Kingdom of God

I want to conquer the kingdom of god. How to do it?

God cannot be conquered. The very idea is foolish. You have to be conquered by God, you have to allow God to conquer you, and on the contrary you are saying, 'I want to conquer the kingdom of God.' This is the male ego, the aggressive mind: it always thinks in terms of conquering -- conquer nature, conquer God, conquer love. And you have destroyed everything that you have conquered. You have destroyed the beauty of nature, the ecology, the inner harmony of nature by your conquering it. Even a man like Bertrand Russell writes a book called THE CONQUEST OF NATURE. But this is how the Western mind has been thinking continuously -- in terms of conquering. Either conquer this world or conquer that world, but you remain an Alexander. This is not the way to approach love, this is not the way to pray. The very word 'conquering'…

The man said 'That is too mystical for me. Make it a little more clear.' So Rinzai wrote on the sand with his finger 'Dhyan -- meditation.' He said 'If you cannot understand silence try to meditate, then one day you may be able to understand silence.' But the man said 'Even that is not comprehensible to me -- just a single word, "meditation"?' So Rinzai wrote 'meditation' twice but the man was still insistent so Rinzai wrote 'meditation' thrice. And the man said 'You must be mad because you go on writing the same word again and again.' Rinzai said ,'I know that it will look mad to you but what can I do? Lower than that I cannot fall. The first answer, to be absolutely silent, was the truest because it is beyond words. But if you insist then at the most I can compromise by saying 'meditation'.

Osho, you said, “Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of earth.” But regarding “Blessed are the pure in heart, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” what do you say?

There is another saying of Jesus: Blessed are those whose hearts are pure, for the kingdom of heaven shall be theirs. There is a slight difference between the two. Blessed are the humble—the earth will be theirs, the kingdom of the earth. Blessed are the pure—the kingdom of heaven will be theirs, the kingdom of heaven. In truth, humility is the beginning; purity is the culmination. Humility is the first step; purity is the fulfillment. Those who are humble have stepped onto the first rung. They have opened the door to purity. They are not yet pure, but by becoming humble they open the door to becoming pure. Those who are not humble can never be pure, because there is no greater impurity than the ego. The ego-filled can never be pure; but those who become humble, who drop the ego, who bow down, who surrender—they open the door to…

Sannyas is initiation into that space where one starts belonging to God, where one no more thinks of oneself in egoistic terms, where one starts thinking in terms of the whole. When you start feeling yourself in harmony with the whole great joy arises in the heart. Harmony is joy and disharmony is misery. Whenever we are not in tune with the whole there is misery. Whenever we are attuned to the whole suddenly clouds disappear and it is all sunshine. Suddenly flowers start blooming in your heart, you are full of the fragrance of the unknown, of the beyond. But it happens only in those moments when you are in harmony. And everybody knows those moments once in a while. Of course they happen accidentally. Just watching a sunset you may feel you are falling into a subtle harmony.