Once upon a time....

Once God used to live just in the marketplace, but the whole day, even in the night people were knocking on the doors and complaining about everything: "This is not the right kind of world you have created. Why is there so much sickness? If you are the creator, then why do you create bodies which are sick? Why is there old age, and why is there death?"

So people tortured him so much, the old story says, that he called a council of his angels and asked them, "I will either die out of this constant torture, or I will have to commit suicide! Can you tell me what I should do? These people don't leave me for a single moment and their demands are such that I cannot fulfill them. And there are millions of people shouting and angry because their desire has not been fulfilled, their prayer has not been heard."

So the angels thought. One angel said, "It is good if you move to Everest, the highest peak of the Himalayas."

God said, "You don't know it but I am omniscient, I know everything -- past, present, future. Soon there will be a man who will reach to the highest peak of the Himalayas. And once one man has found me, there will be buses and airplanes, and all kinds of vehicles. And they will make roads and hotels, and again there will be the marketplace. You don't understand: it will only be just a little peace for a short time. That won't do. I will have to change my place again."

So somebody suggested, "Why don't you move to the moon?"

He said, "You don't understand because you don't know the future -- just after Everest they are going to go to the moon. So I will have to change again. Show me something from where I have not to change!"

Then an old angel came close to him and whispered in his ear, "The only place man may never think of is within his own heart. You just sit there ..."

He has disappeared from everywhere. Perhaps you can encounter something of divineness in your own being. In your own life you may find something which is godly. You will not find God as a person, you will find a quality, a fragrance, a presence; a certain air, a certain energy which is not yours, which belongs to the cosmos.

Book: I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here by Osho