The first question:

Osho,
Whenever one comes to the absurd, something inside simply explodes and the whole world looks anew. Is it when the absurd becomes overwhelming that one gets an insight into the gestalt of everything?

The absurd is nothing but another name of God – and a far more beautiful name than God itself. For centuries the theologians, the philosophers have destroyed the beauty of the word God. They have painted it, polished it, with such rational garbage that it no longer has any life left in it. The God of the philosophers is not the true God because it is nothing but a rational concept.

The God of the lovers is a totally different phenomenon; it has nothing to do with reason, with mind. It is the heart pulsating in tune with the whole. It is a song, a symphony. It is a dance, a celebration. It is more poetry than prose. It is more intuitive than intellectual. It is something felt not thought.

Hence I say “the absurd” is a far better name for God.

The mind has created a subtle structure of rationality around itself to protect the ego, to protect the separation from existence. All rationality is man-made – and God is not man-made. All rationality is just a projection of our own ideas on the screen of existence. And God is not a projection; it is a discovery. To see God one needs eyes absolutely without any idea. The idea is the greatest cloud.

One of the greatest mystics of the West – whose name is not known because he has not signed his book – this unknown mystic has written one of the most important mystic treatises ever: The Cloud of Unknowing. He says that it is not through knowledge that you come to know; on the contrary, you come to know by unknowing. This is pure absurdity! It is talking in paradoxes: knowing through unknowing.

What does he mean? He means that when all knowledge has been dropped, when all experience has been put aside, when mind as such is no longer functioning, then you relate with existence in a totally new way. Each fiber of your being pulsates with the whole; it is a rhythmic dance. It is absurd – you cannot make a theory out of it.

God is not a hypothesis. If God is a hypothesis, then that hypothesis is no longer needed. Far better hypotheses have been proposed by science. But God has never been a hypothesis. It is a passionate love affair with existence. It is feeling the existence. It is being in a heart-to-heart contact with existence.

Tertullian is always worth remembering – a great Christian mystic. He says: I believe in God because God is absurd – credo quia absurdum est. The reason that he gives for his belief is that there is no reason to believe.