...There is no God, but that
does not mean that I'm an atheist. Certainly I am not a theist – I am saying
there is no God – but that does not mean that you jump to the opposite, the
atheist.
The atheist says there is no
God also, but when I say there is no God, and the atheists like Charvaka, Karl
Marx, Lenin, Epicurus... When these people say there is no God, there is a
tremendous difference between my statement and their statement – the statements
are absolutely similar – because I say at the same moment that there is
godliness.
So when I say there is no God,
I am not agreeing with Marx or Epicurus. I am certainly not agreeing with
Jesus, Krishna, Moses, Mohammed, when they say there is God, because they use
God as a person. Now, to think of God as a person is just your imagination. The
God of the Chinese has a Chinese face, and the God of the Negroes has a Negro
face, and certainly the God of the Jews must have a Jewish nose; it can't be
otherwise. And if horses think about God, their God will be a horse. So this is
just projection. Giving personality to God is your projection.
When I say there is no God, I
am denying personality to God. I am saying God is not, but there is tremendous
godliness. That is an impersonal energy, pure energy. To impose any form on it
is ugly. You are imposing yourself on it.
So when I say there is no God,
I am saying there is no person as God; all personality is human projection. I
want you to take away the personality and let God be free, free from the
bondage of personality that you have imposed upon him.
I am not an atheist. To me, the
whole universe is full of the energy of God and nothing else.
You have to understand one
thing which is very fundamental. The world consists of verbs, not of nouns.
Nouns are a human invention necessary, but after all, a human invention. But
existence consists of verbs, only of verbs, not nouns and pronouns. Look at
this. You are seeing a flower, a rose. To call it a flower is not right,
because it has not stopped flowering, it is still flowering; it is a verb, it
is a flow. To call it a flower you have made it a noun. You see the river. You
calI it a river you have made it a noun. It is rivering. It will be more
accurate to the existential to say that it is rivering, flowing. And everything
is changing, flowing. The child is becoming a young man; the young man is
becoming old; life is turning into death; death is turning into life.
Everything is in continuity, continuous change; it is a continuum. There never
comes a stop, a full stop. It comes only in language.
In existence there is no full
stop.
Excerpted from
From Unconsciousness to Consciousness by Osho