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God is everywhere. God is everywhereness. God is not a person. You cannot locate him. God is the totality of all beings, of all things. But down the ages man has looked at the sky overhead for God, for a certain reason.

The reason is not that God is overhead, the reason is that to search for God we have to go above our heads, that we have to transcend ourselves, that we have to look upwards. Not that God is there, God is everywhere– below you, beside you, behind you, in front of you. But we look up because we are low. We are living in a dark valley, and we look up. This is a kind of inner search. Just as the tree grows upwards, man grows upwards. Man is a kind of tree.

But remember always, when the tree grows upwards its roots meanwhile are growing downwards. If the tree only grows upwards it will fall, it will not be able to remain rooted in the soil. The bigger the tree, the deeper it has to go lowwards, downwards. The roots go into the soil and the branches grow into the sky, and there is a great balance. It is almost in proportion. The bigger tree will have bigger roots, and the proportion is almost the same. There is a balance.

If a tree only goes downwards, it will be meaningless; and if a tree only goes upwards, it will not be able to exist. That's what has happened to humanity. A few people live only downwards: in sexuality, in food, in the body– in the lower centres. They go on spreading their roots. Their life becomes meaningless, because meaning arises only when you start rising upwards. The higher you go, the more meaning, the more significance, because there is more light. Clouds become available to you, and the sun and the moon and the stars, and life starts taking the shape of poetry. Life starts becoming a song. You can sway and dance into the sky, and you can whisper with the stars, and you can love the wind and the rains, and you can have a dialogue with the sun– with the source of life and light.

Roots remain dismal, sad, dark, lost into the soil. If a tree has only roots and no branches, no foliage, no leaves, no flowers, no fruits, how can it be meaningful? It cannot have fulfilment. Fulfilment comes only from fruition, flowering. But if a tree simply goes upwards and forgets to grow its roots, it will fall down; it cannot grow very far. It will be at most seasonal. Flowers will come and within weeks they will be gone. It will be very tentative. There cannot be any eternal significance in it. It will be seasonal.

To be really into existence and into God, one needs this proportion. I bring this proportion to you. That's why I am not against the body, because the body is your soil. I am not against sexuality, because that is where your roots have to grow and become strong. It is there where your roots have to get nourishment, the waters of life. But to stop there is to commit suicide. Take the nourishment from the soil, take the vitality from the body, from sexuality, and then use it for higher purposes, for higher rhythms, for higher harmony. Then bloom. Bloom in meditation, in love, in ecstasy. Then let there be a great rejoicing and a dance. Only then are you a total man. A total man is a balanced man; he is not extremist.

So to look for God upwards does not mean that God is overhead, it simply means that if we grow upwards we will have closer contacts with God. Not that God is upwards, God is downwards too. But you will not have a closer contact with God unless you are fulfilled. In your fulfilment is the experience of God. Don't seek God. Seek fulfillment and you will find God. Seek God, forget fulfillment, and you will not find God. God cannot come like an accident, God can come as an inner growth. It is something that happens in your innermost core.

But in the old days this metaphor of looking overhead, praying to the sky, became very very rigid. People took it literally. They started thinking God is overhead. That is a natural fallacy. But times have changed; man has come of age. Man is more alert, man is no more childish. Humanity has come a long way since the Vedas and the Talmud: humanity has passed through many stages. It is no more needed to take God and the metaphors associated with him literally. Take them metaphorically. They are metaphors.

If you ask me 'Where is God– overhead?' I would like to tell you that the metaphor has become a little bit rotten. Too much used, misused– the associations have gone wrong. That has to be dropped. Instead of saying 'God is overhead' it would be better to say 'God is alongside.' Let God become your 'alongsidedness'. Rather than thinking of God as a father-figure, think of him as a beloved, as a friend, and you will find the approach easier, you will find yourself more open.

Yes, one day it was so– to call God 'the Father' was to bring him very close. When Jesus called him Abba, he was speaking the language of his day. The father was immensely respected, the father was very deeply rooted in the child, in the psyche of the child. To call God 'Father' was valuable: it meant much. Now things have changed, utterly changed. 'Father' is not a respectable word anymore. It smells of authority, authoritarianism. It smells of institutionality. It smells of a power structure. And the moment you say God is the Father, you fall apart rather than being joined by it. Father is no more a hyphen between you and God. The word has fallen, because the institution of fatherhood has deteriorated. You will have to find new words and new metaphors– new language to relate.

Let God be your beloved, let God be your friend. If you are a woman, think of God as your lover. If you are a man, think of God as your beloved.

This has also to be understood. There have been religions– for example, the Sufis– who call God 'the Beloved'. But that is man-oriented. What is a Sufi woman going to call God? If God is taken to be a woman, then what is the Sufi woman going to call him? It will be difficult. In the East the bhaktas have called God 'the Lover'. But then if the man has to call God 'the Lover' it becomes difficult: it does not sound right. Something seems missing.

