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‌CHAPTER 20

24 May 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives sannyas to a six-year-old.]

Prem means love, Wahid is a sufi name for God – it means: the one – love for the one.

Right now it may not be possible for you to understand, but let it become a seed in your heart; one day you will understand. There are two kinds of love: love for the many – and that’s where everybody lives and suffers – and there is another kind of love: love for the one; that’s where bliss happens.

[Osho then addresses the parents. The mother had wanted to take sannyas some weeks before but the father was not ready.]

[To the man] That’s good! Now things will start happening. I was waiting for you. I was waiting for the right moment and the right moment has come today.

[Your wife] also did well – she waited and waited. When one loves, one can wait. Love gives patience, and there is no hurry.

One can trust that it is going to happen – sooner or later; when is irrelevant. And I knew that you were to come, that’s why I told her to wait. Even if she had to wait her whole life, she was to wait.

Join the sufi dance and in the night join the music group. For these few days just enjoy. The more you enjoy being here, the closer you come to me. When you are in a celebration I am there. And even when you are gone far away, whenever you are celebrating you will find me there. Celebration is my key word. That’s my meditation, that’s my prayer.

[The woman asks: I wanted to ask you if we could continue our transcendental meditation. We’ve done it for almost three years. We enjoy doing it but we wanted to ask you.]

You can continue. Whatsoever you enjoy, always continue. Enjoyment is the criterion; nothing else is decisive. If you are enjoying something, go on doing it. Whatsoever feels good, is good. Continue, mm?

Prem means love, Moumin is a sufi name for God. It means: the faithful one. Prem Moumin will mean: love and faith, love and trust. And remember faith does not mean belief... never. Belief is a pseudo-faith. It pretends to be faith – it is not. It is an intellectual substitute for something which is of the heart and is never of the head. But the head is very cunning – it goes on creating substitutes. They are not more than toys to play with.

Faith is of the heart, belief is of the head. But when you start longing for faith, the head immediately gives you belief. It looks like faith but it is not. But one can be deceived, millions are deceived. To believe in christianity is not faith, to believe in islam is not faith, to believe in hinduism is not faith. These are beliefs. But to become a Christ is faith. To become a christian is belief.

Once a zen master was asked, ‘What is the greatest barrier in Christ’s work in the world?’ And the master said ‘christians, christianity.’

Christianity becomes the barrier in the work of a Christ because it is a substitute. You can learn christianity; you cannot learn how to be a Christ. In fact the processes are polar opposites, diametrically opposite. If you want to be a christian you have to go to the school, you have to learn christian theology, doctrine, this and that. You can learn it like anything else – as you learn geography, as you learn history, you can learn christianity.

But if you want to become a Christ, there is no way to learn it. In fact, on the contrary, you have to drop all learning. You have to get rid of all that has been imposed on you; you have to forget all that you know. You have to start from scratch. You have to start with a clean slate, you have to start with an unconditioned mind. All learning is conditioning, and when one is unconditioned Christ arises in one’s own being. It is not something that you gather from the outside, that you accumulate, imbibe, no. It is something like a flowering of your own. You bloom into it. It is your colour, it is your perfume. It is your very nature.

That is faith. To become a Moumin – to become faith, to become trust, is the greatest quantum leap. To come from the head to the heart is the longest journey. Man can reach the moon – that is easier – and soon man will reach to the stars; that too is not very difficult. The only problem and the most difficult journey is: to move from the head to the heart, because they don’t exist in the same dimension – their ways of existing are so different.

So remember: your name will mean love and faith, not love and belief. And love is the door to faith. The more you love, the more you become heart-full. When you have really become heart-full and your love has grown to a maturity, a ripeness, that very love starts changing, starts being transformed into a new fragrance. That fragrance is faith – it is the ultimate love. Love is the beginning of faith, faith is the culmination of love.

[A sannyasin is very sad to be leaving.]

Then start a small centre in your town – just friends gathering together, mm?

This will be the name for the centre: Wali. It is a sufi name for God – it means: the friend. And think of God as the friend, because we are not different from Him. He is not different from us. We belong to the same reality, to the same whole. And this existence is a great brotherhood, a great friendship. Everything is interlinked. The lowest and the highest are not separate; they are part of the same ladder.

Think of God as the friend. There is no need to think of God as far away, distant; that creates difficulties. Think of Him as a friend who is walking by your side, following you like a shadow, who cares for you, who loves you and who needs you as much as you need Him. That is the meaning of a friend. The need is not one-sided: it is not only that you need Him – He also needs you. You are incomplete without Him and He is incomplete without you. That is the meaning of friendship: you both complement each other. This whole existence is interdependence. This small blade of grass is as significant, is needed, is required, as much as the greatest star. There is equality.

And if we can start thinking of God as the friend, there will be a change in the world climate – of thought, of religion, of philosophy. To think of God as the father is not very good, because we don’t have a good idea of the father in the mind. No son has a good idea of the father in the mind. There is a certain kind of fear around the very idea of the father. Every boy is afraid of the father; he punishes. One has not to do this, one has to follow him. He is all-powerful and there is a kind of domination from the father. It is very difficult to forgive your own father. To call God the father is to destroy something.

It is better to call God the friend. Then you feel more in tune. You can open your heart, you can share yourself with all your limitations; there is no fear. And you know that the friend will forgive you, you know the friend will support you. Your limitations will not become a barrier. You need nat hide from the friend – he will understand.

Start this small centre, mm? – and friends will gather and think of God and meditate and pray. Then something will start moving. All great things start like small ripples. Nobody could have thought that Jesus would become such a tide. It was such a small ripple, in such afar away part of the world. But it has become such a great force. What is happening between you and me – you cannot be aware right now of what it can become tomorrow. It can possess the whole world it can become a wild fire.

So just remember, and don’t be afraid of starting. There is no need to do great things – just small beginnings. And if they are on the right track, if they are in cooperation with God, they become great. They are bound to become great, they are destined to become great.

[Osho gives a ‘come close energy darshan’ to a couple. He then talks to them about how we cannot really gauge happiness, though we can gauge pain. when you have a headache, you are bound to know, but when you don’t have a headache, what is there to know? When there is no headache, there is no head either! It is strange that all that is really good and healthy and whole remains unknown. But man has to be made alert about pain, otherwise he will die. Pain is a protective device, but when there is no pain, nature is not worried about it.]

It has no in-built mechanism. You have to create that mechanism; slowly slowly you have to learn it. It is not inborn; it is all art that has to be learned. Very few people learn to know what bliss is. Many people attain to moments of bliss but they don’t take note of them. Things are perfectly good

– go on into this unknown phenomenon. Slowly slowly the art will arise. It is just like the wine-taster: just by a single drop on his tongue he can say the make of the wine, the year it was made. It is not inborn, but slowly, through making subtle distinctions, one comes to know.

To know about bliss is almost like the art of a wine tasterThings are good – I can taste the wine!

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