Is God just a projection of childhood?

[Guest Guest needing help]

I found this excerpt from an Indian philosopher named Osho. Does this disprove god? 

All the gods sculpted of wood and ivory can’t say a word. I know, says Kabir, I have been crying out to them. He had prayed for many years. He is not just saying it, he has cried his eyes out! He was weeping and crying, and weeping and crying and praying, and then one day suddenly he realized the fact: “To whom am I addressing this? There is nobody, the temple is empty.” The god has never been there. It is a man-made temple manufactured by the stupidity of man, manufactured for certain securities. Because man cannot remain alone, he creates a God. God is nothing but a childish desire that you always need a parent. It is a father-fixation or a mother-fixation.

The child is born; he is born in security, comfort, convenience. The mother takes care, the father takes care, he is protected. He grows in this protection, in this caring, loving atmosphere; he becomes accustomed to it. He starts getting the idea that he will always be cared for this way, always protected this way, always loved this way. It is natural for a child because one learns by one’s experience. Sooner or later he will have to stand on his own feet. Sooner or later the mother will die, the father will disappear, he will be left alone. Now a problem will arise: “Who will care? Who will love me? Who will protect me?” Now all his securities are gone. And now he creates imaginary securities. He says, “There is a God – God the Father or God the Mother.”

Why do you call God “the Father”? It has something to do with your father. Why do you call God “the Mother”? It has something to do with your mother. It is a projection, it is a wish fulfillment.

Kabir will absolutely agree with modern psychology and its approach. It is a father fixation, a parent fixation: because your real parents are gone, you create unreal parents. You cannot remain alone. You are still childish deep down, still immature; you are not yet an individual.

To be an individual one has to be free of all idols, all projections. To be an individual one has to live in insecurity without any armor. One has to live vulnerably, without any protection; one has to live dangerously. Because you are afraid, you create a God. Your God is created out of your fear.

The real God is never created out of fear. From where does the real God arise? The real God arises out of love. The false God arises out of fear. Keep it in your mind: whenever you pray out of fear your prayer is false, pseudo, a sheer wastage of time. When you pray out of love your prayer is true. Only love is true. But the difference has to be understood. When you pray out of fear, you ask some God somewhere in the sky to give love to you. It is begging. You are a child, you need a father. Your own father has betrayed you, died, your own mother has not been true to you forever. Now you need a father or a mother who will be forever and ever, an immortal father and mother, an eternity – but you want love.

A child wants love, a grown-up man gives love: that is the difference between a child and a grown-up man. And the so-called grown-ups are not all grown-ups. Growing in age is not real growth, growing in consciousness is real growth. Growing is not necessarily growing up, it may be just a passage of time. You only grow old, you don’t grow up. You only age, you don’t become wise.

 

[notme]

On 9/19/2023 at 4:35 AM, Guest Guest needing help said:

Does this disprove god? 

No, it's just an idea, not a proof.  

The idea seems to say that when a person prays out of fear, the prayer is to a false god, but when they pray out of love, the prayer is to The God. I don't see how this can be an argument in favor of atheism.  Please elaborate.  

This reminds me of the hadith which says that worship out of fear of punishment is the worship of a slave, worship out of expectation of reward is the worship of a merchant. Worship which is out of love for The Creator is the worship of the best believers. (I'm paraphrasing and hopefully have not misremembered any important detail. )

[Ashvazdanghe]

23 hours ago, Guest Guest needing help said:

A child wants love, a grown-up man gives love: that is the difference between a child and a grown-up man. And the so-called grown-ups are not all grown-ups. Growing in age is not real growth, growing in consciousness is real growth. Growing is not necessarily growing up, it may be just a passage of time. You only grow old, you don’t grow up. You only age, you don’t become wise.

Salam this is just for justification of sexual abuse by Osho the "Sex cult" leader for abusing both of child and a grown-up man or woman without any restriction for Osho  the "Sex cult" leader & his lunatic devoted followers which Osho calls himself their god so therefore they worship him by doing totally free sexual abuses .

‘I joined 'sex cult' and was sterilised at 25 - I left 40 years later and cry everyday’

The 2018 Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country exposed the heinous practices of Rajneesh Osho’s cult, and now another follower – who only left last year – has come forward to share her story of sexual abuse and mistreatment.

Erin then claimed that she had been sexually assaulted by the cult leader, explaining that at the time she had written it off by reasoning that it was simply a mark that the two had developed a special bond.

This dedication to the guru would have far-reaching implications for her later years. As well as displaying a sexualised attitude towards the women who associated themselves with him, Erin described how the group’s leader was unsympathetic towards children.

This meant, she explained, that the cult’s followers were encouraged to take steps meaning they would not be able to have children.

“He was professing to be interested in the future of humanity, but yet he said that children were a distraction to our awakening and to our relationship with him," she said.

“Having children was discouraged; people who were pregnant were suggested to have abortions… It was strongly encouraged to get sterilised, so many young women and men were sterilised.

“I have a scar too, under my navel, from where I was sterilised aged 25.”

Despite the horror of her experiences, and now into her late 60s, Erin acknowledged that she had only recently been convinced to step away from her life with the group after her therapist repeatedly suggested that she had been “brainwashed”.

“I need time to cry everyday, buckets of tears. But at the same time, I think I’m getting through,” she added.

