does Tao exist?

DOES THE DIVINE EXIST?

To say that the divine exists will not be right, because all that exists is divine. Each and everything exists, only the divine cannot be said to exist. The divine is existence. To be divine and to exist is to say the same thing in two different ways. So the quality of existence cannot be attributed to the divine.

Everything else can be said to exist because it can go into non-existence. I can be said to exist because I will go into non-existence, you can be said to exist because there were times when you were not in existence. But the divine cannot be said to exist because the divine is always there. Its non-existence is inconceivable, so existence cannot be attributed to the divine. I will say existence is divine, or divineness means existence.

Nothing exists which is not divine. You may know it or not, it makes no difference as far as your divinity is concerned. If you know it, then you become existence, bliss. If you do not know it, you go on and continue in agony, but you are divine. When asleep, when ignorant, then too you are divine. Even a stone is divine, unknown to itself. Existence is divine.

All those who try to prove that God exists do not know. This is sheer nonsense to prove that God exists. Those who try to prove that God does not exist are in the same boat. No one will prove that existence exists. If you say it this way, if you ask me whether existence exists, the question will be absurd.

To me, when someone says that God exists, it means the same thing, that existence exists.

God and existence are equivalent, synonyms. Once you have become aware of what existence is, you will not call it existence. Then you will call it God. The moment one becomes aware of the total being that is, then you cannot use the existence. You become more intimate with it, so you have to use a personal name. You call it God. To call existence God only means this and nothing else: that you can be in an intimate relationship with it, that you can be in personal contact with it.

It is not something dead. It is not something to which you cannot be related. It is not something which is indifferent to you. When we say existence is God, we mean to say existence is intimately related with us. We are related with it, and it is not indifferent to us. But as far as the human mind is concerned, we do not know a more accurate word to use than God.