What is God?

All the religions believe that God created the world and also mankind. But if you are created by
someone, you are only a puppet, you don’t have your own soul. And if you are created by somebody,
he can uncreate you any moment. He neither asked you whether you wanted to be created, nor is
he going to ask you, ”Do you want to be uncreated?”

God is the greatest dictator, if you accept the fiction that he created the world and also created
mankind. If God is a reality, then man is a slave, a puppet. All the strings are in his hands, even your
life. Then there is no question of any enlightenment. Then there is no question of there being any
Gautam the Buddha, because there is no freedom at all. He pulls the strings, you dance; he pulls
the strings, you cry; he pulls the strings, you start murders, suicide, war. You are just a puppet and
he is the puppeteer.

No theologian, no founder of religions thought about this, that if you accept God as the creator,
you are destroying the whole dignity of consciousness, of freedom, of love. You are taking all
responsibility from man, and you are taking all his freedom away. You are reducing the whole of
existence to just the whim of a strange fellow called God.

Man is free, but free for what? If there is no God and man is free, that will simply mean man is now
capable of doing anything, good or bad; there is nobody to judge him, nobody to forgive him. This
freedom will be simply licentiousness.
There comes the other side. You remove God and you leave man utterly empty. Of course,
you declare his freedom, but to what purpose? How is he going to use his freedom creatively,
responsibly? How is he going to avoid freedom being reduced to licentiousness?

God was non-existential, but it was a good consolation. It used to fill people’s interior, although it
was a lie. But even a lie, repeated thousands and thousands of times for millennia, becomes almost
a truth. God has been a great consolation to people in their fear, in their dread, in their awareness of
old age and death, and beyond – the unknown darkness. God has been a tremendous consolation,
although it was a lie. Lies can console you, you have to understand it. In fact lies are sweeter than
the truth.
Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, ”Truth is bitter in the beginning, sweet in the end, and lies
are sweet in the beginning, bitter in the end” – when they are exposed. Then comes a tremendous
bitterness, that you have been deceived by all your parents, by all your teachers, by all your priests,
by all your so-called leaders. You have been continuously deceived. That frustration brings up a
great distrust in everybody. ”Nobody is worthy of trust...” It creates a vacuum.

To continue in part-II.