Who Invented GOD?
WHO INVENTED GOD? WAS IT MAN SIMPLY NOT WANTING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS OWN LIFE? IS NOT THE PRIEST AS MUCH A VICTIM OF HIS OWN FEAR OF LOOKING INSIDE AS ANYONE ELSE?
The priest is as much a victim as you are.
But he is more cunning than you are.
Man’s fear of darkness, man’s fear of sickness, man’s fear of old age, man’s fear of death needed somebody to protect him. He could not find any protection anywhere. When you can’t find any protection anywhere you have to invent one, as a consolation.
Just today I was listening to a song of one of the great Urdu poets, Mirza Ghalib. A sentence says:
HAMKO MALOOM HAI JANNAT KI HAKIKAT LEKIN DIL KE BAHLANE KO GHALIB KHAYAL ACHCHHA HAI.
We know perfectly well the truth about your paradise, but it is good as a consolation. We know it is not there, we know it is a lie, but to console yourself that after death angels will be there waiting, playing on their harps, ”Alleluia,” that receiving you at the pearly gates will be Saint Peter, and God will be waiting for you… Ghalib is right. DIL KE BAHLANE… just as a consolation it is a good idea.
The priests know perfectly well, perhaps more than you, that there is no God. But the priest is in the most cunning profession in the world – the worst and the most ugly profession, far worse than prostitution. Prostitution is the product of the priest; it is number two. First comes the priest, then comes the prostitute, and then come all kinds of pathologies in the world.
The priests saw that everybody was afraid and wanted some protection.
So the fear created God, as a security, as an insurance after you die. Otherwise, it seems that after death all is darkness for eternity. What will happen? Where you will be? All your friends will be left behind, your family will be left behind, nobody will come with you, you can carry no money beyond death. Utterly a beggar, naked, just a skeleton, you will be moving into death. And then, for eternity… It creates a great anxiety – what kind of life will there be after death?
So our fear, our dread, our death created God. The priest immediately saw a good excuse to exploit people. He became the middle agent. You can’t see God, so there is every possibility that if there was no priest to continuously persist that there is God – philosophizing, creating theologies, scriptures, temples, statues, rituals, prayers, the whole drama… He stands between you and God, and he says to you, ”I have a direct line to God. You don’t have a direct line. You tell me, you confess to me your sins, and I will tell God to forgive you.”
You cannot see God, obviously. You feel it a great relief that somebody knows, somebody is there who has a direct connection.
And you feel it is cheap. You commit a sin, and you are afraid you will have to suffer in hell, and the priest is there; you just go and confess your sin and the priest says to you, ”Put five dollars into the charity box and I will pray for you.”
And God is very compassionate; he always forgives. So your sin is forgiven for five dollars – those five dollars are pocketed by the priest; they never reach anywhere else because there is no God to whom he can give those five dollars.
And what will God do with five dollars? He is alone, there is no shopping mall, what will he do with five dollars? And up to now he must have collected billions and trillions of dollars – all useless junk. What will he do with those dollars, notes and bills? He does not come to the world to purchase things. And I have never heard and never come across in any scripture that there are shopping markets in paradise. Saints don’t need anything. In paradise you don’t need food, in paradise you don’t need anything. Everything is fulfilled; you simply live an eternal life. You are no longer a body, you are just a spirit. And spirits don’t need food, don’t need water, don’t need medicine. The spirit never becomes sick, it never becomes old, it never dies. So what will God do with those five dollars?
But every Sunday the Catholic priest collects a good amount, and all other priests have their own ways. The Hindu priest catches hold of you from the very beginning. Even before the child is born, he is caught hold of by the priest. The Hindu priest even used to tell you in the past on what day, on what night you should make love to your wife, at what time, so you get a really intelligent, holy, saintly child.
And this whole India is a proof that the priest was wrong. I don’t see those holy children anywhere. The child has been got hold of from the very beginning, even from before the beginning. The child is not yet even received by the mother’s womb, and he is telling you on what night, at what time…!
I used to stay with one of the oldest M.P.s in India. He was M.P. for sixty years continuously without a gap. He used to be called Father of the Indian Parliament. There are only two persons who remained M.P.s for sixty years. One was my friend, Dr. Seth Govind Das, and the other was Winston Churchill in England, both continuously chosen, without any discontinuity, for sixty years. Dr. Govind Das was a very fanatic Hindu, so I had to suffer from his fanaticism continuously.
I used to stay with him in New Delhi. Whenever I was talking and giving lectures in New Delhi I stayed with him. And he was so fanatic… in India there are many people of that kind, he was not alone. He would ask his priest, when he was going back to his constituency, at what time he should leave the house. He asked the priest, who, consulting all kinds of charts and his birth chart through the scriptures and astrology, would find what was the right moment to get out of the house.
