Every child’s original face is the face of god
Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
HOW DO WE, THE COMMUNE, ENSURE THAT OUR CHILDREN MAINTAIN THEIR ORIGINAL
FACE?
The original face of every child is the face of God. Of course my God is not a Christian, a Hindu, a
Jew. My God is not even a person but only a presence.
It is less like a flower and more like fragrance. You can feel it but you cannot catch hold of it. You
can be overwhelmed by it but you cannot possess it.
My God is not something objective, there.
My God is your very subjectivity, here.
My God can never be indicated by the word ”that.”
He can only be indicated by the word ”this.”
The God of my vision and experience is not to be searched for in the synagogues, temples,
mosques, churches, in the Himalayas, in the monasteries. He is not there because He is always
here. And you go on looking for Him there.
When I say every child’s original face is the face of God, I am saying that God is synonymous with
life, existence. Whatsoever is, is divine, sacred. And there is nothing else than God.
God is not to be understood as quantity, but as quality. You cannot measure it. You cannot make a
statue of it, you cannot draw a picture of it. In that sense it is absolutely impersonal. And if you look
at the faces of children when they arrive, fresh from the very source of life, you will see a certain
presence which cannot be named – unnameable, indefinable.
The child is alive. You cannot define its aliveness, but it is there, you can feel it. It is so much there
that howsoever blind you are you cannot miss it. It is fresh. You can smell the freshness around a
child. That fragrance slowly, slowly disappears. And if unfortunately the child becomes successful,
a celebrity – a president, a prime minister, a pope – then the same child stinks.
He had come with a tremendous fragrance, immeasurable, indefinable, unnameable. You look into
the eyes of a child – you cannot find anything deeper. The eyes of a child are abysmal, there is no
bottom to them. Unfortunately, the way society will destroy him, soon his eyes will be only superficial;
because of layers and layers of conditioning, that depth, that immense depth will have disappeared
long before. And that was his original face.
The child has no thoughts. About what can he think? Thinking needs a past, thinking needs
problems. He has no past, he has only future. He has no problems yet, he is without problems.
There is no possibility of thinking for him. What can he think?
The child is conscious but without thoughts.
This is the original face of the child.
Once this was your face too, and although you have forgotten it, it is still there within you, waiting
someday to be rediscovered. I am saying REdiscovered because you have discovered it many times
in your previous lives, and again and again you go on forgetting it.
Perhaps even in this life there have been moments when you have come very close to knowing it, to
feeling it, to being it. But the world is too much with us. Its pull is great – and there are a thousand
and one directions the world is pulling you. It is pulling you in so many directions that you are falling
apart. It is a miracle how people go on managing to keep themselves together. Otherwise their one
hand will be going to the north, another hand to the south, their head must be going towards heaven;
all their parts will be flying all over the place.
It is certainly a miracle how you go on keeping yourself together. Perhaps the pressure from all sides
is too much so that your hands and legs and heads cannot fly. You are pressed from everywhere.
Whenever I see ... and I don’t know why people go on sending me beautiful paperweights – I don’t
have any papers. What am I going to do with paperweights? Perhaps they think there are hundreds
of books in my name so there must be so much paperwork around me, all over my room papers and
papers. There is not a single paper.
Yes, paperweights go on coming, and whenever a paperweight comes I am immediately reminded of
you. You would have been flying like papers in the strong wind, but there are so many paperweights
to keep you pressed and give you an idea that you are one individual. You are not – you are many,
and in the crowd of this many-ness of your existence, your original face is lost.
Even if by chance you happen to meet your original face, you will not be able to recognize it, it will
be such a stranger. Perhaps you come across it once in a while, just by accident, but you don’t
even say Hi! It is a stranger and perhaps deep down, a certain fear – that is always there with every
stranger.
That’s why people try to become acquainted, introduced to strangers, the sooner the better. They
don’t want to be left in that state of fear, that somebody is absolutely unknown to them. They don’t
know what he can do, what he intends to do, what kind of person he is. Maybe he is a murderer, a
thief.
