Love

– Prem means love, Hamido is a Sufi name for God – it means the praiseworthy. Sufis continuously praise God. They call it jikr – remembrance They are continuously bowing inside to God. That is a way of effacing yourself. That is a way of destroying the ego, the way to destroy the person. When the person is completely effaced, dropped, he becomes a presence, and that presence is love.

Love is known only when you are no more a person and you have become a presence. Love is a shadow of presence. If you are a person then in the name of love a thousand and one other things go on masquerading as love: possessiveness, jealousy, domination, politics, power. A thousand and one are the games of the mind. If you are a person – and by ”person” I mean if you have the ego, the ”I”; that’s what person means – if you are living in a kind of separation from existence, then you are constantly in Conflict. Even with those you love there will be conflict; your very style of life is of conflict. Then people love, but the love brings only misery… gives great hope, but never fulfills, promises much but the goods are never delivered.

There is another kind of love – the real love – that never happens to a person; it happens only when you have become a presence. The way to love, the method to create love energy in you, is to negate the ego. And to negate the ego the Sufis use the continuous prayer, praising God in every possible way. They never miss a single opportunity to praise God. If they see a rose flower, the Sufi will immediately say, ”God be praised!” Why? Because in this moment he has given this beautiful rose flower to him. If he sees a star in the sky, ”God be praised!” If he sees a beautiful person passing by, ”God be praised!”

He continuously uses all occasions to praise God. Hence one of the names of God is Hamido, the praiseworthy, one who has to be praised continuously. It is a technical device to efface oneself, to forget oneself, to drown one’s person into oblivion. And then one day you are not there. Something is, but you are not there. There is no feeling of ”I” – a pure presence. That presence showers love. That presence becomes a blessing to existence. So your name means: attain to love, a love that becomes a blessing to existence. Attain to that love which is synonymous with God, the praiseworthy one. Love be praised.

Love is the only alchemy that transforms a man into something superhuman. And my work is nothing but creating a situation in which your love can start flowing. It is there, frozen; it needs a little warmth, a provocation, and then it starts flowing. It needs to be called forth, and that is the function of the Master: to call forth the intrinsic in you, the potential in you, and to help it become actual.

God is everybody’s potentiality; it has to become everybody’s actuality too. Unless it happens we remain in misery. And when it happens there is ecstasy, unbounded ecstasy. And once it starts happening it goes on happening; then there is no end to it. Yes, it begins but it never ends… it has a beginning but no end.