When I think about sannyas, these days, I realize more and more how lucky I have been. There’s gratefulness and there’s the joy of knowing that this journey of sannyas never really ends. I met Osho in 1978, still a teenager having just spent two years as the youngest member of a Gurdjieff group in London, led by one of Gurdjieff’s direct disciples-for me, an incredible preparation for what was to come as a resident in the communes that formed around Osho.
It still surprises me that despite being pretty talkative and supposedly articulate (my sannyas name means blissful wisdom), I mostly just sat in silence in front of Osho, awed and bliss-ed indeed. I never had much to ask him, no high-flying spiritual inquiry. I have always found that the answers to the questions we have are all in the talks he gave (I’m sure that’s why he asked for them to be recorded and filmed!).
In fact at least twice in response to some question I had written to him, I got blank pieces of paper in response! I took that to mean basically; Keep quiet and enjoy this moment, without your mind ‘doing’ anything with it!’
I loved going to ‘energy darshan’, the wild, ecstatic moments as Osho pulsed my ‘third eye’ with his cool fingers, the dazed silence afterwards and often having to be carried out of Chuang Tzu auditorium! (Unfortunately, I lost all my darshan photos with Osho at the end of Rajneeshpuram and only have a few taken at ‘Mobo's, a kind of hostel near the ashram which was always full of sannyasins.)
What remains invisible, beyond mind, is the other inner work for which Osho’s presence is still a catalyst.
In Pune 2, in a beautiful reply to a semi-humorous question I had asked him about paths and the following of them, I saw Osho chuckle at my question, replying more or less with the same message from years before; Keep quiet, don’t worry and simply be here and now-and dance! ”For what do you think I am sitting here?” he teased me.
Anyway back to my luck; within a few months of arriving in Pune 1, and with a fistful of groups behind me, I found myself sharing a bamboo hut with my girlfriend on Jesus House roof, and working in Osho’s garden.
I was also there for most of the mad, wonderful experiment of Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, and then in the early days of Pune 2, I worked as a guard, either seated in the front rows during Osho’s discourses or in his garden. . Later I found that it did not matter so much where I sat- I would still mostly sink into such blissful silence. Night-guarding at Lao Tzu house (where Osho lived) was another kind of initiation into meditation for which I am really grateful.
Yes, I have been lucky and the stories about the work I did in the communes around Osho, before I started leading groups perhaps don’t belong here-but the experience was rarely not fun and intense and rich.
So when I was asked to be part of the teaching staff of the Osho Divine Healing Arts training shortly after it started in 1987, I jumped. I‘d already had some experience with shiatsu, but it was the chance to contribute to a training that put together so much of what I had already been given that was really thrilling. I also spent some years after Osho left his body as one of the co-leaders of the Osho Tantra Intensive at the Osho Multiversity in Pune, and although the focus is slightly different with the Tantra work, the corner stones are the same; awareness, bodywork, healing movement, centering, a meditative approach to working with people, laughter and dance-and these are the elements that I still rely on in much of my work today, along with direct guidance we received from Osho about the nature of Healing and the transformation of energy. Luckily, I’ve become more comfortable with being speechless too!
