Osho is my love affair since childhood. I feel very strongly that it was not just an accident that I was born in a house where Osho was loved so much. I really feel that I chose my parents. The day my mother, Neelam, knew she was pregnant with me was the same day she met Osho for the first time.
Both of my parents fell in love with Him. My mom started meditating while I was in her womb. Osho saw me the first time when I was four months old. I have no memory of that, but I have heard from my mom that He looked at me and said to her, "She is my child. I will take care of her. "
He named me Priya, which He explained means ‘The Beloved One‘. I have vague memories of sitting on His lap and playing with His beard and pulling the hair on His chest. I remember feeling very secure and warm there. At that time a group of people called a Kirtan Mandali travelled with Him while He led meditation camps all around India. I was four years old when this group came and stayed at our house, and it was my first exposure to saffron clothes and the mala. Singing devotional songs with high rhythmic music, these people looked so divine, as if they were possessed by the unknown. Their faces were glowing with freedom, devotion, bliss and ecstasy. They looked so radiant with something I fell in love with madly. I developed a strong bond with this group, which I still maintain to this day.
I was studying in a Christian convent school as it was the best school available at that time in my city. The school was very English, very proper. The nuns were so serious and so strict and they created an unhealthy competitive atmosphere where the whole psyche of the school was based on tension and fear. And my home was just the opposite. I have beautiful memories of it. It was a lovely, aesthetic and meditative house where Osho's discourses were being played all the time. I used to look at Osho's photograph and feel a deep longing in me. It was as if this longing was not only from this life but had roots from many lives before. I could never give this longing a name or explain it to any of my friends in school. I kept it to myself. The contrast between school and home kept on growing as I got older. Together with my parents we would go to the ashram in Pune during my school holidays.
I remember my first evening darshan with Osho. I was six years old. He touched my third eye very strongly and for a long time. Nothing was said in words. It was a strong energy communion that has no expression. Just before every holiday my mom would ask me, "Should we go to Pune this time or maybe somewhere else for a change?" My answer would always be "Pune!" I would be counting the days to be in His presence again. I was seven when I took sannyas. It happened in a very natural and spontaneous way. I was sitting in the evening darshan with my parents next to me. Osho was talking to someone and suddenly l got up and said, "Bhagwan, I want to take sannyas." The guards came running over to me because I had disturbed everyone. My parents were shocked as I had not expressed any desire of taking sannyas before. Osho called me and said, "So, now my little Priya wants to take sannyas. " I screamed loudly, "YES!" Because I was not on the list of people who had asked to take sannyas, Laxmi had to quickly go inside and get a mala for me (which was so long that I had to fold it twice). Osho said to me, "I like your name Priya, so from now on you will be called Ma Deva Priya, which means 'the Beloved of the Divine’. "He gave me a little wooden box with some of His hair in it and said, "Every night sleep with this box on your heart. I will always be there with you. " I felt so close to Him. As I always wanted to wear saffron and be totally part of His group I asked him, "Bhagwan please tell my mom to stitch me saffron clothes from now on," and Osho grinned and said "Yes Priya, she will stitch you saffron. When you go to school wear the uniform but mala inside; remember I am always with you."
It is then that my journey as a sannyasin began. And my love affair with Osho continues. It is a love affair that is not of this world.
"The relationship between a master and a disciple is the highest possibility of love — because it is not a relationship of two bodies, it is not a relationship of two minds, two friends, in subtle, psychic harmony. No. It is neither bodily, nor sexual; it is neither mental nor emotional. It is of two totals, coming together and merging into each other. This is the greatest art. Because between a master and disciple the greatest mystery is lived, the deepest is lived, the highest flows. It is a relationship between the known and the unknown, between the finite and the infinite, between time and eternity, between the seed and the flower, between the actual and the potential, between past and future. A disciple is only the past; the master is only the future. And here, this moment, in their deep love and waiting, they meet....When the bridge happens between a master and a disciple, it is a miracle. To bridge the known with the unknown, and time with eternity, is a miracle. " - Osho: The Grass Grows by Itself, Chapter 2.