I played around this theme so many times because I was continuously traveling in India, and I was
always traveling in an air-conditioned coupe. So at the most two persons – that too very rarely
because in India very few people can afford to travel in the air-conditioned coupe, except people like
me who have nothing to lose. Just poor people like me can travel like that because we cannot be
more poor than we are.
But once in a while a minister, a governor, a rich industrialist, a scientist, a vice-chancellor – people
like that were my fellow travelers. And I always tried to see what happened to them if I continued to
remain a stranger. And I enjoyed – it does things to people.
I was not doing anything, I was just trying be a stranger, which really I am. They would ask me,
”Where are you going?” – just anything to begin with.
I would say, ”Anywhere will do.”
They would say, ”Anywhere will do?” – and I could see the fear arising: ”Is the man mad? But no,
he does not look mad.” They would then say, ”Are you joking?”
Once I said, ”Why should I joke with you?”
In India, it is a convention that you joke only with certain relatives. Joking is very confined, to a
certain relationship. You joke only with your wife’s brother, otherwise you don’t joke; only that’s
acceptable to the society. I said, ”But you are not my wife’s brother, why should I joke? Or are you
my wife’s brother? Perhaps you are. But I don’t remember ever seeing you before.”
The man became really more shaky and I could see the trembling arising – and he had to travel with
me for at least ten hours, twelve hours, or even twenty-four hours. But still he tried: ”What is your
name?”
I said, ”The moment you asked me, it was just on the tip of my tongue. Now I am trying hard to
remember. I have a name, I certainly remember ... I know it is there but you will have to give me a
little time. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come what can I do? What can you do? But it doesn’t
matter anyway, you can call me any name. Anyway every child is born without a name and we give
him one. All names are arbitrary, so it does not matter whether you call me Ram, Rahim, Ibrahim,
Moses, Jesus, Christ; anything will do.”
Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
HOW DO WE, THE COMMUNE, ENSURE THAT OUR CHILDREN MAINTAIN THEIR ORIGINAL
FACE?
The original face of every child is the face of God. Of course my God is not a Christian, a Hindu, a
Jew. My God is not even a person but only a presence.
It is less like a flower and more like fragrance. You can feel it but you cannot catch hold of it. You
can be overwhelmed by it but you cannot possess it.
My God is not something objective, there.
My God is your very subjectivity, here.
My God can never be indicated by the word ”that.”
He can only be indicated by the word ”this.”
The God of my vision and experience is not to be searched for in the synagogues, temples,
mosques, churches, in the Himalayas, in the monasteries. He is not there because He is always
here. And you go on looking for Him there.
When I say every child’s original face is the face of God, I am saying that God is synonymous with
life, existence. Whatsoever is, is divine, sacred. And there is nothing else than God.
God is not to be understood as quantity, but as quality. You cannot measure it. You cannot make a
statue of it, you cannot draw a picture of it. In that sense it is absolutely impersonal. And if you look
at the faces of children when they arrive, fresh from the very source of life, you will see a certain
presence which cannot be named – unnameable, indefinable.
The child is alive. You cannot define its aliveness, but it is there, you can feel it. It is so much there
that howsoever blind you are you cannot miss it. It is fresh. You can smell the freshness around a
child. That fragrance slowly, slowly disappears. And if unfortunately the child becomes successful,
a celebrity – a president, a prime minister, a pope – then the same child stinks.
He had come with a tremendous fragrance, immeasurable, indefinable, unnameable. You look into
the eyes of a child – you cannot find anything deeper. The eyes of a child are abysmal, there is no
bottom to them. Unfortunately, the way society will destroy him, soon his eyes will be only superficial;
because of layers and layers of conditioning, that depth, that immense depth will have disappeared
long before. And that was his original face.
