According to Osho, the biblical claim 'In the beginning was the Word' is mistaken: existence has no beginning or end—it's an ongoing creativity without a creator. If one imagines a beginning, it could only be silence, from which words arise and disturb. Silence is the timeless center of all life—present before, during, and after everything—and the doorway he urges us to enter.
There wasn’t a first word—reality is endless, and the deepest truth is the quiet silence at its heart; rest there.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, the christian bible begins with the statement, "in the beginning, was the word." do you agree?
There has been no creation. How can there be "the beginning"? The creation is continuous; it is creativity. Back you move, you will not find the beginning; ahead you go, you will not find the end. It is beginningless, endless creative energy. So in the first place there was no beginning. God never created the world -- there is no God. And the Bible says, "In the beginning was the word." That is the most ridiculous thing to say. If we assume just for the argument's sake that there was a beginning, then I will say, "In the beginning there was silence." How can there be "the word" in the beginning? Just look at the idea. How can the word be in the beginning? -- then what was before the word? Of course there must have been silence, before the word disturbed it. And silence means much more because that's…
John 1
1 IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND THE WORD WAS WITH GOD, AND THE WORD WAS GOD 3 ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY HIM AND WITHOUT HIM WAS NOT ANYTHING MADE THAT WAS MADE. 4 IN HIM WAS LIFE; AND LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF MEN. 5 AND THE LIGHT SHINETH IN DARKNESS; AND THE DARKNESS COMPREHENDED IT NOT. 6 THERE WAS A MAN SENT FROM GOD, WHOSE NAME WAS JOHN. 7 THE SAME CAME FOR A WITNESS, TO BEAR WITNESS OF THE LIGHT, THAT ALL MEN THROUGH HIM MIGHT BELIEVE. 8 HE WAS NOT THAT LIGHT, BUT WAS SENT TO BEAR WITNESS OF THAT LIGHT. 11 HE CAME UNTO HIS OWN,AND HIS OWN RECEIVED HIM NOT. 12 BUT AS MANY AS RECEIVED HIM, TO THEM GAVE HE POWER TO BECOME THE SONS OF GOD, EVEN TO THEM THAT BELIEVE ON HIS NAME: 14 AND THE WORD WAS MADE…
the bible begins with a very strange statement in the beginning was the word and god was with the word and god was the word this beginning of the bible has led the whole western mind in a wrong direction the word can never be the beginning because before the word can even exist he sound is needed to transform the sound into the word a mind is needed the word can never be the beginning the sound of running water is not a word the sound of wind passing through the pine trees is not a word word came much later on word came with man, not with existence word is a mind product it is giving meaning to sound sound is there, then comes the mind then mind interprets the sound and makes the word the word is a human creation if i was to write the bible…
Slowly slowly, first for a few seconds, then for a few minutes, then for half an hour, then for an hour, then for a day, then for two days, then for a week... slowly slowly the person who is getting ready to go into space prepares himself. A musician went to visit this absolutely sound-proof room. When he entered it he could not believe what was happening. They had told him it was absolutely silent, but he heard two sounds very clearly, absolutely clearly, and they were not whisperlike -- they were so much that he enquired of the director of the lab 'What is the matter? From where are these two sounds coming?' And the director laughed; he said 'They are not coming from anywhere. One is your heart beating, the other is the sound of your blood circulating.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, MANY PEOPLE, WHEN THEY TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE ORIGIN OF CREATION, ARE PUZZLED: WHY DOES THE ULTIMATE, WHICH WAS ONE, HAVE TO BE IMMEDIATELY TWO AFTER CREATION? IN OTHER WORDS, POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE, MALE AND FEMALE, AND SO ON. THE ULTIMATE IN ALL ITS POWER, EXISTENCE, FULLNESS, COULD HAVE HELPED CREATION ON A MALE-MALE BASIS, ON A FEMALE-FEMALE BASIS, OR A JOINED TOGETHER BASIS, AS A THEOSOPHIST ONCE EXPLAINED. HE WROTE THAT AT THE TIME OF CREATION THE HUMAN CREATURES, MALE AND FEMALE, WERE BORN JOINED TOGETHER AT BIRTH AND THEY WALKED ON FOUR LEGS. OF COURSE, THE ULTIMATE IN ALL ITS POWER COULD HAVE SOLVED THE PROBLEM OF PROGENY IN A DIFFERENT WAY FROM THAT WHICH WE KNOW NOW. IS THIS A QUESTION WHICH IS SOLVABLE, OR WILL IT BE BETTER TO HAVE IT ADDED AS UNKNOWN TO LIMITED THINKING, TO THE MIND AS SUCH?