Osho – From birth to death you go on living, groping in darkness with no light — and you could have created the light. You cannot find it in the scriptures; nobody can hand it to you. It is not purchased or sold; it is nontransferable. But you can create it — you can put all your energies together. You can start living consciously from this very moment.
For example, you are listening to me. You can listen in a sleepy way… because you are here, and I am uttering a few words, and you have ears and your ears function, so those words strike your eardrums and some noise is made — and of course you hear. But this is not listening, it is only hearing. It is not listening.
Listening means you are alert, watchful, on your toes, drinking with no mind to distort; with no inner noise, with no chattering, utterly silent; not sleepy, very wakeful, very awake; as if your house is on fire, as if everything can be taken away any moment and this is no time to sleep. When your house is on fire you cannot sleep — or can you? When your house is on fire you cannot be sleepy; you will be alert, very alert.
The first statement that Buddha made after he left his palace was, “My house is on fire. Now I cannot live anymore in unconsciousness.” There was nobody except his charioteer. The old man looked at the palace; he didn’t see any flames there, the house was not on fire. He thought, “The prince has gone crazy!” He was an old man, an old servant, of the same age as Buddha’s father. He had seen Buddha from the first day he was born; Buddha used to respect the old man.
The old man said, “What nonsense you are talking! Al-though my eyes are becoming weak, I am becoming old, but I don’t see any flames. The house is perfectly okay, there is no fire!”
Buddha said, “Yes, I see — you may not see — my house is on fire, because each and every moment death is possible. Now I cannot remain in this sleepy state anymore.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. He said, “You are saying just insane things!”
When he had to leave Buddha in the forest and they said goodbye, the old man was crying and he said, “Listen to me — I am just like your father. Where are you going? Have you gone nuts? Such a beautiful palace, such a beautiful wife, so much comfort, so much luxury! Where are you going?”
Buddha said, “I am going in search of consciousness.” He didn’t say, “I am going in search of God,” because how can you talk about God if you are not even conscious? The real seeker goes in search of consciousness, not in search of God. If you start your search for God, that is going to remain an unconscious search — because you have heard priests talking about God a greed has arisen in your mind for God.
The real seeker, the real sannyasin, has nothing to do with God. His whole effort, his single effort, his one-pointed effort, his concentrated effort, is to become more conscious — how to be so intensely conscious that you become full of light, that your whole mind is a flame of light burning bright, that the torch of your mind is burning from both the ends simultaneously. In that light one knows naturally that God is.
God is not to be searched for; what is to be searched for is consciousness. Unconscious people can believe in God, but their belief in God is just like their belief in money. They believe in notes, they believe in God, they believe in stone statues, they believe in dead scriptures. They can only believe, remember: only unconscious people believe.
The conscious person knows, feels, experiences. He does not believe in God: he lives in God, he breathes in God, his heart beats in God. It is not a question of belief. You don’t believe in the sun when you see the sun rise. You don’t ask people, “Do you believe in the sun?” If you ask, they will laugh at you. You don’t believe in the moon when the moon is full in the night; you never ask anybody. There are not believers in the moon and nonbelievers. It is your experience; there is no need to believe or disbelieve.
Exactly like that, in consciousness you have eyes to see God, you have eyes to see the truth of existence. Then it is no longer a question of belief — it is your experience, existential experience. A conscious person knows, an unconscious person believes.
Why are you a Hindu, why are you a Mohammedan, why are you a Jaina, and why are you a Christian? All beliefs! — and the priest lives on your unconsciousness. He goes on giving you more and more beliefs — moral beliefs, beliefs that if you do this you will be rewarded, if you do that you will be punished, belief in hell, belief in heaven. He goes on piling up more and more beliefs. You are drowning in beliefs! Your beliefs have become so heavy on you, like the Himalayas on your chest; they don’t allow you to live.
The first step towards consciousness is to discard all beliefs. Don’t be a Hindu, don’t be a Mohammedan, don’t be a Christian… because I tell you the way to become a christ! Why be a Christian? And I tell you the way to become a buddha — why be satisfied by being a Buddhist? Why be satisfied with plastic flowers when the real roses can be grown, when you can become a garden of roses? You purchase a few plastic flowers from the market and you go on worshipping those plastic flowers. What you call them — Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu — does not matter; if they are borrowed they are plastic. The real flower has to be grown within your being; it has to blossom there.
Those who have known, they say — and I vouch for them, I am a witness — that when your consciousness opens up in its totality it is a one-thousand-petaled lotus, a golden lotus, gold with perfume. It is the ultimate miracle. And unless that is attained, don’t rest. Each moment lost is a great loss.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 4”