There is no need for God to be man or woman. If you are a man, God is a woman; if you are a woman, God is a man. There is no need to have a fixed idea of God. Let the idea of God arise within your soul– whatsoever your need, let God be that. So I don t say who God is– he or she, it depends on you. If you are a he, then he is a she; if you are she, then he is a he. Let God become meaningful to you– personally, meaningful, intimate– so that you can hug him, so that you can embrace him, so you can have a love affair with him. Without the love affair, you will never find him.

So don't say 'God is overhead', it is no more relevant. God is to be understood more as 'alongsidedness'.

Martin Buber calls the relationship between man and God an l-thou relationship. It seems a little stiff. It is stuffy and churchy: I-thou. 'Thou' is no more used in ordinary conversation. You don't call your woman 'thou', you don't call your lover 'thou'. It is out of use. His understanding is right– man and God's relationship is an l-thou relationship; that's how prayer arises. But I would like to tell you: let it be an l-you relationship rather than I-thou. Let God come close. 'Thou' keeps him far away. It is too respectful, and respect is always less than love.

When love is possible, forget about respect! When love is not possible, then that is the second best. Let it be an I-you relationship, only then is dialogue possible; then man and God can move hand-in-hand.

Remember, words become useless after a certain time. Not only useless, but sometimes dangerous, harmful. The same words which used to mean much become meaningless. The same words which were very significant go out of-date after a time; then they lose meaning. Words also are born and die. 'God the Father' has died– the word, the metaphor. 'God the Beloved' still can ring bells in your heart.

Victor Hugo has said 'All the forces in the world are not as powerful as an idea whose time has come.' And the time for God to become your beloved, your lover, has come. We have tried all other relationships with God. There have been religions which have called him 'Mother'; there have been religions which have called him 'Father'; there have been religions which have thought of God as their child.

But man now knows that there is only one relationship that goes to the very core; all other relationships are secondary. A child is born to you because you loved a woman or a man. The relationship of the mother or the father with the child is a secondary relationship. Somebody becomes your father because he loved a woman; somebody becomes your mother because she loved a man. All relationships revolve around the single relationship of love. Love is the shrine, the innermost shrine of the whole temple of relationship. Man has tried all other relationships. They did well for a time, but now only one relationship can be of any help. All other relationships look a little faint and dull.

As man grows in understanding, in maturity, many things happen that go on changing his own world vision. For example, after Freud, it is very difficult to call God 'the Mother', because ninety-nine percent of mental problems exist because of the mother. Now, Freud has to be reckoned with, Freud has to be taken in. You cannot neglect him; he has happened. Before Freud, 'mother' was an absolutely pure concept. Nobody then had ever thought that the world was neurotic because of the mother; nobody had ever gone into it. It was taken for granted that the relationship of the mother and the child was the most divine, spiritual relationship. 'There is nothing like it. It is the purest love'– that was thought before Freud.

After Freud, things are totally different. And you cannot go on neglecting Freud, because he has some truth in him; it is not just fiction. Man's problem– almost ninety-nine percent– exists because of the mother. Now the mother has become the source of all neurosis, schizophrenia, psychosis, madness, suicide, murder. How can you call God 'Mother' anymore? It will be difficult.

After Marx, Engels and others; 'father' is no more a natural relationship; it is institutional. Father has come the cause of private property. It is economical; it has nothing to do with love. And once the economic structure of the society changes, once there is no more private property in the world, father is going to disappear.

You will be surprised to know that 'uncle' is an older word than 'father'. 'Uncle' existed first, then 'father'. And sooner or later 'uncle' will exist again and 'father' will disappear. People will live in communes. The child will never know who his father is, but he will know that all the people who are of his father's age are uncles.

And have you watched it? The relationship with the uncle is always lovely. It is never so lovely with the father. With the uncle the child has a friendship. It is always beautiful. It is very difficult to find a bad relationship between the child and the uncle; it is always a happy relationship. What is the matter? With the father there is possessiveness, with the uncle there is no possessiveness. The uncle cares, just like the father, but without possessing. He is not authoritative; friendship is possible.

If the word 'father' disappears, then for the first time God will be called 'Uncle'. Nobody has yet called him 'Uncle', but things change. To me, father is institutional, because in nature he doesn't exist. Mother exists, mother is more natural. So religions who call God 'Mother', are more natural religions. But that too is not possible because of Freud. Freud has looked deep into the mother and has found that all those fictions of the 'spiritual relationship' and 'pure love' etcetera are all nonsense. Mother has to be transformed and changed, otherwise the world will remain neurotic forever.

