From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 9. I TEACH A RELIGIONLESS RELIGION
And meditation is: after everything has been thrown out, to enter your self – which no God, nobody
has put there.
It has been your being for eternity and it is going to be your being for eternity.
Drown yourself in silence.
Enjoy, drink it, taste it!
Just in the beginning there is fear. Once you have had a little taste, just a little taste on the tip of your
tongue, then all fear disappears, because it is so sweet, so nourishing, so immensely centering and
grounding. It gives you for the first time the feel that alone you are enough, that no God is needed,
no prayer is needed, that the temple is not outside but within. And as the feeling grows, and you go
on entering into it, you will be surprised:
In the beginning there was silence, not sound.
In the middle there is silence.
In the end there is silence.
It is perpetual, continuous, and it is your very being: so fulfilling, so tremendously fulfilling, giving
you such contentment that for the first time you feel nothing is needed. All that is needed is provided
already within you.
Existence is very generous.
God is very miserly – of course, because misers have created the fiction in their own image.
God is very miserly, very cruel, very jealous, very revengeful. Just for small things... somebody
smokes cigarettes – now what kind of sin is he committing? I cannot conceive that he is committing
any sin. Perhaps he is committing some mistake, but that is a medical thing, it has nothing to do with
religion. Perhaps he is not taking proper care of his body, but that is his business. Perhaps he will
die two or three years earlier, but if he thinks of what he is going to do for two or three years more,
he will smoke more, so what is the point?
But there are religions like Buddhism and Jainism – smoke and you are in hell. Strange... here that
man is smoking, and there you will throw him again into fire. Here he was throwing fire into himself;
there you throw him into fire! What kind of revenge is going on? And he was not throwing anything
on you – whatever he was doing, he was doing to himself And he has suffered for it: he may have
tuberculosis, he may have cancer. He may suffer for it – he has suffered; now what is the need of a
hell? Small things, natural things, and the religions have made so much fuss about them because
of the very tiny mind of the God.
Existence is very generous, always forgiving, never punishing.
But the only way to reach to existence is through your own innermost silence. That is the silence
between the stars – the same silence; there is no difference.
From Ignorance to Innocence 120 Osho