I heard Osho was referring to a beautiful story – ‘My Search for God’, in one of his mesmerizing lectures, written by Rabindranath Tagore. The story is so good that I am stating the same here. Tagore writes:
“I have been searching for God, for many, many lives. Once in a while I saw a glimpse of Him near a far, faraway star, and I rushed towards that star. But by the time I reached there, He was gone.
“Again, I saw Him somewhere else, far away, but it was always far away, and to travel that distance takes time. And God is not something dead – it is something flowing, constantly moving. By the time I reached the spot where I had seen Him, He was dancing somewhere else. I heard the dance, I heard the music; He was playing a flute, I heard the flute. I saw Him, but always so far away. “But I have continued. It was a challenge. One day I was going to find Him. How long could He go on escaping from me?
“And one day I reached a beautiful house, and a plate on the house said, THE HOUSE OF GOD. And I was so full of joy that my journey had not been in vain, I had found Him; it was simply a question of going just a few steps and knocking on the door.
“Dancing with delight, I stepped on those marble steps. I was just going to knock at the door, but my hand remained as if paralyzed, because a thought suddenly came to me: If He opens the door, and I meet Him, then what? All my life has been a search; all my life has been a constant seeking; I know only how to search and how to seek. The meeting of God is going to be a death to me, because I am nothing but a search, a seeking. It is going to be a death to the challenge – and what is life without a challenge?
“I moved my hand back and took my shoes off from my feet, because who knows? – He might hear the noise on the steps and open the door and say, ‘Where are you going? Here I am.’ Taking the shoes in my hands, I ran away. I never looked back – perhaps He might be standing in the doorway and watching, and then escape would become a little more difficult and painful.
“Since then, I have been searching for Him again, and I see a glimpse here and there. I know where He lives, so only that place I have to avoid, and everywhere else I go on searching, seeking, asking, inquiring, ‘Where is God? What is God?’”
It is a tremendously profound story. Have you ever thought about it – if you meet God, what you are going to say to Him? what are you going to do with Him? He will be the dead-end street, He will be your grave, because beyond Him there is nothing. You have been searching with great intensity, with great passion and longing; all passion and all longing will disappear.
Perhaps this is the reason why everybody goes on seeking God, and yet never meets Him. Perhaps everybody knows the house where He is, so they only avoid that house – and the whole universe is there to seek and search. Or perhaps God understands that He has to remain a search, an inquiry, a quest, and is never to become an experience.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”. Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
