Osho Quotes on Remembering God

Osho Quotes on Remembering God

1. Deva means god, surati means remembrance — remembrance of god. God has not to be searched for but only remembered; because we have not lost him, he is not to be found. We have simply forgotten him; he is just to be remembered. God is there within you, but you are asleep. The moment you awake, you are god. Remembering is the way of waking up. Remember more and more, and that arrow of remembering will go deeper and deeper into the heart. It will become almost unbearable pain, but pleasant too, sweet too. One loves it when it arises. It is not pain in the ordinary sense; it is far more pleasant than any pleasure that you have known. But it is also pain because it hurts. It hurts that we have forgotten, it hurts that a few glimpses are coming but the whole is not yet achieved. The separation hurts, the distance hurts, the puzzle hurts — that he is so close-by and yet so distant. That is the meaning of surati.
2. Deva Pritamo. Deva means God; pritamo means beloved. Let God be the beloved. Seek and search for God in everything that you are doing, and you will find him everywhere. Eating food, eat him; drinking water, drink him. Then the taste of the food is his taste, and the coolness of water is his coolness. Breathe him in and out. Let him surround you in every possible way. When you see the stars think of him. When you watch people know that these are all his forms. In the beginning you will have to remember it, but soon it becomes natural. Then one need not remember; it simply remains there. It becomes an undercurrent in your consciousness. This is the method Sufis call zikr: remembering God continuously, in each act, in everything that you come across. And you can be certain that one day God is going to knock at your door. If your love is enough, if your love is total, God is going to happen. It has always been so, it will always be so: it is the eternal law.
3. It is only a question of remembering. We have only forgotten who we are. Once remembering starts, the light starts burning again. From this moment think of yourself not as a sinner, not as somebody condemned, but as a beloved of god. He has created you in his own image.
4. From this moment start remembering that God is watching. Just become full of the remembrance that God is watching and you Will see changes start happening of their own accord. Things that you have never done, you will start doing. Thoughts that have never occurred to you will start occurring. Silences, pauses, intervals, will come automatically. You will start entering into new spaces, unknown to you, never even dreamed about. Use this device — this is one of the most important Sufi devices.
5. No sooner do you recognize His hand behind the canvas of this vast creation than you are a changed person; you cannot remain the same. Whoever hears even the faintest murmur of the divine music in creation has to alter his life, because once you begin to see His hand behind everything, you cannot continue to do what you have been doing; it all appears wrong. As long as you pretend He doesn’t exist you can sin, misbehave, mistreat others, and give yourself full freedom to indulge in any evil; as soon as His hand appears to you that freedom is lost. Then you have to think twice before you act and pay more attention to remembrance, to remembering God, because now you know that He sees, that He is present. He is in and around everyone, everything. Whatever you do to anyone, you do to Him. If you pick someone’s pocket, it is His pocket you pick; if you steal, you steal from Him; if you kill, it is Him you kill. Most human beings turn a blind eye towards Him. Once aware of His presence, you can no longer remain as you are; you will have to change at your very roots. This change is so sweeping that many prefer to avoid all the trouble, so they deny God and remain as they are.
6. Deva means god and chama means one who sings in praise, a poet who sings in praise, a bard. So the full name will mean: one who sings in the praise of god, a bard of god… and there is the key for you. Start remembering god more and more — and any excuse is good enough to remember. Feel grateful for small things. They arc not small; they only look small because we have become accustomed to them. If a man is dying in a desert, is thirsty, he will not think that a glass of water is small; that will be his whole life. And if you can give him a glass of water he will be thankful forever. But ordinarily, a glass of water is just a glass of water — who bothers? We start taking things for granted so we miss their mystery, their joy, and we start forgetting how to be grateful. Just the very fact that one is alive is enough to be grateful for; nothing else is needed. Just the very fact that one can still breathe, that one is breathing, that one can see a rose flower, can see a cloud pass by, can see the rolling waves in the ocean and one can hear a child giggle, is enough… more than enough to be thankful for!
7. Govindo is a name of god. All names are names of god, all forms are forms of god, because nothing else exists; only god is. Let this feeling sink deep into your heart: only god is! And it will bring a great transformation. Go on remembering it. The sound of the insects: only god is. The darkness of the night: only god is. Somebody laughing: only god is. Somebody weeping: only god is. Sadness surrounds you: only god is. Great excitement and happiness: only god is. In all moods, in all climates, in all seasons, go on remembering the is-ness of god, and slowly slowly it becomes an undercurrent of your consciousness. You need not remember then, it is always there: it is like a fragrance that surrounds you. And when this starts happening, that without remembering the remembrance persists, it is prayer! Prayer means that the door has opened. Prayer means that the revelation has started happening: god has started arriving in you; you have been accepted. Prayer is an indication that god is very close by. That’s why you are feeling so cool, so collect5ed, so silent, so joyous, for no reason at all! So this is going to be your meditation: god is, only god is — not that you have to repeat the words, but allow the feeling.