Now the trains don’t run according to astrology. So the train was going at twelve o’clock in the night, and his astrologer said, ”You have to leave the house at three o’clock in the afternoon.” And I had to sit with him on the railway station from three to twelve.
I told him, ”This is stupid, if we have to wait here. The best would have been you could have come out of the house at three o’clock and come back through the back door. Unnecessary torture…”
But he said, ”No, I have to leave.”
I said, ”There are millions of Hindus who go on asking the same thing, but still accidents happen in trains. And there may be many Hindus who have consulted the priest, ‘This is the right time, a good time for you to travel’ – and the train gets drowned in a river, the whole bridge collapses!”
In India bridges collapse like anything, because it is a very religious country, a very spiritual country! It trusts in God, not in cement. So bridges are made with as small an amount of cement as possible; the larger part is just sand. So it is good, the bridge is good for inaugurating by the prime minister.
That’s enough. The first time the train comes, both the train and the bridge go into the river. And all the Hindus in the train must have consulted their astrologers, their priests, ”What is the right time?” In India there should not be any accidents.
I said to Dr. Seth Govind Das, ”Why are there accidents? In India there should not be.”
He himself was in a car accident. When I went to see him, I said, ”What happened to your astrology?”
He said, ”At least at this time when I am suffering from multiple fractures you should not start any argument with me.”
I said, ”This is the right time to make you clear that you have been stupid your whole life. Did you ask the astrologer or not?”
He said, ”I asked.”
”Then why this accident?”
But people don’t have the guts and courage to go against the past, though it may be a completely rotten past. Marriages in India are made by the astrologers. And every marriage is a failure. I have never come across any marriage which was not a failure.
I used to live in a place called Raipur. I was a professor in Raipur, just for six months I lived there. The city was so out of date that I got tired living with those people. You would find everywhere written on the walls: ”If you are suffering from ghosts, then come to me,” and the address. ”If you are suffering from witches, come to me. If you are suffering from black magic, I am the right man to cure you.” The whole city was full of black magic, witches, ghosts.
Just in my neighborhood used to live a very famous astrologer, and he used to fix marriages just by looking at the birth charts. He became friendly with me. I told him that this was not working. ”It is not working even in your case.” His wife used to beat him.
I said, ”What happened? You are such a great astrologer. You are making hundreds of marriages. Without your confirmation people cannot get married because their stars do not meet.” There has to be a certain synchronicity between the stars of both the charts. ”What happened? Did you not consult the birth chart of your wife?”
He said, ”I did.”
”Then what went wrong?”
He said, ”Don’t harass me. I am already too harassed by my wife. And now you have come into my neighborhood to harass me.”
I said, ”I will not harass you. I just want to know if you believe in your own astrology.”
He was certainly a sincere man. He told me, ”Don’t tell anybody. It is my profession, but I don’t believe in it at all. In fact sometimes it happens that the birth charts do not meet. But the man is rich and he is going to give me at least a hundred rupees if I give him the go-ahead that this marriage is going to be very successful. So sometimes I change the charts. I put in a new chart for the girl which mixes with the boy’s chart.”
The priest knows perfectly there is no God. He is the only person who knows it perfectly. But it is his profession; he lives by exploiting people. So he goes on persisting that there is a God. God is his business. And when it is a question of business, it is his very livelihood.
And there are millions of priests belonging to different religions. There may be in every country different kinds of priests, but all that they do is to exploit people by giving them consolation: ”This marriage is going to be great.” And every marriage is a tragedy. I have never come across any comedy.
Just today – because last night I talked about Mickey Mouse Manu and the great beautiful woman Zareen – Zareen has been looking for German glue to get Manu completely in control. She was thinking to glue him to her body, so that poor Manu should follow Zareen wherever she goes and not escape in the name of business to Bombay. Tomorrow morning he is going again.
He has written me a beautiful letter, thanking me and being grateful, but again business… Today they were walking hand in hand on the road. Is it not enough proof that I have some clarity, that I can see things? And I remain in my room, I never go out. Both were happy, like small rats.
People can only be happy if they are not married. Then you have a freedom. Then it is out of freedom you are together, not out of any contract, not out of some business deal, not because of society’s enforcement, not because of law but because of love. Just out of love you are together, and when the love fails…
And everything fails, remember. It is a fiction created by the poets that love is eternal. No, the love that you know is not eternal and the love that poets know is not eternal; it fades away. It remains if lovers don’t meet.
There have been only three or four pairs in the whole history of man who are great lovers – because they never met. So there was no quarrel, there was no question of their love being disappointing. The society did not allow them to meet, their parents did not allow them.
In India we have the stories of Laila and Majnu, Shiri and Farhad. The lovers never met because society was against them. They belonged to different castes, different societies, different religions, so there was no possibility of their marriage. They are thought to be great lovers, their love never faded – because it never began! Once it begins the end is not far away.
