Osho Belief Doubt and Fanaticism

Content:
Introduction
1 Belief is not the Answer
2 In Search of Salvation
3 Moving into the unknown
4 Doubt is the Door to Trust
5 From Darkness to Light
Epilogue: Peace has to dance, Silence has to sing

Truth liberates, and nothing else. Everything else creates a bondage, a burden. And truth cannot be found by intellectual effort, because truth is not a theory, it is an experience. To know it you have to live it -- and that is where millions of people go wrong. They think that if they can cling to a belief, clinging will help them to find the truth. By and by they settle with the belief, and belief is not truth. It is a theory about truth: as if somebody has settled just by words, scriptures, doctrines, dogmas; as if a blind man has started believing that light exists, or a hungry man reads a book on cooking, believes this way, that way, but all the time he remains hungry. That is not the way to satisfy hunger.
Truth is a food. One has to digest it, assimilate it; one has to allow it to circulate into one's blood, beat into one's heart. Truth has to be assimilated into your organic unity. Belief is never assimilated, it remains an unrelated phenomenon.
You may be a Hindu, but Hinduism remains just an intellectual concept. You may be a Christian, or a Mohammedan, but they are not organic parts of your being. Deep down, the doubt continues.
I have heard one story:

Titov, the Russian cosmonaut, returned from space and was asked by Nikita Khrushchev privately whether he had seen anyone there. The story goes that he replied, "Yes, I really did see God," to which Khrushchev answered: "I know that already, but you know our policy, so please don't tell anybody."
Later Titov was with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarch asked him whether he saw anyone in space. Titov, faithful to his instructions, replied, "No, there was no one."
"I know that already," replied the church leader, "but you know our policy, so please don't tell anybody."

Underneath your beliefs, whatsoever the belief, doubt continues. Doubt is at the center, and belief is on the periphery. So your life is basically determined by your doubt, not by your belief. You may be a communist, and still somewhere deep down the doubt continues. You may be a Catholic, a Christian, a theist, but deep down the doubt continues.
I have looked into so many people belonging to different beliefs, sects, but deep down -- the same doubt. And the doubt is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. And the doubt is neither communist nor anti-communist. Doubt is pure -- simply doubt. For this pure doubt you will need pure trust.
This pure doubt which has no adjective to it -- Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan -- cannot be destroyed by Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan concepts, beliefs, theories, philosophies. What to do about this doubt?
A real seeker is not searching for any belief to console himself. Rather, he is trying to find a deeper center in himself which goes beyond doubt. This has to be understood. You have to go deep in your own being to such a point of aliveness where doubt is left behind on the periphery. Rather than doing that, people go on clinging to beliefs on the periphery, and doubt remains deep down. Just the reverse has to be the case.
Go deeper into your being. Don't be worried about the doubt, bypass it. Let it be there! Don't try to hide yourself in a belief. Don't be an ostrich. Face the doubt -- and go beyond it. Go deeper than the doubt. Then comes a moment in your being... because at the deepest core, at the very center, only life is. Once you have touched that deep core within yourself, the doubt is just a faraway peripheral thing. It can be dropped very easily.
And there is no need to cling to any belief in order to drop it. You simply see the stupidity of it. You simply see the ridiculousness of it. You simply see how the doubt has been destructive to your whole life, how the doubt is continuously eroding your being, how it has been poisonous. Just seeing the fact that doubt has been poisonous, and it has not allowed you to celebrate, a great opportunity is being missed. You simply drop it. It is not that instead of the doubt you cling to a belief.
A real man of trust has no belief -- he simply trusts, because he has come to know how beautiful life is. And he has come to know how eternal, timeless, life is. He has come to know that just within himself is the kingdom of God. He becomes a king -- and not a king in the ordinary sense of the word, because that kingdom which comes from without is a false kingdom, a dream kingdom.

I have heard about Shah Farouk, the king of Egypt: He was once asked how many kings there would be in the world after twenty-five years.
He replied without hesitation that there would be five, and then he explained: "The king of England, the king of hearts, the king of diamonds, the king of clubs and the king of spades."

The kingdom that comes from the outside is just a kingdom of dreams. You can be a king, but you will be a king of playing cards or, at the most, the king of England. Nothing much of value, worthless; just a bogus symbol, meaning nothing.
The real kingdom is within. And the most amazing fact is this: that you go on carrying it within yourself completely unaware, not knowing what treasures you are having, and what treasures are yours just to claim.
Religion is not a search for any belief. Religion is an effort to know the very ground of your being, to touch the very rock bottom of your existence. That experience of the rock bottom of your existence is what we mean when we use the word truth. It is existential. It is an experience.