8. If a person is religious, the only proof of his being religious is his cheerfulness. Going to the church does not prove anything. Reading the Bible or Bhagavad Gita proves nothing. You can worship God and pray every day ritually; it means nothing unless your heart dances continuously, unless you create an aroma of cheerfulness within and without. Then whether you remember God or not, it does not matter. If you are cheerful, God remembers you. And that’s what is really significant: not your remembering God, but God remembering you. One of the great Indian mystics, Kabir, has said that “There were days when I used to remember God, and I searched in every nook and corner, I went everywhere. I asked the learned people, I listened to very scholarly discourses. I was continuously crying and weeping and calling God, but no reply, no response; the skies remained absolutely indifferent. But then one day when I forgot all about God, and was dancing and singing, and was so lost in my dance and in my song that I could say I was not, only the dance was, he came and started calling me ‘Kabir, Kabir!’ Since then he follows me and calls ‘Kabir, Kabir, Where are you going? What are you doing?’ I don’t call him any more, but he continuously calls me.” And that’s what is really significant, when God calls you. That is possible only if you create the space of cheerfulness.
9. Deva means god, animesh means without blinking the eyes: searching for god without blinking your eyes, looking for god continuously, constantly. Not only when one is awake but even when one is fast asleep the search should continue; it should become an undercurrent. You may be involved in the market-place but deep inside the remembrance goes on. That’s what Sufis call jikr: remembrance. One has to do many things, life requires them — you have to earn your bread, you have to work — but still something deep inside you can go on remembering god. And god can only be remembered that way. People try to remember god at a particular time. Every day, early in the morning they will say a little prayer, or in the night going to bed, for two or three minutes they will pray to god and fall asleep. This is not going to help. This prayer remains superficial; it cannot go to the very core. A constant hammering is needed. It is just like breathing. If you breathe for only two, three minutes in twenty-four hours, you cannot be alive. Breathing has to be there for twenty-four hours; even while you are asleep it has to be there. You may be in a coma but the breathing continues. Remembrance of god has to become just like breathing.
10. Do you remember your breathing? You remember only when there is some trouble: you have a cold, breathing trouble or something; otherwise, who remembers breathing? That’s why people remember God only when they are in trouble. Otherwise, who remembers? And God is closer than your breathing, closer than you are to yourself; He is more close than yourself. One tends to forget. Have you watched it? If you don’t have something, you remember. When you have it, you forget — you take it for granted. Because God cannot be lost, it is very difficult to remember. Only very rare people become capable of remembering God. To remember that which we have never been away from is very difficult. A fish in the ocean forgets the ocean. Throw the fish on the shore, in the sands, hot sands, and then the fish knows, then the fish remembers. But there is no way to throw you out of God; there is no shore to Him — God is a shoreless ocean. And you are not like a fish, you are like a wave. You are exactly like God; your nature and God’s nature are the same.
11. That is the situation: nobody has lost God, nobody can. It is impossible. God is your very being, how can we lose him? And if we can lose him we will immediately die, because he is our life. If we lose him then there is no possibility of finding him; so the question is not of finding God, the question is only of remembering. We have only forgotten. That’s why Sufis say zikr, remembrance, is all. That is their very fundamental: just remember, just make yourself alert and remember. Just become more aware and you will start laughing — that you had never left the place and you were thinking how to get back, what methods to use, what paths to follow, what maps are needed. And you were consulting maps and books and teachers and this and that, and all the time you Were simply fast asleep in your own home.
12. Prayer is blissful when it is an expression of gratitude, with no demands, with no complaints. Whenever one starts asking for something in prayer, it is no longer blissful; it is praying out of misery, out of demand, out of need. It loses its grandeur, its grace. It is nothing but desire disguised as prayer. And that’s what goes on in the churches, temples, mosques, in the name of prayer: people are not praying, people are asking, demanding, people are trying to exploit even God for their own purposes. They pray only when they are in need, they remember God when they are in misery. They completely forget God when they are happy. And the real prayer arises out of happiness, not Out of misery, so it is very rarely that real prayer happens in the world, because people pray when they are in pain and they forget completely when they are in pleasure. When everything is going well who bothers about God and who bothers about prayer? When something is not going right, you start remembering God.