Every beginning has an end. Even when you are born, death is not far away. Every day it comes closer.
And once you are married, the problem becomes more difficult. Out of freedom you can live together because you know you are living out of freedom; you can move any moment. In great friendliness, with thankfulness to each other: ”You gave us such beautiful moments, such beautiful days and nights. We lived in poetry, in music, in songs. These few days and nights were all golden, but now the season is gone, the spring is over, the honeymoon finished. It is better for both of us to separate.” With great gratitude… there is no revenge, there is no hate, there is no reason for anger. Both gave whatever they could to each other; they are richer than they were before. The experience has made them more rich.
But marriage does not allow you to move away. Love finishes, but you have to pretend that you are still loving. And whenever you have to pretend it is a heaviness on the heart. Whenever you pretend, you are phony – you know it, your wife knows it.
When love fades there is no possibility of deceiving each other. Maybe for a few days you can deceive by bringing ice cream every day, but for how long? In fact the moment you start bringing ice cream that is a signal that the old warmth of love is finished, now the coldness is coming!
It is only people like Dale Carnegie… and they can be effective only in America, nowhere else. Dale Carnegie is America’s only philosopher. He has sold his book in a quantity second only to the Holy Bible. The book is HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE.
And everything is phony in that book. He says, ”Every husband, when he is going to the office, should kiss his wife.” Whether he loves her or not is not material, but he should kiss and say, ”I love you, honey.” When he comes home he should again hug, bring a few roses, and say, ”Sweetheart, I have been thinking of you the whole day.” At least three times a day and three times in the night he should make her aware that he loves her. And the same is true for the wife. Both are following Dale Carnegie; there is no love. And you simply go on saying…
The word ‘phony’ applies to America more than to any other country. It comes from ‘telephone’, because on the telephone your voice becomes different, it becomes phoney.
The husband calls the wife once or twice in the day, just to assure her that he loves her. And while he is calling, his secretary is sitting in his lap! This is happening in every office, without exception. Secretaries are chosen not because they are more efficient than others… When they are brought before the boss for their interview…
I have heard about one. A secretary came in and said that she was very experienced, she had all the certificates and her speed was very good on the typewriter. Another came; she was fresh, younger, but had no experience. Then the third came, then the fourth came; there were at least a dozen. And finally when the manager asked, ”Which one have you chosen?” the boss said, ”The one who has the biggest tits.”
Secretaries are chosen because of tits? But that’s how things are. Once you start feeling encaged in anything you immediately feel to get out of it, it is a prison. Your God, your priests, they are all your imprisoners. They create, they go on creating new prisons for you, of morality, of marriage, of responsibility for the children – all kinds of entanglements and chains for you. The whole purpose is to keep you miserable, because unless you are miserable you do not go to the church. Unless you are miserable you are not going to pray. Only in misery you remember God – you know it! Only when you are suffering you remember God, you think about the Holy Bible, you think about Bhagavadgita, you go to the temple – but only when you are in misery.
Bertrand Russell is absolutely right when he says, ”If we can make the whole of humanity happy, religions will disappear.” And I absolutely agree with him, but he does not know how to make the whole world happy. I know how to make the whole world happy.
Out of deep meditation bliss arises, and then you are so happy the whole day, the whole night… without any cause. It is just bubbling inside you. It is your very nature, your dharma. Then you don’t need any God and you don’t need any priest, and you don’t live in any kind of misery or imprisonment. The moment you feel that something has become phony, something has become pseudo, something has become just a mask, you simply drop it. You remain truthful to your own consciousness – that is your only responsibility.
And all else will follow, and your life will be a life of rejoicing. Not only will your life be a rejoicing, your death also will be a rejoicing. Death does not destroy anything. The five elements of the body fall back into their original sources and for the consciousness there are two possibilities: if it has not tasted meditation it will move into another womb; if it has tasted meditation, if it has known its eternity, its immortality, it will move into the cosmos and disappear into this vast existence. And that disappearance is the greatest moment of life. You have become one with the source from where you had arisen. You have gone back and disappeared into it.
Authentic religion does not need any God, does not need any priest, does not need any prayer. All that it needs is an exploration of your inner world.
That exploration I call Zen. In Sanskrit it is dhyan; in Chinese it is ch’an; in Japanese it is zen. But it is the same word. Going inwards, reaching to the very point from where you can look, a door opens into the divine cosmos. Standing on that point, you are a buddha. And your whole life changes; it is a metamorphosis. You have become a new man.
And we need this new man urgently. It has never been so urgent as it is today. The new man is the only hope for a whole humanity. If the new man does not arrive soon, the old man is ready to commit suicide, global suicide.
Source
https://bodhisattvazen.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/who-invented-god/
