From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 8. GOD IS NOT A SOLUTION BUT A PROBLEM
were trying to figure out how God looks, what language He speaks. Now, Jews cannot believe that
He speaks any other language than Hebrew, and Hindus cannot believe it – God speaking Hebrew!
– have you gone mad? Do you think God is a Jew? He speaks pure Sanskrit!
I have heard that after the second world war a German general and a British general, just resting,
taking a sunbath on the beach, started talking. The German general said, ”I am simply puzzled by
one thing: that we were praying to the Christian God, and you were praying to the same Christian
God but we are defeated and you have won. Is it not partial?”
The English general laughed and said, ”It is not partial. Just tell me one thing: in what language
were you praying – in German? That’s where the fault was. God understands only English – no
other language – and we were praying in English. There is no mystery in it, it is simple.”
Man, imposing himself by this creation of God in man’s own image, is not aware of what he is losing.
He is losing all that is valuable, everything that is beautiful, everything that can become a blessing
to him.
The so-called religious person starts focusing himself upon a fiction and forgets his own reality,
forgets himself and thinks of somebody there, above, in the sky. That person above in the sky is
non-existential, but you can focus on any non-existential thing, and you can forget yourself in that
focusing.
And that is where real religion happens – within you.
Hence prayer has nothing to do with religion.
In my religion there is no place for prayer.
No true religion can have anything like prayer, which is absolutely bogus.
What are you doing in prayer? You are creating first an image of your own imagination, surrendering
to your own imagination, then talking to that image. You are just performing an insane act.
In all the churches, in all the synagogues, in all the temples and in all the mosques of the world,
these people are doing something insane; but the whole earth is full of these insane people.
Because they have been doing this for centuries, and you have accepted them as religious, it shocks
you when I say that they are not religious. They are not even normal – to be religious is far away.
They are below normal. They are doing something so stupid that if they go on doing it, whatsoever
little intelligence is left in them, by and by, will go down the drain. Perhaps it has already gone.
To me, religion is a tremendous phenomenon.
It is not fictitious. It is entering into the very heart of reality. It is knowing existence from its very
center. But you will have to drop your fictions. Those fictions will never allow you to enter into
yourself, because those fictions are projected outwards, and you get completely identified with them.
From Ignorance to Innocence 107 Osho