The mother goes on doing whatsoever she feels is right, but the question is 'What she feels right– is it right? The mother cares about the child, but is the care unconditional, really unconditional, or are there hidden conditions in it?' The mother brings up the child and sacrifices much for the child, but that sacrifice takes its revenge on the child. It goes on taking revenge on the child. The mother starts proving herself to be a kind of martyr– that she has sacrificed for you, now you sacrifice for her! That demand is constantly there– deliberately made or not, but it is always there. 'I have sacrificed my life for you.' Consciously, unconsciously, that is always the message. 'I have destroyed my life, I have sacrificed my life for you– now what about you? Now I am getting old, you sacrifice your life to me!'

And really, she has done much, so the child feels guilty. Every child feels guilty. When a man falls in love with a woman he feels guilty; he is doing something wrong to his mother: because he is moving towards another woman, he is betraying. Mothers are never happy with the wives of their sons– never! There is a competition, conflict continuous conflict: this other woman has taken their son away. And if the son wants to live his life he has to go away, otherwise the mother will suffocate him. He feels grateful, but that gratefulness does not mean that he has to remain hanging around her apron for his whole life. He has to go. And every mother makes the child feel guilty.

These things have to be transformed. So God cannot be called 'Mother'; and God cannot be called 'Father' because the father has always been the disciplinarian. It was perfectly okay for Moses to call God 'Father' because the whole concept was legal. God was the super-disciplinarian, he was disciplining everybody– punishing those who were going wrong, rewarding those who were following him. It was a kind of court. It was a continuous judgement.

You cannot love your judge! You are afraid of the judge, you are always trembling before your judge. And it is not just accidental that this century has to declare that God is dead– God as the judge is dead, certainly dead! I agree with it. God as Father is dead. God as authority is dead. Now God can be revived only as love– and not the love of the mother towards the child, or the father towards the child, or the love of the child towards the mother or the father.

There is only one natural love, and that is between a couple. That is the only love that descends– one never knows from where; that is the only one that arises spontaneously. Your love for your mother is not spontaneous, it is a conditioned love. If you had been taken away the day you were born and you were brought up by another woman who told you that she was your mother, you would have loved her. And one day, after twenty years, if you met your real mother, you would not have recognised her at all. It was a conditioning.

It comes because you live in close contact with your mother, it is a kind of imprinting, continuous imprinting. She gives you milk, she gives you warmth, she gives you care; when you are ill, she serves you... she does so many things for you. She surrounds you from everywhere. Love arises, but this love is more like a liking than like love; it has no madness in it. It is a liking. So is the case with the father. He protects you, he finances you– he sends you to the school and the college and the university– he prepares you for your life. You feel obliged. You have a respect for him.

But the only spontaneous love is between man and woman. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you come across a woman and something clicks. You come across a man and your heart starts beating in the same rhythm. You are possessed by something called love. This is very mysterious. There is no reason for it– the woman has never done anything for you, the man has never done anything for you. There is no past to it, and there is no future either! You don't know this woman– what she will do to you in the future. And you don't know this man– how he is going to prove to you in the future. There is no past– you have met for the first time, and there is no guarantee for the future; still the thing is so tremendous that you forget the past, you forget the future, you start moving in the present. This moment is so valuable in itself that for no other reason you are ready to sacrifice all and everything for it. It is foolish, it is mad– that's why all down the ages the so-called wise people have called love mad. It is mad, because it has no reason in it. But that is the beauty of it, that is the depth of it. It comes from somewhere beyond the reason, beyond the mind. It has the same quality as God. That's why Jesus says 'Love is God.'

Now love is going to be the metaphor for the future. Let God be your boy-friend or your girl-friend. And it will depend on you who he is, not on him. God has no fixed entity, he becomes what you need. He is liquid.

And the day for the idea has come. And when the day for the idea has come, then nothing is more powerful than that. And vice versa it is also true: when the day of the idea has gone, nothing is more impotent than that. God as Father is impotent, God as Mother is impotent. Those ideas will linger because a few people live in the past. You can't help. A few people always live backwards; they only look in the rear-view mirror, they never look ahead. A few people have fixed minds about the past. They are so afraid of the new that they don't look ahead, they look backwards.

All people are not contemporaries. Somebody lives two thousand years back, then for him Jesus' idea 'God is Father' will be appealing. Somebody lives even more backwards, then some other idea will be appealing. But those who are contemporaries and those who are ahead of their time, for them a new metaphor is needed: the metaphor of love.

God as overhead is out-of-date.

A customs officer at Heathrow opened up the suitcase belonging to an attractive Frenchwoman and found six pairs of saucy panties. 'What are these for?' he demanded.
'I tell you' she replied. 'Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.'
'What about Saturday?' he asked.
'Saturday– oh, la, la.'
He chalked her case and off she went.
Next in line was a stout, motherly party from Yorkshire. In her case she had twelve pairs of red flannel drawers.
'What's all this, Ma?' he asked.
And she answered 'January, February, March, April...'

There are people who are not contemporaries.

But remember to be a contemporary, because life belongs to those who are contemporaries. The past is no more– don't cling to it.