The Face of Godliness
Question :
How can one 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 - unnamable, 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, unnamable.
You look into the eyes of a child - you cannot find anything deeper. The eyes of a child are an abyss, 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. 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.
You are asking me how we can save the original face of our children. You don't have to do anything directly. Anything done directly will be a disturbance. You have to learn the art of non-doing. That is a very difficult art. It is not something that you have to do to protect, to save, the original face of the child. Whatever you do will distort the original face. You have to learn non-doing; you have to learn to keep away, out of the way of the child. You have to be very courageous because it is risky to leave the child to himself.
For thousands of years we have been told: if the child is left to himself he will be a savage. That is sheer nonsense. I am sitting before you - do you think I am a savage? And I have lived without being interfered with by my parents. Yes, there was much trouble for them and there will be much trouble for you too, but it is worth it.
The original face of the child is so valuable that any trouble is worth it. It is so priceless that whatsoever you have to pay for it, it is still cheap; you are getting it for nothing. And the joy on the day you find your child with his original face intact, with the same beauty that he had brought into the world, the same innocence, the same clarity, the same joyfulness, cheerfulness, the same aliveness. What more can you expect? You cannot give anything to the child, you can only take. If you really want to give a gift to the child, this is the only gift possible: don't interfere.
Take the risk and let the child go into the unknown, into the uncharted. It is difficult. Great fear grips the parents - who knows what will happen to the child? Out of this fear they start molding a certain pattern of life for the child. Out of fear they start directing him into a particular way, towards a particular goal, but they don't know that because of their fear they are killing the child. He will never be blissful. And he will never be grateful to you; he will always carry a grudge against you.
Sigmund Freud has a great insight in this matter: he says, "Every culture respects the father. No culture on earth exists, or has ever existed, which has not propounded, propagated the idea that the father has to be respected." Sigmund Freud says, "This respect for the father arises because sometime back in prehistoric times the father must have been killed by the children just to save themselves from being crippled." It is a strange idea, but very significant. He is saying that the respect is being paid to the father out of guilt, and that guilt has been carried for thousands of years.
Somewhere - it is not a historical fact, but a meaningful myth, that young people must have killed their father and then repented - naturally, because he was their father; but he was driving them into ways where they were not happy. They killed him, but then they repented. Then they started worshipping the spirits of the ancestors, fathers, forefathers, out of fear, because the ghosts of those can take revenge. And then slowly, slowly it became a convention to be respectful towards the elders. But why? I would like you to be respectful to the children.
The children deserve all the respect you can manage, because they are so fresh, so innocent, so close to godliness. It is time to pay respect to them, not to force them to pay respect to all kinds of corrupted people - cunning, crooked, full of shit - just because they are old. I would like to reverse the whole thing: respect towards the children because they are closer to the source; you are far away. They are still original, you are already a carbon copy. And do you understand what it can do if you are respectful to children?
Then through love and respect you can save them from going in any wrong direction - not out of fear but out of your respect and love.
My grandfather...I could not speak a lie to my grandfather because he respected me so much. When the whole family was against me I could at least depend on the old man. He would not bother about all the proofs that were against me. He would say, "I don't care what he has done. If he has done it, it must be right. I know him, he cannot do wrong." And when he was with me of course the whole family had to shrink back. I would tell him the whole thing, and he would say, "There is no need to be worried. Do whatsoever you feel is right, because who else can decide? In your situation, in your place, only you can decide. Do whatsoever you feel is right, and always remember that I am here to support you, because I not only love you, I respect you too."
His respect towards me was the greatest treasure I could have received. When he was dying I was eighty miles away. He informed me that I should come immediately because there was not much time. I came quickly; within two hours I was there. It was as if he was just waiting for me. He opened his eyes and he said, "I was just trying to continue to breathe so that you could reach me. Just one thing I want to say: I will not be here now to support you, and you will need support. But remember, wherever I am, my love and my respect will remain with you. Don't be afraid of anybody, don't be afraid of the world."
Those were his last words: "Don't be afraid of the world." Respect the children, make them fearless. But if you are yourself full of fear, how can you make them fearless? Don't force respect on them towards you because you are their father, you are their daddy, their mom, this and that. Change this attitude and see what transformation respect can bring to your children. They will listen to you more carefully if you respect them. They will try to understand you and your mind more carefully if you respect them. They have to. And in no way are you imposing anything; so if by understanding they feel you are right and they follow you, they will not lose their original face.
The original face is not lost by going on a certain way. It is lost by children being forced, forced against their will. Love and respect can sweetly help them to be more understanding about the world, can help them to be more alert, aware, careful - because life is precious, and it is a gift from existence. We should not waste it. At the moment of death we should be able to say that we are leaving the world better, more beautiful, more graceful. But this is possible only if we leave this world with our original face, the same face with which we came into it.
-Osho, "From Darkness to Light, #6, Q1"