Is it difficult for people to drop their expectations of God as their only hope?

Is it difficult for people to drop god because he is their only hope and they focus all their expectations on him? It seems to be very hard to drop an expectation even when one can see it as such and can guess that most likely it will end up in disappointment.

<q>SEKITO SAID, "THEY ALL COME OUT OF HERE...."</q> Remember this word `here'. We were just talking about the same thing. <q>SEKITO SAID, "THEY ALL COME OUT OF HERE, AND THERE IS NOTHING WANTING."</q> Once you are here, there is nothing unfulfilled in you. Everything becomes so fulfilled, such a deep contentment, that you don't need anything anymore. You have actualized your potential. Your flowers have opened their petals, the spring has come. It all comes from here, it all comes from now. Neither can Buddha give it to you, nor anybody else. <q>ON SEIGEN'S DEATH, SEKITO WENT TO MOUNT NANGAKU. FINDING A LARGE, FLAT ROCK, HE BUILT A HUT, AND FROM THENCE FORWARD CAME TO BE KNOWN AS "STONEHEAD," AND LATER, WHEN HE WAS A MASTER, AS "STONEHEAD OSHO."</q> This Mount Nangaku is the place where he had gone to see Master Nangaku. In Japan it has been a tradition…

At darshan, from the way you talked to me it seems clear my meditation is to live totally in the here and now. You made it clear I was not to live in hope. T.s. Eliot said, "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. There is yet faith, but faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting." anything more to say Osho?

THE question is from Pradeepa. She understood perfectly what I was trying to show her. Maturity happens when you start living without hope. Hope is childish. You become mature when you don't project hope into the future. In fact, you are mature when you don't have any future; you just live in the moment -- because that is the only reality there is. In the past, religion used to talk about the hereafter. Those were the childish, immature days of religion. Now religion talks about herenow; religion has come of age. In the Vedas, in the Koran, in the Bible, hereafter is the basic goal. But now man is no longer that childish. That sort of God and that sort of religion is dead. It was a religion of hope, it was a religion of future. Now another sort of religion is asserting itself all over the world, and this…

Young people hope a little but sooner or later their hopes start dwindling. By the time somebody is thirty hopes are finished. Hope seems to be the illusion of youth, particularly now it seems to be so. The mature person is one who lives without hope, but then he lives meaninglessly. There is no significance in his life, no fragrance, no light, nothing to wait for except death. That's utterly wrong. Man has never been so utterly wrong as he is now. For the first time all that is high has disappeared. Only the baser instincts are left. It seems that there is no way to go uphill. One can go only downhill and one day fall into one's grave... and that seems to be the ultimate end. This attitude towards life is sheer stupidity. It has no logos, no meaning.

Osho, is it only disappointment that one finds in the world? Is it utterly futile to keep hope?

A little boy asks his old granny, “Granny, can you croak?” She says, “Yes, son, why not?” The boy says, “Then croak, please! Because mom was saying: ‘When that old woman croaks we’ll get lots of money.’” But the child can be forgiven; he understood as much as he could. He thinks it’s only a matter of saying “croak”—say it and we’ll get money. He doesn’t know what lies behind death. But even grown-ups behave the same way. Neither do you understand what is said to you, nor do you understand what you see. As long as mind is there, you deform everything. Only free of mind does truth begin to appear. Then this world is wondrous. Then it is not maya. Your mind has made it appear as maya. Your mind has cast the net of illusion upon it. Bhartrihari left palace and home for the forest to meditate.…

Question: OUR BELOVED MASTER, ONCE, WHEN YAKUSAN WAS RECITING A SUTRA, A MONK ASKED HIM: "YOU DON'T USUALLY ALLOW US TO RECITE SUTRAS. WHY DO YOU YOURSELF RECITE A SUTRA?" "I JUST WANT TO ENTERTAIN MY EYES," REPLIED YAKUSAN. THE MONK ASKED, "CAN I ALSO RECITE SUTRAS LIKE YOU?" "IF YOU WANT TO RECITE SUTRAS LIKE ME," ANSWERED YAKUSAN, "YOU MUST PIERCE EVEN THROUGH THE HIDE OF A COW." ON ANOTHER OCCASION, YAKUSAN WAS ASKED BY GOVERNOR RI, "WHAT ARE THE PRECEPTS, MEDITATION AND WISDOM?" YAKUSAN ANSWERED, "THIS POOR MONK HASN'T SUCH USELESS FURNITURE." RI SAID, "DON'T BE SO MYSTERIOUS!" YAKUSAN SAID, "IF YOU WANT TO HAVE WHAT I HAVE, YOU MUST SIT ON THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN, GO DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE DEEPEST SEA. "YOU DON'T THROW OFF YOUR BURDENS EVEN WHEN YOU GO TO BED; YOU ARE BUSY WITH ILLUSIONS.