God Realization

Osho, seekers have always observed that God-realization is an extremely arduous event. But enlightened ones like you have always emphasized that the divine can happen here and now. Is saying this again and again a challenge and a way to make people try—a method, a device?

He began to beg. Twenty years passed. He forgot. If someone begs for twenty years, to keep remembering “I am a prince” would be impossible, painful; it would make begging difficult. So it is only fitting that he forgot. He had to forget, otherwise how could he beg? A prince—and he begs? Door to door, standing with a begging bowl at thresholds! Begging outside hotels and restaurants, asking for leftovers! A prince! He had to forget the prince entirely, had to consign it to oblivion. That chapter was closed. As if it had been some dream, some story read, a film seen—what did it have to do with him? After twenty years, when the emperor—his father—grew old, he became anxious: there was only one son! He alone was the heir. He told his ministers: Go find him, and wherever he is, bring him back. Tell him his father has forgiven…

Beloved Osho, it has always been the observation of seekers that the realization of godliness is a very arduous phenomenon. But enlightened ones like you always emphasize that it can happen right here, right now. Is saying this again and again a provocation? And a method or device to arouse thirst in us?

Don't laugh, because most people are just like Chinmaya. Don't think that your laughing proves that you are different than Chinmaya. Chinmaya at least got up the courage to ask -- you didn't even ask. This is the only difference. You are just like him. If you haven't become God by the time the Ashtavakra Gita discourses are over, then know: there is no difference, you are just like him. But if while listening you wake up and become God, then just the shadow of the whip has worked. "It has always been the observation of seekers that the realization of God is a very arduous phenomenon." The seeker is off track from the very beginning. The very meaning of seeker assumes that God has to be sought, that he has lost God somewhere. The seeker accepts that he has lost the divine somewhere. What a strange idea. He has…

Deva means divine, amarga means pathlessness -- divine pathlessness. There is no path to God; all paths are false. In the very nature of things there can be no path to God because God is all and everywhere. A path leads somewhere. God is not somewhere: God is everywhere. A path is needed when you are going from here to there. But God is here, and there is no need for any path to be here. So all paths misguide, all paths mislead, all paths take you away from reality, not to reality. The path exists because of the desiring mind. The desiring mind is always dreaming of somewhere else. It is never in the moment so it creates the path. All paths are mind creations, and to come back to reality one has to renounce all paths. All paths are fabrications, lies, so are all philosophies, all religions.

Question: First question: Osho, God-realization through grace—how does it happen? Not only your own— not a mere dream! Let it be true, real; let the empathy not be false, not empty talk, not superficial; let it be heartfelt, existential—then sometimes it happens there too. It happens in deep delight; it happens in a deep wound; it happens in an unmindful mood; it happens in the absence of striving. You ask: “How, through grace, does God-realization happen?” Only this much can be said: “Understand the futility of effort. Understand the hollowness of striving.” Shandilya says: Drishtatvach cha. So it is seen—this is how it appears. What is seen? Sometimes you see a man on the road; you recognize the face; the name sits on the tip of your tongue—you say it is on the tongue—and still it does not come.