Osho

Question 2
THE OWNER OF THE GRAND HOTEL WHERE I AM LIVING WOULD LIKE AN ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION: WHY DID GOD CREATE THIS WORLD?

First, never bring anybody else's questions to me. Bring the questioner, because I cannot answer anybody else's question. The questioner has to be here, in my presence, because deep down, my presence is the answer -- not what I say, but what I am. Never bring borrowed questions. If it is not yours, it is meaningless. You tell the owner of your hotel, "You can come," and if he is really interested, he should come. I don't think he is interested in God or in anything -- maybe curious, but curious people are just stupid.
Any stupid person can be curious. To be really an enquirer, one needs great intelligence.
Now, if he is interested, I am here in Poona, and he runs a hotel here. You are here from faraway countries, and he has not come. He is not interested, he is just curious. He is not ready to stake anything, not even coming here. It is not very costly to come here; he could have come. And he knows you are coming here every day, and he knows that you are a sannyasin. He knows that you have staked your life, you have gambled with your life, and he has not even become interested.
NEVER bring such questions to me. This type of question is foolish; it cannot be answered -- because unless you ask intensely, unless you ask from the very core of your being, the question is irrelevant. The question becomes relevant only when you are behind it and you are ready to do something for it: you are ready to pay for it.
God is not available to such people. They are not ready to pay anything. They want God very cheaply. They want God second-hand. Now, you will listen to my answer, and then you will go and tell him. First, you don't know; you will not listen to what I say, you are bound to carry some wrong message. Of course, your mind will come in, you will distort it: you will add something, you will delete something from it, you will color it with your own mind, with your own interpretation, and then you will take it to him. It is already dead; you have killed it. Then you go and give it to him.
And if in this way enquiries are possible, then books are available. He should go and consult a library; all answers are written there. And he must have read something, otherwise the question would not arise. He must have heard the word 'god'.
Never do these things. If somebody asks such a question, drag him to me. Tell him, "You come and you face this man directly."
But, I suspect that the question is yours, and not the owner of the hotel's. But you are not courageous enough to say that it is yours. People are so ashamed, even of asking authentic questions. Why are people so ashamed? -- because to ask a question proves that you are ignorant. So people would like to hide behind somebody else's back: now this "owner of the Grand Hotel" is a perfect place to hide.
People feel a little ashamed when they ask a question, because the very idea that "I am asking a question," means that "I don't know."
Once it happened: A man came to me and he said, "My friend has become impotent. Can you suggest something?"
I said, "It would be better for you to send your friend and he can say the truth: that his friend has become impotent. Why have you bothered? You could have sent the friend, and he could have told the truth: that his friend has become impotent. You are not even potent enough to ask a question? Why bring this friend in?"
The first thing when you ask a question is to recognize your ignorance. From there the enquiry starts. A question is beautiful when the questioner knows that he doesn't know. Then a question is healthy -- because the mother is healthy, and the question is your child. When you say, "I don't know, and I ask because I don't know," then the question is tremendously healthy, alive, its heart beating. It breathes. And I love an alive question; then something can be done.
Now, you bring a dead question because you cannot accept the fact that you don't know. You know perfectly well that this owner of the Grand Hotel is ignorant that he is asking. That's why I am going to answer -- because I know it is your question.
"WHY DID GOD CREATE THIS WORLD?"
First thing: it may be a surprise to you that God never created THIS world. This world is your creation. God has created a world, but you don't know about that world at all. THIS world He has not created at all: this world where Richard Nixon exists, where Vietnam exists, where Idi Amin Dada exists. This world God has not created: this world of Adolf Hitlers and Mussolinis, and fascism and communism, and Stalin and Mao. This world God has not created: this world where such tremendous poverty exists because people are so greedy, because people go on hoarding; this world where such ugly life exists, where not even a shower of love happens -- desertlike, loveless, people just competing, fighting, conflicting -- where such IMMENSE violence exists... THIS world God has not created. This is your world. You are the creator of it. You are this world. This world is your projection. This world vibrates on your ugliness.
So the first thing: God has not created this world. Please don't make Him responsible for it; He is not. Otherwise He would be the greatest criminal if He had created this world. At least I for one declare that He has not created this world. This is your creation.
But you will say, and logically too, that He has created us, and if we create this world then finally He is responsible. No, still I say He is not responsible -- because He has created you as freedom. That is the thing to be understood.
