What does it mean to find God?

Another friend has asked: have you found god?

This is just the kind of question the traveler to Calcutta would ask. I would like to ask this friend, "Did you ever lose God?" -- because, if I say I have found God, it means I had assumed him lost. He is already found. Even when we feel we have lost him, he is still with us. It is simply that we are under hypnosis and therefore feel we have lost him. So, if a man says, "Yes, I have found God", he is mistaken. He still doesn't understand that he had never lost him in the first place. Therefore, those who come to know God will never say they have found God. They will say, "He was never lost." The day Buddha became enlightened, people gathered around him and asked, "What have you attained?" Buddha replied, "I have attained nothing. I have simply come to see that which…

Question: The last question: Osho, if one does not find God, what is the loss? With this supreme consciousness, what are you attaining? In this supreme consciousness, the bliss of the whole existence can dawn. To find God means only this: the doors of your being open to joy. The celebration of life enters you. You begin to dance. Or, think of it this way: Today the kachnar blooms, Shyam is not in the palace. Friend, you adorn yourself in spring’s finery, vermilion bright in your tresses. You laugh along with the moon, stop mid-sentence, loosen, tighten your embrace— but youth, like a maiden’s fragrance, will not be contained in golden silken robes. Today the kachnar blooms, Shyam is not in the palace. As when a lover is not at home—what do flowers mean to the beloved then? Today the kachnar blooms, Shyam is not in the palace.

Beloved Osho, is it really true that god is also searching for me? Can I wait for him to find me?

Have you ever heard in any religion, in any country, a story that God expelled a few trees out of the garden of Eden? Or a few animals, or a few birds? It is only man who is expelled. The story is significant. It simply means that the whole of existence is rooted in God. Only because man has a thinking mind, he has wandered far away. Mind is capable of wandering anywhere -- you can be sitting here and your mind may be wandering somewhere in America or somewhere in Germany, or somewhere in Japan, or maybe on the moon.... There are all kinds of lunatics. It is very rarely that you are here, very rare to be in the place where you are. Your mind is always wandering somewhere else. It is never here, it is never now. This wandering mind has taken you away from your own…

Osho, where is God? If we are to seek, where should we seek?

Is it a boat or the moon’s shadow upon the ocean’s waters? When will that boat of light touch the shore of night? Is that untouched lunar shade a frolicsome ripple, A fleeting kiss of light on parched, impatient lips? Dream, or ideal, or resolve—call it what you will— A jewel of a ray, a blossom on the body of dusk! Beyond the reach of clay—are all things false there? Are eyes, fixed on limits, chained to the horizon’s bar? How can literate eyes read what the heart hums within— What fragrance once inscribed as verse upon the gentle breeze! Let the unreachable become reachable—this is the abyss’s longing; Made vocal, written upon the deep heart of the ocean! What is that song of the Unseen the moon keeps writing— Boundless love on the boundless grief of the bounded! The quarters beat the drum, the sky is sound, Time sings,…

A friend has asked, Osho, why is the path to attaining God so hard, long, and full of suffering? Why isn’t there an easy, simple, and joyful way to attain Him?

It does not matter how far you have wandered from God. If you are willing to turn around, God will be seen this very moment. The distance between you and Him is not real; it is only the distance of your turned back—merely a question of direction. He stands right with you. He is hidden within you. Understand first that the difficulty is not of the road. Therefore do not seek an easier road; seek to be easy, to be simple. Many people look for an easy road. They ask, “Any shortcut?” They fall into great delusions, because there is no shortcut to reach God. For turning around your back, what shortcut could there be? If all that is needed is to turn, and God will be in front, what could be more concise than that? It cannot be made any shorter. But we go on looking for a shortcut.…