13. Bliss brings a beauty which is not of this world. Bliss becomes the door to some other dimension of existence. It takes you into the realm of the mysterious. I teach bliss. That is my simple, single message: be blissful, be cheerful, be full of love. There is no need to worry about god and there is no need to worry about prayer. Those things will arise of their own accord, they always arise. The blissful heart starts praying without words. The blissful heart starts remembering god without words. It is a feel, it is not a thought.
14. Have you watched it? — whenever you are in misery you start remembering God more. When you are in danger you remember God. When you are happy and everything is going smoothly, you forget all about God. Your God is nothing but your fear projected.
15. You don’t remember God. When you are in suffering your remembering God is just meaningless. Just because you want to avoid suffering, you remember God as a protection. You are not interested in God, you are only interested in how to avoid the suffering. So that’s why when you are happy you forget all about God. But know well, only when you remember God in happiness is there remembrance, otherwise not. In suffering everybody remembers God — even an atheist. That’s why even atheists start becoming theists as they become older. And at the death point almost every atheist becomes a theist — when the real suffering of death comes then all your philosophy of atheism disappears. But that is not real, authentic prayer, authentic remembrance. Religious persons are those who remember when they are happy, because they remember in gratitude. When you see a rose flower, that will be the right moment to remember God. The rose flower is enough proof to remember him, enough of an indication, enough of a cause, an occasion. When you see a child smiling or when a bird flies into the sky, when a bird is on the wing or the .sun rises or a lonely star in the morning is just on the verge of disappearing — if you know what beauty is, you will remember God in these beautiful moments. If you know what love is, you will remember God when you make love. If you know what joy is, you will remember God when you are full of joy. Those are the moments in which to thank. And then even if you remember him in your suffering it will be a true remembrance, otherwise not. If you remember only in suffering, you don’t remember God — you simply want to get help from him. You simply want to use the word ‘God’, you want to use God, that’s all.
16. Truth is when we dissolve into the ultimate; in that dissolution is bliss too. Let God be your strength. Disappear as a separate person. Start feeling more and more in tune with the whole: drop all distances, feel inwardly connected, rooted. And it is only a question of remembering, because we are rooted; it is not something that has to be done. We have only forgotten. So God has not to be discovered, but only remembered.
17. Remembering God is not really a remembering of his name. Remembering God is not to go on chanting “Rama, Rama, Krishna, Krishna”; that is useless, futile. Remembering him means forgetfulness of yourself. If you are not, if you are forgotten, completely forgetful of yourself, abandoned, he is. When you are not, suddenly he is — and this can happen in a single moment.
18. Man can find god only when he learns how to forget himself. Forgetfulness of oneself is the remembrance of god. You cannot keep both together — it has to be either you or god. We all are too full of our own selves. We are continuously remembering ourselves, hence it is impossible to remember god; they don’t mix. They are like light and darkness. If you want darkness then you cannot bring light in; if you want to bring light in, you have to renounce darkness, you have to lose your love for darkness. The ego is love for darkness; god is light. We cling to the ego so deeply that we talk about god, but basically we are afraid, frightened of god. If suddenly god comes and knocks on your door and says ‘Can I come in?’ you will not be able to say ‘Yes’ immediately; you will say ‘I have to think about it.’ And you may take lives to think about it, because to allow god in means that you disappear, you will never be found again!
19. Truth is a constant remembering. Truth is not forgetting for a single moment that “God is: only God is. He has given me life, he has given me the desire to search for truth, he has chosen me to search for him. He must have called me in some mysterious way — otherwise how could I have moved in his direction?
20. The Sufi does not escape from the world, but a moment comes when the world disappears and dissolves. The Sufi lives in the world and he finds that there is no world, only God is. The Sufi is not an ascetic. He does not believe in inflicting pain on himself, he is not pathological. The Sufi lives life in an utterly normal way, with no perversions, with no obsessions. Although, slowly slowly, the quality of his life goes on changing, it is not that he tries to change it. His whole effort consists in remembering God, not in changing himself.
21. Shah Jahan has nothing to do with the Taj Mahal, in fact. Yes, he created it, he created it as a memorial for his wife, but he is not the essential source of it. The essential source is in the Sufi way of life, it is in Sufism. Basically it was created by Sufi masters; Shah Jahan was just instrumental. The Sufi masters have created something of immense value. If you silently sit in the full moon night just looking at the Taj Mahal, sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed eyes, slowly slowly you will feel something that you have never felt before. Sufis called it zikr, remembrance of God. The beauty of the Taj Mahal will remind you of those realms from where all beauty, all benediction comes. You will become attuned with the Sufi way of remembering God: beauty is God.
22. Live in the world and yet not be part of it. Remain empty inside, continuously remembering that your consciousness is a pure mirror. In that awareness, God happens. God is a happening.