This ugly world wouldn't exist if God had created you as slaves. If God has created you as robots, mechanisms, then this ugly world would not exist. Then you all would be Buddhas, but meaningless buddhas. If a Buddha cannot be an Adolf Hitler, if the very possibility is denied, then the Buddha is just a statue, meaningless. If you HAVE to be good, and there is no freedom to be bad, then what is the point of being good? The world would have been good if God had not created you as freedoms. If He had forced you to be just mechanical repetitions, gramophone records, then you all would have been delivering a Sermon on the Mount, or writing a BHAGAVADGITA. But a gramophone record is a gramophone record.
God has created you as freedom. Of course, in freedom, the opposite is implied. Good you can do if you choose, bad you can do if you choose it that way, and the choice is yours. God has given you all freedom to choose.
That is the glory of man, and the agony -- the glory, because man is free. Can't you see it? A tree is not free; a rosebush is a rosebush. Whatsoever is going to happen is already predestined. The rosebush is not free. If it decides not to grow roses, nothing will happen; roses will still come. If the rosebush decides to change the color of the roses, nothing will happen; the rose will remain of the same color as before. If the rosebush decides to become a lotus plant, nothing will happen; the rosebush will remain a rosebush. It is destined to be a rosebush. It is beautiful, but not free.
That's why I say: Nothing can be compared to man's beauty. Even roses are nothing compared to man's beauty. Because a rose has to be a rose, it is in a sort of bondage. It cannot do otherwise. It cannot go astray: it has to be a saint. It has to be a Jesus, it cannot be a Judas. That's why a rosebush is just a rosebush -- good to look at, but nothing to be compared to the beauty of human beings. The beauty comes because a person can be a Jesus or a person can be a Judas, and everybody carries both possibilities -- Jesus and Judas.
Everybody is totally free, and the range is big -- the whole spectrum. Man is a rainbow -- all the colors. Man is not predestined. Hence we have created this world out of our freedom. The responsibility is ours. If you want to become a Buddha, you CAN become one. Nobody can force you to become a Genghis Khan. The choice is yours. God is not dragging you anywhere. He has given you enough rope... you can go astray, you can come back. Because of this possibility of going astray this world exists. This world can be changed, can be utterly changed. Once we change our consciousness, this world can become a totally different affair.
You ask, "why did God create THIS world?" so the first thing: He has not created this world, He has created you, He has created human freedom -- and one should feel grateful that He has made you free. Otherwise, if you are forced to become a Jesus, then to be a Jesus is mechanical, meaningless; there is no significance, no poetry in it. Because you can miss the target....
The Christian word `sin' is very significant. Its original root means: missing the target. The original root for the word `sin' comes from `missing the target'. You can miss; it is up to you. Sin is missing the target, it is going astray. And God will not prevent you: His love is so infinite that He will love you even if you have gone astray. He loves the sinners as much as the saints. And if you listen to Jesus, Jesus says he loves the sinners even more, because they need more love.
Have you not watched it? If a child is ill the mother cares more about the ill child than the healthy child -- naturally so. It is justified. The healthy is healthy, so there is no need for the mother to be over-careful. But the ill is ill: the mother sits by the side of the bed, massages the child, takes more care. Jesus says God cares more for the sinners, those who have missed the target. He goes on showering His mercy on them.
THIS world is our going astray, our sin. It has nothing to do with God.
The second thing: "Why did God create this world?" The second thing is that in the Christian, in the Judaic, in the Mohammedan world, a very wrong conception exists about God, as if He is separate from His creation; as if one day He created the world and then forgot all about it; as if God is a painter -- the painting is finished and the painting becomes separate from the painter. No, the East knows far better. The East says: God is not separate from His creation. The creator is not separate from His creation. He is involved in it, He is in it, He IS it. Creator is creation. That's why I insist again and again: don't call God "the creator", call him "creativity". God is a DYNAMIC creativity. Creator is a dead concept -- as if one day He finished. That's what Christians go on thinking: in six days He created the world and the seventh day He rested. In six days, finished? Then what has He been doing since then? He must be getting very tired, not doing anything. He must be getting fed-up. He must be bored: have mercy on Him.
He is not finished yet. The creation is never finished; it is an ongoing process. The creation is never complete, and God goes on and on and on. He is not finished with it. If He were finished with it, then that would be the end. He is still involved, He is still in love. He is still painting, He is still sculpturing... He still hopes.
Rabindranath has said, "Whenever I see a new baby born, I look at the sky and say: God still hopes." A new baby is a hope. Of course, He failed with the old generation, so He creates a new generation. He says, "Let us see; maybe this time I will succeed." His optimism is infinite He is like a poet who goes on composing new poems every day. Every day he feels a little satisfied and a little dissatisfied -- satisfied because something has happened in the poetry, something has been caught, a ray of light; but something is still missing. Tomorrow morning, another try.
Rabindranath had written six thousand poems, and when he was dying, an old friend said to him, "You can die peacefully and in deep content, because you are the greatest poet."