 

https://culteducation.com/group/1108-osho-rajneesh/36469-i-joined-sex-cult-and-was-sterilised-at-25-i-left-40-years-later-and-cry-everyday.html

Children separated from parents in both Ashram and Ashraf

Growing up in the Wild Wild Country cult: ‘You heard people having sex all the time, like baboons’
Noa Maxwell and his family were involved in Osho’s cult during the 1980’s. He was interviewed by the Guardian in April 2018. Soon Noa’s mum was living in one place in the ashram, his dad somewhere else, and Noa was in the kids’ hut. “We had been a tight, 70s middle-class family, and within a very short period that family unit was ripped up,” he says.

The children’s hut was an octagonal bamboo structure with bunks. Noa and the other kids – from Australia, Germany, America – were pretty much left to their own devices. There was a school, “run by this crazy English hippie called Sharma with long blond hair and a guitar and we would sing ‘We all live in the orange submarine’. I don’t know how much it mattered if we were in school or not. When I eventually did get back to this country when I was 10, I couldn’t read anything or write anything, or do two plus two.”

Children in the Cult of Rajavi were kept in separate units far from their parents. Rajavi went further in 1991 and sent off all children of MEK members from Iraq to Europe. Read the stories of some of MEK children here.

Tragedy of MEK-Born children

https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/12031

Sex guru Rajneesh Osho set up a commune that turned into a terror cell which plotted to kill a White House lawyer and infected hundreds of voters to rig an election. Ma Anand Sheela was an assistant to Osho, on top of this matriarchal pyramid, just like Maryam Rajavi on top of the MEK’s hierarchy of power.

Female sex workers in MEK and Osho’s cult
Sheela admits she was in love with the guru and claims he was also in love with her, but she told Vogue: “There was no sex with Osho. Our relationship was not sexual. The integrity mattered because I was already drowning in him…”

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Win McCormack of the New Republic quotes Rajneesh’s rationale for exploiting women: “This is the point. the male mind is a little further away from the no-mind than is the female mind. So the ashram will be run by women until I find people who have no-minds. When the no-minds are available, then there will be no question of male and female; then the ashram will be run by no-minds.”

 

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“There was tremendous sexism going on there, yet they tried to make you believe that because Rajneesh was picking women to run all those departments he really believes in liberated women,” an ex-Rajneesh disciple Roselyn Smith

 

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Although Osho is notoriously known as an abusive sex cult guru, male members of his cult seemed to be happy. “The women were harangued into thinking that they were really uptight and negative if they didn’t want to be sexually free,” Roselyn Smith, the ex-member told the New Republic. “The women who didn’t take part in it were made to feel very guilty and selfish and self-centered and uptight, frigid and rigid and rejecting of men. As I get further away from it, I realize more and more . . . I used to think Bhagwan was a feminist. When I was in Pune, I used to want to write a book extracting his views on women. I thought that he supported a woman’s right to an abortion, that he supported a woman’s right to be a leader. Women ran the whole ashram there, and I was so impressed by that. But as I get further away, I realize that he’s got the macho-male trip down flat; the way he got women to be sexual servants for men is every man’s fantasy.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/24/wild-wild-country-netflix-cult-sex-noa-maxwell-bhagwan-shree-rajneesh-commune-childhood

[313_Waiter]

The question is - is Osho (and the cosmos) just a projection of God’s imagination?

[Guest yes]

On 9/19/2023 at 3:19 PM, notme said:

No, it's just an idea, not a proof.  

The idea seems to say that when a person prays out of fear, the prayer is to a false god, but when they pray out of love, the prayer is to The God. I don't see how this can be an argument in favor of atheism.  Please elaborate.  

This reminds me of the hadith which says that worship out of fear of punishment is the worship of a slave, worship out of expectation of reward is the worship of a merchant. Worship which is out of love for The Creator is the worship of the best believers. (I'm paraphrasing and hopefully have not misremembered any important detail. )

I am late to this, but I think they are talking about when one thinks a god would exists because of psychological imagination, not cause god praying for love.

[notme]

1 hour ago, Guest yes said:

I am late to this, but I think they are talking about when one thinks a god would exists because of psychological imagination, not cause god praying for love.

Nonetheless, it's an idea, not a proof.

[Abu Hadi]

On 10/14/2023 at 11:20 AM, Guest yes said:

I am late to this, but I think they are talking about when one thinks a god would exists because of psychological imagination, not cause god praying for love.

It is true that God doesn't exist because of psychological imagination. He exists because He exists. I know this sounds like a circular argument, but it's not. 

He exists because He exists means that he has an objective existence that is separate and apart from anyone's imagination. Our imagination is contained within our brain and our body and God is not contained within anything because He(s.w.a) is infinite. The Prime Cause

Our existence, and thus the existence of our imagination is a contingent existence. It depends on other things to exist, our brain, our experiences, our thought, our emotions, etc. The existence of God is non contingent, i.e. He does not depend on anything for His existence. This is sometimes called the Necessary existence because without this existence, nothing else would exist.

The God that exists in someone's psychological imagination is not God. It is merely a figment of their imagination. This is because we, as muslims believe that God is 'Al Samad', the Unique. There is nothing you can think of and nothing you can even conceive that is similar to God. Because of our limitations as human beings, we cannot know God directly or experience Him directly. We can only say about God what He(s.w.a) taught us about Himself and we can only know God thru the signs he shows us (the existence of ourselves, the universe, Prophets, Holy Books, etc) and that is the furthest limit we can reach in the reality we currently reside in. 

So when 'All the gods sculpted of wood and ivory can’t say a word..'

This is true about them. They are figments of imagination but these are not God. God is something else entirely.