23. Live in the world but go on remembering god — that’s your work. Live life in its totality but still never forget for a single moment that god is our home, that we have to go one day, and that the day is not far off. And when the day comes don’t cling. When death comes don’t cling to the world. Go joyously, dancingly, because death in nothing but a calling of god. You have been called home. It is your invitation, it is not an enemy.
24. Remember: man is an outsider in the world; hence the feeling of alienation. One cannot feel at home here. We do everything to make ourselves at home but still something deep down goes on saying ‘This is not the place. Sooner or later we will have to leave; it is not more than a caravanserai, just an overnight’s stay and in the morning we will have to go.’ Deep down someone goes on saying ‘Remain detached. Don’t get too entangled because soon you will have to leave and all those entanglements will become a very deep misery. Remain unattached, aloof. Just be a passer-by, a pilgrim who passes through many places but never makes any place his home.’ This world is a pilgrimage — don’t get lost in it. Even while you are in it, go on remembering god.
25. A real man is constantly remembering god. In fact a man is different from animals only because he remembers god and animals cannot.
26. Help people to remember God, and by helping people to remember God, you will be remembering God automatically. It is a tremendous help for yourself. Slowly slowly, just helping people towards God, you start moving — not even knowing that you are. One day one is surprised that one has moved so far so fast.
27. Prabhunivasa. It means abode of God, a house of God. Everybody is a house of God. In the innermost core of being, on1y He resides. God lives in every being. Every being is an abode of God. We may know Him, we may not know Him, we may have completely forgotten Him, but it is He who lives in us. We live through Him… our life is His life. That you have to start remembering.
28. Prem means love, parimal means fragrance, love’s fragrance. And that is the only fragrance there is, so remember it. Remember it so constantly that it becomes a deep truth in your being. Constantly remember it. By remembering something constantly, it creates a milieu around you. And as I see it, if one can attain to love, one has attained. If one misses love, one has missed. One can forget god, nothing is lost, but one cannot forget love. One should not forget love, because if one starts living and loving, god happens. So love makes the real religion. The word ‘god’ creates only a theology, a philosophy at the most, but something that is intellectual, something fragmentary, rational. Love is the only experience that possesses you totally, so when love knocks at your door, never say no. And don’t wait for love to knock at your door. Go on knocking on love’s door also. One should make love one’s prayer.
29. God is always there; we can keep our backs to him or we can confront him. Sannyas is a confrontation with god, it is an encounter, and it needs courage to encounter god. But if you go on feeling and remembering that god loves you, that courage arises; then there is no fear. If god loves you, then there is no problem. Even if you are not worthy it doesn’t matter — god loves you, his compassion is greater than your worthlessness. Your sins cannot be greater than his compassion. This is the attitude of the religious mind: I may have gone astray, I may have made many mistakes. but his quality is to forgive. And in his vision, my sins and my errors and my mistakes can’t be very important. He may not ever be able to see such minute details. they may not be of any relevance in his vision. Man can confront god only if this remembering slowly slowly sinks deep into the heart that ‘God loves me’.
30. There is every reason to disbelieve in god and there is no reason to believe in god. The mind can supply a thousand and one reasons why god cannot be, but the mind cannot supply even a single reason for god’s existence. In fact, from mind there is no way towards god. Mind is just the opposite of god: it is keeping your back towards god — and if you keep your back towards god how can you see? Hence the importance of constantly remembering that god loves you, that if there is suffering then there must be meaning in suffering, otherwise there would be no suffering. And there is meaning in suffering. It is through suffering that one becomes integrated.
31. I am not against the body. Love it, respect it, care for it, but don’t be confined by it; don’t let it become your definition. Use your mind but don’t become a slave of your mind. Remember that you are beyond all this — the body, the mind. Remember that you are a witness, that you are pure consciousness. And this remembering slowly slowly deepens, digs a well within you, and one day suddenly the being starts arising in you. It starts welling up. That is the experience of God. God is not encountered outside: the meeting happens inside. The guest is hidden in the host.
32. Deva means divine, anusati means remembrance — remembrance of the divine. God is not lost — there is no way to lose him because he is not separate from us; wherever we are he is — but we can forget about him. So all that is needed is not an effort to achieve god but only an effort to remember. It is just a forgotten language. It is still there — just a little effort, a little search inwards and suddenly one is suprised that god was hiding within oneself! And one was never without god, not even for a single moment. He is our life, he is our breath, he is our awareness. A rememberance means a turning in. That is the meaning of the Christian word ‘conversion’: turning in, looking back towards oneself. Ordinarily we are rushing outwards; that’s how god has fallen to the back. One just needs an about-turn, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and suddenly god is found, because god was never lost. It is easy because it is only a question of remembering. It would have been really difficult if god was lost… it would have been impossible.