The child has no thoughts. About what can he think? Thinking needs a past, thinking needs
problems. He has no past, he has only future. He has no problems yet, he is without problems.
There is no possibility of thinking for him. What can he think?
The child is conscious but without thoughts.
This is the original face of the child.
Once this was your face too, and although you have forgotten it, it is still there within you, waiting
someday to be rediscovered. I am saying REdiscovered because you have discovered it many times
in your previous lives, and again and again you go on forgetting it.
Perhaps even in this life there have been moments when you have come very close to knowing it, to
feeling it, to being it. But the world is too much with us. Its pull is great – and there are a thousand
and one directions the world is pulling you. It is pulling you in so many directions that you are falling
apart. It is a miracle how people go on managing to keep themselves together. Otherwise their one
hand will be going to the north, another hand to the south, their head must be going towards heaven;
all their parts will be flying all over the place.
It is certainly a miracle how you go on keeping yourself together. Perhaps the pressure from all sides
is too much so that your hands and legs and heads cannot fly. You are pressed from everywhere.
Whenever I see ... and I don’t know why people go on sending me beautiful paperweights – I don’t
have any papers. What am I going to do with paperweights? Perhaps they think there are hundreds
of books in my name so there must be so much paperwork around me, all over my room papers and
papers. There is not a single paper.
Yes, paperweights go on coming, and whenever a paperweight comes I am immediately reminded of
you. You would have been flying like papers in the strong wind, but there are so many paperweights
to keep you pressed and give you an idea that you are one individual. You are not – you are many,
and in the crowd of this many-ness of your existence, your original face is lost.
Even if by chance you happen to meet your original face, you will not be able to recognize it, it will
be such a stranger. Perhaps you come across it once in a while, just by accident, but you don’t
even say Hi! It is a stranger and perhaps deep down, a certain fear – that is always there with every
stranger.
That’s why people try to become acquainted, introduced to strangers, the sooner the better. They
don’t want to be left in that state of fear, that somebody is absolutely unknown to them. They don’t
know what he can do, what he intends to do, what kind of person he is. Maybe he is a murderer, a
thief.
I played around this theme so many times because I was continuously traveling in India, and I was
always traveling in an air-conditioned coupe. So at the most two persons – that too very rarely
because in India very few people can afford to travel in the air-conditioned coupe, except people like
me who have nothing to lose. Just poor people like me can travel like that because we cannot be
more poor than we are.
But once in a while a minister, a governor, a rich industrialist, a scientist, a vice-chancellor – people
like that were my fellow travelers. And I always tried to see what happened to them if I continued to
remain a stranger. And I enjoyed – it does things to people.
I was not doing anything, I was just trying be a stranger, which really I am. They would ask me,
”Where are you going?” – just anything to begin with.
I would say, ”Anywhere will do.”
They would say, ”Anywhere will do?” – and I could see the fear arising: ”Is the man mad? But no,
he does not look mad.” They would then say, ”Are you joking?”
Once I said, ”Why should I joke with you?”
In India, it is a convention that you joke only with certain relatives. Joking is very confined, to a
certain relationship. You joke only with your wife’s brother, otherwise you don’t joke; only that’s
acceptable to the society. I said, ”But you are not my wife’s brother, why should I joke? Or are you
my wife’s brother? Perhaps you are. But I don’t remember ever seeing you before.”
The man became really more shaky and I could see the trembling arising – and he had to travel with
me for at least ten hours, twelve hours, or even twenty-four hours. But still he tried: ”What is your
name?”
I said, ”The moment you asked me, it was just on the tip of my tongue. Now I am trying hard to
remember. I have a name, I certainly remember ... I know it is there but you will have to give me a
little time. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come what can I do? What can you do? But it doesn’t
matter anyway, you can call me any name. Anyway every child is born without a name and we give
him one. All names are arbitrary, so it does not matter whether you call me Ram, Rahim, Ibrahim,
Moses, Jesus, Christ; anything will do.”
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