taoism. Zen is a crossbreed of these two, and the crossbreed is always better than both parents. It is the meeting of Buddha and Lao Tzu; out of this meeting is born Zen. It is not Buddhism, it is not Taoism; it has its own individuality. It carries everything beautiful that comes from Buddha and everything great that comes from Lao Tzu. It is the highest peak that man has ever reached. Only Taoism and Buddhism don’t start with a belief. Their whole effort is that you should enter yourself without any concept of what you are going to find there. Just being open, available, without any prejudice, without any philosophy and scripture – just go in, open-hearted, and when you reach the point where the mind is silent, not a single thought moving.

According to Tao and Buddha, even God is a thought. When there is no thought, you reach the highest Everest of consciousness. At that point, you know that every living being has the potential of being a god. Buddha is reported to have said, “The moment I became enlightened, I was surprised: the whole of existence is enlightened; only people don’t understand. They are carrying their enlightenment within themselves, and they don’t look at it.” Buddha has reported his past lives’ experiences.

When he was not an enlightened man but was just a seeker, he heard about a man who had become enlightened, so he went to see him. He had no idea of what enlightenment is, and he had not come with any prejudice for or against. But as he came close to the man, he found himself bowing down and touching the man’s feet. He was surprised! He had not decided to do it – in spite of himself, he was touching the man’s feet. That was one surprise. And as he stood up, the second surprise was even bigger: the enlightened man touched his feet. He said, “What are you doing? You are enlightened; it is perfectly right for me to touch your feet. But why are you touching my feet?” And that man laughed. He said, “Sometime before, I was unenlightened. Now I am enlightened. You are unenlightened now. Someday you will become enlightened. So it is only a question of time. As far as I am concerned, you may not know it, but I can see your hidden treasure.” So everybody is a Buddha, either aware of it or unaware of it. No hypothesis comes into the path of Zen. Except for Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu, and the people who became enlightened from their lineages, the whole of humanity is living in hypotheses. The search has to be inwards, not outwards.

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Osho excerpts from: Master of the Irrational,