Osho on Purpose of Existence and Creation – Existence exists without any cause

Question – You said that god is the creative process. Then why are things created? What is the purpose of creation, or is it something that just exists?

Osho – If God exists as a person then the question why becomes relevant. If God is a person then we can ask, ”why have you created the word?” But God is not a person; God is a process. You cannot ask the process, ”Why do you exist?”

Existence exists without any cause. Thinking in terms of causes leads nowhere. If you go beyond one cause then there is another cause. If you go beyond that, then another cause comes. And the why remains. Always, endlessly. You ask why and again you are confronted with another why. If God is a person then the why becomes relevant. But God is not a person. You cannot ask Him – you are Him. You yourself are the cause.

The existence is uncaused. Otherwise you will have to invent ultimate causes. But that carries no meaning. If you say that there is an ultimate cause it means that beyond a certain point vou will not again ask what the cause is. Even a person who believes in God as the creator, who says, ”God created the world,” may invent whys and answers. But if you ask him, ”Why is there a God? Why does He exist?” then the religious man will say, ”God is uncaused. He is the cause, so He is uncaused.” Existence itself is uncaused. At the beginning, there is no cause. So in the end, there can be no purpose. Only when here is a cause can there be a purpose.

There is no beginning because if there is a beginning, then there must be a cause. Existence is beginningless. And there is no end because the beginningless cannot come to an end. It is endless. So there is neither a beginning nor an end to existence. It is eternal, uncaused, without any purpose. For the human mind it is meaningless to say this because we think in terms of causes (from where?) and in terms of purposes (to what end?). Because of this limitation of the human mind, he cannot conceive of something that is beginningless, endless – uncaused, purposeless.

But how can there he any cause and how can there be any purpose? To be is enough, to have been is enough. being is enough. You can think of it in another way, through another outlook. When you love someone, you do not ask what the cause of it is. If love is caused by something, it ceases to be love. Love flowers uncaused. If a cause could be pointed out then the beauty of love would be lost, then there would be a scientific explanation for it.

You cannot ask what love is for. There is no purpose in love. If I love you, I cannot ask why. If I am loving you for some reason then it is not love Love is purposeless. In love, we come closest to God. That is why Jesus said, ”God is love.” It is not that God is loving, no. That is not the meaning, God is love! In love, we come closest to the creative process, closest to God. Love is the peak from which we come to know what religion is.

Love is religious so a person who cannot love cannot pray. A person who cannot love cannot be religious. Only a loving mind can be religious because only a loving mind can think in terms of no purpose, no cause. Love is enough. It does not ask anything beyond itself. It is a fulfillment in itself; it is the end in itself. A single moment of love is eternity itself.

When we ask why, where, how, we are not asking religious questions. If you ask how, the question becomes scientific. The question how is the basis of science: how are things happening? And if you ask why, the question becomes philosophical. Religion has no question. For religion, there is no questioning. There is a quest, but no questioning. There is a quest to know what is. Neither why nor how, but what is.

Of course, to solve the question how is easier. We can go on solving and solving and there will be no end to it. Every solution will again create a problem. The how will again be encountered, so science will go on progressing. You cannot conceive of a day when scientists will come out of their laboratories and say, ”Now, science has achieved!”

Philosophers will go on thinking and thinking why, and there will be as many answers as there are thinkers. If everybody on earth begins to think about it, there will be millions and millions of answers. Everybody can say: because of this or that. But religion does not ask. Religion is a quest, not a questioning It is a quest after what is – not after the beginning, not after the end. It is a quest for neither the cause nor the purpose, but for that which is – this very moment, here and now. The ’what’ is the quest.

A scientific mind can go on searching without ever changing itself. A philosopher can go on inventing answers without changing an inch. But a religious man cannot even begin without changing. The moment he begins to ask what is, there is a change, a transformation – because he himself is part and parcel of what is.

You are neither part and parcel of the how nor of the why. You were not asked anything in the beginning nor have you been asked to plan for the end. You are somewhere in the middle – in the is. You are only concerned with what is here and now, this very moment.

So religion is concerned with the present – neither with the past nor with the future. And the present is the only existence, the present is the only time. The past is memory; the future is imagination. The present is the only reality, the only existence.

Religion is concerned with the existential, the purposeless, the meaningless, the uncaused. Things are – and you can become one with them and can achieve a moment of bliss, a moment of pure existence, a moment of total consciousness. In India we have called this satchitananda – the moment of total existence, the moment of total consciousness, the moment of total bliss.

Once you have a glimpse of it, there will be no question, no problem. You will be at ease with the reality. Then you will be in a state of let-go with reality. You will flow with it, you will live with it. You will breathe it, vou will be one with it. You will be it.

Source – Osho Book “The Eternal Quest”