What power or inspiration helps bring a person closer to God?

Osho, what is the proof of God’s existence?

And you still ask for proof? There have been people who offered proofs, and all their proofs are futile. No proof works. All the proofs for God so far are not worth a penny. Someone says: everything that is made must have a maker; such a vast world—surely it must have a maker. But that proof commits suicide; the moment it meets an atheist, it goes lame. The atheist says: If every made thing must have a maker, if God is needed to make the world, then who made God? With that he tightens the noose around your neck. Who made God? You protest: No, no one made God. Then the atheist says: If God can be without being made, why can’t the world be without being made? The argument collapses; it falls flat. You say: just as the potter makes the pot, so that Great Potter made this world.…

Osho, I want to be rich, I want a high position, and I want a beautiful woman too. What should I do?

A man once placed an advertisement—meant for people like you: “Send two rupees and learn the formula to become a millionaire overnight.” Now who wouldn’t want to become a millionaire for two rupees! Almost a hundred thousand people sent their money. A week later, everyone who had sent the two rupees received the reply: “Do exactly what I did.” He had indeed become a millionaire overnight! One lakh people sent two rupees each—two lakhs landed in his lap. This is how you’re being duped—through gambling, matka. And it’s not only people who run these scams; governments do it too. Governments that claim to be Gandhian run lotteries! A lottery is gambling—a cheat dressed up nicely. But the greedy get hooked: “Just one rupee for a chance at lakhs. If it comes once, that’s enough…!” But what will you do after getting lakhs? There’s a famous story by Tolstoy: A tailor…

Osho, how does the remembrance of the Divine begin? How am I to remember God? I have no clue to God at all.

Have you ever known any joy through the ego? The ego aches like a wound; the smallest things hurt. The greater the ego, the greater the pain in life. Remove the source of this pain. Then some true Master will knock at your door. Or, unawares, you will recognize a Master in one in whom you had never seen one before. Sometimes he was living right next door and you did not hear; you met daily on the road, exchanged greetings—and still you never saw. You need the eye to see; the ego does not allow such an eye to be born. Ego is a great curtain. One way is this. If this too feels hard—if letting the ego drop is not easy, if recognizing the Master is not easy—then there is another way: search in nature. In waterfalls, trees, winds, the moon and the stars. Do not search for…

Within three to nine months time the mind stops chattering. One day suddenly it is not there, and that day such a silence descends as you have never known before. That silence, that infinite silence that comes and overwhelms you from all sides. Then it never leaves you; it remains with you, it becomes your very soul. It is very liberating. Sudhiro means the wise one. It does not mean the man of knowledge, it means the man of insight. It does not mean one who knows much, it simply means one who is so innocent, so open, so vulnerable to existence that nothing can remain hidden from him. Existence reveals itself to him. It does not mean a scholar, it means a seer. And the path is taking a jump from mind to no-mind.

Osho, tell us of some lure that would set us moving toward God—some temptation that would engage our mind in God-realization.

Difficult today, difficult tomorrow; the day after, not so difficult—if you persist and don’t jump up, “Oh, a bad thought—get rid of it!” The witness has nothing to do with good or bad. Thorns have the same worth as flowers. We label; the witness does not. Soon, an amazing thing begins: now and then a gap appears—an interval. A thought comes, then the next does not; a space remains. In that empty space, the first glimpses begin. In that emptiness, even you are not—there is only emptiness. That is the door. Keep at it, and thoughts lessen; spaces grow. It’s like a road where a person passes, then for an hour no one—emptiness. A thought appears on the screen, then none for a long while; the screen is blank. From that blankness, your first contacts with God begin—because in that moment you are present. Thought can take you to past…