Rahim - the Merciful one

Rahim: It means mercy, kindness, compassion. It means the compassionate one, the merciful one.

And get in tune with the feeling of mercy. That will become the door to God for you. Everybody has to find his own door. Different people go through different doors. They arrive at the same goal, they reach the same reality, the same nothingness or the same God, but the approaches are different because personalities are different, types are different.

So mercy is going to be the key word for you. Feel more and more compassion. Flow into compassion... for no reason at all, because compassion can’t have any reason, it is its own joy. If you do it for some reason it is no more compassion. It has to be spontaneous, on the spot, with no idea, with no motive. Then it brings great joy.

-Osho

The first name - Allah

This is far more significant than the word ’God.’ In fact no other word in any language of the world exists which is more important than this word. All other words used for God are at the most qualities of God. They are not as comprehensive as ’Allaha.’ Allaha simply means existence. It contains all: it contains good, it contains bad; it contains life, it contains death. It is not a quality, but all the good qualities of the totality. And it does not mean existent, it means existence.

Man is an existent. God is existence Himself. To say ’God exists’ is a tautology; it simply means ’existence exists.’ It doesn’t make sense. The tree exists, the man exists, the mountain exists, but not God. Existence is a quality of the mountain; with God it is the very spirit. The mountain exists today, tomorrow it may not exist. There was a time when it was not there; there will be a time when again it will not be there.

God always is. You cannot use a past tense for God. It will be grammatically right but existentially wrong.

You cannot say 'God is.' That is the meaning of 'Allaha', that is-ness.

One has to become more and more loving and one has to become more and more existent so that one can go beyond death, beyond birth, beyond the momentary, beyond the temporary; so one can become eternal. Love is the way, existence is the goal

-Osho

Why ninety nine names?

Sufis have beautiful names for God; in all they have ninety-nine names for God. One wonders why not one hundred? It looks so incomplete. For a certain, subtle reason, the hundredth name has been kept silent. That is the true name of God which cannot be uttered. The tao that can be uttered is not the true tao and the God that can be spoken of is not the true God, because the word ’God’ falsifies the reality of God.

So the hundredth name is the true name – what Hindus call ’satnam’, the true name – but it can’t be uttered. It will lose its beauty if it is uttered. It remains unuttered, at the deepest core of the heart. But ninetynine names can be uttered just as a help to reach the hundredth. The hundredth name is almost a nothingness – what buddhas have called ’nirvana’, nothingness. So we can call these the ninety-nine names of nothingness.

This method has been used by all the religions of the world. These names of God are not just names – they contain much more. Each name is a methodology... very potential. Rightly understood it can transform your life.
- Osho

The Power of 99

99 is a mystical number. 99 Names of Allah is only one of the mysteries. This blog will try to bring out the mystical aspects of the number 99 and insights specifically into the 99 names of Allah Ta'ala. The purpose is to see these 99 names as attributes that human beings could try to develop in themselves.
We will use many, and often varied sources to get to the core of each name. Insha Allah.