Rabindranath opened his eyes and said, "Stop this nonsense! Right now I am telling God: What are you doing? I have been trying and trying, and I have not yet succeeded! Much has happened, but I am not satisfied. And just now I was getting closer and closer, and this is the time to take me away? I was just getting closer and closer, and I was feeling that just by the corner it is there -- the poetry for which I have been trying. My six thousand poems are my six thousand failures... maybe the six-thousandth and first? And is this the time to take me away? What are you doing? My whole life, I have been trying and trying and trying, and now I feel the crescendo was coming and I was coming to the peak, and this is the moment you withdraw me?"
God is not yet finished: God still hopes. Hence, we can also hope. In His hope is our hope too. He has not utterly failed. He still trusts you, He still goes on creating. So this concept of a dead creator somewhere in the past....
Christian theologians are so foolish that they have even decided the date, the year: four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ, He created the world -- on a certain Monday of course. Early, at six in the morning, when you start the Dynamic Meditation, He started this whole dynamism. Early in the morning, six o'clock -- he must have fixed the clock with an alarm. It is all foolish.
Creation is timeless: it has always been there, it will always be there -- because God IS creation, God is creativity. So I never call God a painter, I call Him a dancer.
When the painting is finished, the painter is separate and the painting is separate. In dance, it is totally different. Dance is the most spiritual phenomenon, because the dancer and the dance are one. You cannot separate them, the duality does not exist. There is a tremendous oneness: the dancer is the dance, the dance is the dancer. If you take away the dance, the dancer is no more a dancer. If the dancer stops, the dance stops -- they are not two. God is as involved in His world as a dancer is involved in his dance. Hence I tell you to revere the world, never condemn it; God is involved in it, God is present everywhere.
That's what Kabir goes on saying: Feel the awe, the reverence, the wonder, because He is still working everywhere. You can catch hold of Him, still painting, still sculpting, still dancing. It is not something that happened sometime in the past. It is happening right this moment: He is speaking through me, He is listening through you. The creation is still going on. It is never going to end, it is an endless journey.
In fact, existence has no goal. It is a PURE journey. The journey in itself is so beautiful: who bothers for the goal?
Saint Teresa has said, "Heaven is all the way to heaven. Has He not said: I am the Way?" Such a beautiful assertion, of tremendous import: "Heaven is all the way to heaven" -- don't wait for some heaven as a goal -- "heaven is ALL the way to heaven. Has He not said: I am the way?" God is the Way, not the goal. God is here, not there. God is now, not then. God is in you, in me, all around. Only God is.
So you cannot ask this question: "Why did God create this world?" He never created it, He is still creating, and if you really want to know why, go to the artists. Don't go to theologians and don't go to philosophers and don't go to pundits: go to the artists. Go to a Van Gogh when he is painting and ask him why he is painting. Go to a dancer, hold his hand and ask him, "Why are you dancing?" Go to a singer and ask him, "Why are you singing?" And you will know the answer.
The painter will shrug his shoulders. He will say, "What else can I do? I love painting. Why? There is no why. I love painting. It is the way I am. It is the way I feel most happy to be. This is the only way I feel tremendously blessed, that's why. There is no other why." Ask a dancer, "Why are you dancing?" and he will say, "What else can one do? Life is to dance." Or ask a lover why he is in love. Have you ever loved somebody? And if somebody comes and asks you why, what will you say? Will you really have any answer as to why you love? You will say, "Why? There is no question about it. That's the way I feel my best, at my very peak. That's the way I feel blooming. That's the way bliss happens to me."
Now, there is no question about bliss. If you are happy, you are happy; nobody asks you why you are happy. Yes, if you are miserable, a question is relevant. If you are miserable, somebody can ask you why you are miserable, and the question IS relevant -- because misery is against nature, something wrong is happening. When you are happy, nobody asks you why you are happy, except for a few neurotics. There are such people; I cannot deny the possibility.
I have heard about a patient. The psychiatrist was bored with him. Of course, he was getting enough money out of him, but he was getting, by-and-by, bored -- three, four, five years of psychoanalysis, and the man was repeating the same again and again and again. The psychiatrist said, "You do one thing: you go to the mountains for a few days. That will be very helpful." So the patient went to the mountains, and do you know what? Next day arrived a telegram for the psychiatrist. The patient said in the telegram: "I am feeling very happy. Why?"

Feeling very happy: why? -- an explanation is needed. No, happiness needs no explanation. Happiness is its own explanation. God is creating because that is the only way He can be happy, that is the only way He loves, that is the only way He sings, that's the only way He can be at all. Creation is His innermost nature. No why is needed.

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