The gross one is visible, the subtle one is invisible. The gross is the outside, the subtle is the inside. The gross is objective, the subtle is subjective. And people go on searching for God in the gross.
They say 'We would like to see God.' But only the gross can be seen; the subtle has to be felt. The gross can be seen with the eyes open, the subtle has to be seen with eyes closed. The gross is not there as an object.
You cannot encounter it. God is inside you, as you. You cannot stand outside God and see Him; you can see Him only from the inside by being Him.
And these are the two ways to approach reality…
One way is that of science — the gross, the objective. The other way is of religion — the subtle, the subjective. If you see a flower,.you can look at it scientifically. You look at the chemistry of it, at the form of it and the substance that makes it. You dissect it and you come to know about the components of it. But something is missed in that very analysis.
The beauty is missed, because beauty is not a component of the gross. And if you ask the scientist 'Where is the beauty that was in the flower?' he will say 'That was not there, it was illusory. I have dissected it all and all, and these are the things that I have found.
These chemicals were there, this matter was there, these atoms, these molecules were there. But there was no beauty. And this is all, this is the totality…' But you know and the scientist knows in his own poetic moments, that there was beauty. When he gives the flower to his wife, he is not giving her something chemical. He is giving to her something aesthetic, something beautiful. But when he is a scientist, he denies it.
That beauty can be known only through a totally different way: not by looking there outside but by realising it inside. The real poet will go to the flower and slowly slowly will close his eyes and will start seeing it inside himself. He will become the flower; that is his way of knowing. And that is the way of love also.
You can see a man from the outside, you can observe the measurement and the height and the weight and everything — the qualification and the country that he belongs to — but still you are missing. But if you fall in love with the man, then you will know something.
That is really the spirit of the man, the beauty of the man. But in love you will have to become one with the man.
God is the subtle one. Don't look for Him in gross ways. One has to develop indirect ways, aesthetic ways, poetic, loving ways. One has to learn how to trust, one has to learn how to dissolve, how to become one with things.
Then one day, the benediction. Suddenly from nowhere God arises… not as a person standing outside, but as you, as a presence, there inside you at the very core of your being.
OSHO