Osho talks about God as an entity beyond duality.
Q: How can you, as a man, talk about the feminine psyche? How do you know that God is a he?
A: Gudrun Hofmann, I am not talking as a man, I am not talking as a woman. I am not talking as a mind at all. The mind is used, but I am talking as consciousness, as awareness. And awareness is neither he nor she, awareness is neither man nor woman. Your body has that division and your mind too, because your mind is your inner part of the body and your body is the outer part of your mind. Your body and mind are not separate; they are one entity. In fact, to say body and mind is not right; ‘and’ should not be used. You are bodymind — not even a hyphen between the two.
Hence, with the body, with the mind, ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’ — these words are relevant, meaningful. But there is something beyond them both; there is something transcendental. That is your real core, your being. That being consists only of awareness, of witnessing, of watchfulness. It is pure consciousness.
I am not talking here as a man; otherwise it is impossible to talk about the woman. I am talking as awareness. I have lived in the feminine body many times and I have lived in the masculine body many times, and I have witnessed all. I have seen all the houses, I have seen all the garments. What I am saying to you is the conclusion of many many lives; it has not to do with only this life. This life is only a culmination of a long long pilgrimage.
So don’t listen to me as a man or a woman; otherwise you will not be listening to me. Listen to me as awareness.
Secondly, you say, “How do you know that God is a he?”
God is neither he nor she. God simply means the totality of consciousness in existence. God simply means life eternal. Life expresses in two ways, man and woman. God is the unmanifest source of life; you cannot call him “he,” you cannot call him “she.” But because for centuries the word ‘he’ has been used, I go on using it. You have to remember that I don’t mean it.
If you really want to go deep into the phenomenon of God, then God does not exist at all — as a person. God is only a presence. In other words, there is no God but only godliness: a quality that pervades, permeates, the whole of existence; that is everywhere, in every leaf, in every dewdrop. It is a quality. Once you start thinking of God as a quality, your whole outlook on life, on religion, on love, will be totally different. Existence consists not of nouns but of verbs. Nouns are inventions of man and so are pronouns. Verbs are real. When you say “a river” what do you mean? Have you ever seen a river as a noun? The river is always flowing, it is always a movement. It is never static, it is dynamic. How can you make it a static noun? The word ‘river’ seems to be static. If you ask the buddhas, the awakened ones, they will say, “Rivers don’t exist.” But you see the river flowing by! The flow is there, a kind of rivering is there, but no river. You see so many trees, but in fact what exists is a kind of treeing, not trees, because every tree is changing every moment. The time that you will take in using the word ‘tree’, the tree is no more the same. A few old leaves have fallen, a few new leaves have started coming out, a flower has opened up, a bud is getting ready to open. There is great activity; the tree is constantly in momentum.
The whole existence consists of verbs, and God is nothing but the totality of all these verbs. God is not a quantity but a quality, not a person but a presence. God is an experience, not an object of experience but experience itself. God is subjectivity. And how can you call subjectivity “he” or “she”?
I know why the question has arisen. All over the world, particularly in the West, the liberated woman is asking, “Why call God ‘he’?” And she is right, in a way. Why make God identified with the masculine mind? It is a kind of male chauvinistic approach. For centuries, the male has dominated everything, hence he has called God “he.” And the rebellion against it is absolutely right.
But to start calling God “she” will not put things right; it will be moving to the other extreme. That will be another kind of chauvinism, it won’t change anything. Simply the wrong that man was doing will be done by woman; both are wrong. God is neither. Hence in the East, where for ten thousand years hundreds of people have arrived to the ultimate pinnacle of experiencing godliness, we don’t call God “he” or “she,” we call him “it.” That is far more beautiful because it takes God beyond he and she. But something has to be called, and whatsoever words are used are going to be inadequate — he, she, it — because the word ‘it’ has also its own dangers. ‘It’ seems to be dead because we use it for things, and God is not a thing either. ‘It’ seems to be too neutral, and God is not neutral; he is tremendously committed, involved. ‘It’ seems to be lifeless, and God is life itself, love itself. Any word will have its own limitations.
So you can use any word — he, she, it — but remember, all words are limited and God is unlimited. If you use these words mindfully, then there is no danger. The basic remembrance is that God is a presence, otherwise many foolish questions arise.
If you call him “he” or “she,” then the question arises, “Where does he live? Where is he?” And then the question seems to be very relevant because you have reduced him to a person; then where is his dwelling?
“Where is the dwelling of God?”
This was the question with which the rabbi of Kotzk surprised a number of learned men who happened to be visiting him.
They laughed at him, “What a thing to ask! Is not the whole world full of His glory?” Then he answered his own question: “God dwells wherever man lets him in.”
There is no dwelling outside somewhere. Whenever you allow yourself, you open up to existence, whenever you allow the wind and the rain and the sun to reach to your innermost core, suddenly there is God, godliness. Suddenly you are overwhelmed by something bigger than you, by something which is oceanic. You start disappearing into it like a dewdrop. The moment we say, “God is a person,” then we start praying, praising. That is a kind of bribery. That is a kind of buttressing his ego. If God is a person he must have an ego. Then praise him and he will be happy with you, and you will be rewarded either here or hereafter. The moment we think of God as a person we start searching for him not in the world but somewhere far away in heaven, and we miss the whole point. God is now–here, God is nowhere else.
There is a tale that a man inspired by God once went out from the creaturely realms into the vast waste. There he wandered till he came to the Gates of Mystery. He knocked. From within came the cry, “What do you want here?”
He said, “I have proclaimed your praise in the ears of mortals, but they are deaf to me, so I come to you that you yourself may hear me and reply.”
“Turn back!” came the cry from within. “Here is no ear for you. I have sunk my hearing in the deafness of mortals.”
God is in the stones, God is in the waters, God is in the animals, God is in the birds, God is in people, in sinners, in saints. God is equivalent to isness. Now, is isness he or she? The question will be utterly meaningless.
So don’t be worried whether God is he or she. Rather, look within yourself and find the place where he and she both disappear. And that will be the beginning of your understanding of reality, of what it is.
This thing cannot be decided by argumentation. It is not a metaphysical question, it is something existential. If you can find something within yourself which is neither masculine nor feminine, then you will know that there is something in existence which is neither, which is beyond both. And that beyondness is God.
Osho – ‘The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha’, volume 8, Chapter 12
From a lecture given on the morning of January 1, 1980, in The Buddha Hall, Pune, India.