Just recently I was interviewed by the ABC’s “Compass” which is an investigative documentary program here in Australia. They were doing a half hour program on Osho’s Sanyasins in Australia and how they feel these many years later about their time with him. After being interviewed and filmed for 4 hours, I was once again left with the feeling of how difficult it was to describe this journey that I have had with Osho.
I came to Osho as a young woman of 32, married with a family of two beautiful children, with a tremendous yearning for something, which in those days I could not describe. Divine discontent, a sense of futility at the way most people were living their lives. Everything was about “things” – people seemed lost in wanting more, no matter how much they had materially.
The first time I heard Osho speak on a taped discourse, it was as if that hidden place within me was being touched in the most profound way and I knew that this Enlightened man could show me that which my heart and being so longed for. Awareness. He conveyed something beyond my current capacity to understand through my conscious mind, but I knew it was there. And so my journey began with tears of complete overwhelm pouring out of my heart and eyes as a deep sense of “at last” and gratitude burst open within me when I listened to the first taped discourse in Nirvana Centre, London.
Looking back I realized that I was very naive and knew nothing of meditation and inner dimensions. But there was an immediate recognition that never wavered from that first moment. To describe something that is so deep within us, so subjective has always been very difficult for me because it is so impossible to communicate what it is like being in the presence of a human being who has gone beyond the ego, the rational mind and all that society constructs and believes in.
Much of my journey with Osho has been about break-throughs, break-downs, break-ins and sudden shattering insights that have enabled me to wake from the dream of my conditioning and begin to see life from a completely new perspective.
Osho’s humor and lightness made, what was at times, very painful transitions much easier, when seen through the eyes of laughter. Seriousness was deeply entrenched in me as a child but I knew that I also had a capacity to see the absurdity of life through laughter and the intelligence it brought with it.
I took sannyas in early 1973 and came to Pune in 1975 for 5 weeks, leaving my family in London. This precious time with Osho was a great turning point for me. To see and feel him at such close range in darshans and in the daily discourses was and still is very hard to convey to people who have no idea of what it feels like to be in the presence of an Enlightened being.
If you say love, it is misunderstood, if you say bliss, it is also difficult to convey. So I more often than not I simply say “indescribable” and then, I have to laugh.
In 1979 my whole family and I returned to Pune to be with Osho and to live in his Buddhafield. We were all sannyasins by then.
The privilege of being able to see and listen to him daily in discourse, bursting heart, gratitude, delight and yet at times so painful as the realization of how asleep I was would fill me with despair. There were so many valleys and a few peaks in those early days but with time and his enduring guidance I slowly began to accept and relax that all would be well. Lifetimes of unconsciousness cannot we transformed so easily. So patience, relaxation and yet a deep alertness was needed. I realized too that being in the company of this Divine Being was not for the faint hearted. Courage, determination and stamina became my reminder when I felt discouraged.
Absorbing, integrating, becoming aware more and more and through a slow but constant recognition of releasing the fear, repressions and negative patterns of behavior that had been so much part of who I thought I was. Allowing the insights to expand and awaken a new sense of aliveness and freedom within me. Having Osho talk to us each day, using every trick in the book to get us to wake up, was a privilege that I still can’t really get my head around. How utterly blessed we have been to be on this planet at the same time as such a Divine Being, It is so rare in the history of humanity. And we were there day after day being reborn in the womb of inner evolution.
Many years later after the Ranch and back in India once again with Osho, I sensed that many of us had matured and grown in understanding and meditation. The urgency I felt was now more personal than ever. A realization that Osho could pour and pour but it was now up to me to integrate and live both in the outer and inner world. To find a balance of being in the world but not of it and in all things to be present.
The cooking pot of Osho Buddhafield turned me outside in, giving me a capacity to see from behind my eyes. Of course these many years of facilitating the Mystic Rose has brought about the most profound changes within me. I cannot stress enough how during 25 years of laughter, tears and meditation condensed into three week processes, how much I have been healed and transformed. It is a great gift from our beloved Master to all of humanity and it is with my heart full of gratitude and love that I will keep on offering the Mystic Rose in Osho Nisarga until my last laugh.
