My Leaving Darshan

It was July of 1976 – my visa was about to expire and I was preparing to go back to the US. However, Guru Purnima Day was about to happen and Laxmi asked me to sing with the band for this event. I chose a lyric from a small book of Buddha’s words: That which is most needed is a loving heart. The day of the celebration I appeared at the front of Chuang Tzu Auditorium where the band was sitting and told them I was going to sing with them. When they asked me what I would sing, I told them not to worry; I would just join in with whatever they were playing.

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My heart was in my mouth, very excited but eager to begin. But first Indian sannyasins were singing Kirtan with Ma Taru. When they were finished, she handed the mike to me and the band began to play. I listened to a few bars and then joined them, but as far as I could hear, I was just singing to Osho; I heard nothing from the mike. But I continued to sing, looking into his eyes, loving his smile and the way he moved his hands to the rhythm of my song. I improvised on the lyric and enjoyed my words that just spilled from my throat, from my heart.

I was aware of the auditorium being divided into three groups: those choosing to remain seated, a second group ringing the auditorium dancing, and a third group lining up to touch his feet, moving along and then joining those seated. I sang and watched while Osho’s father danced before him and then kneeled to touch his feet. I loved it all. Later I was to hear that my voice and song had been reaching the whole line outside the ashram waiting to touch his feet and they were dancing even as far away as the street. I never knew that the mike was really turned on. I knew I was!

Then the day arrived for my leaving darshan. This is it:

Jeevan: I’m going to be in a place where I’ll have lots of temptation to drugs and sex. I feel as though I’ve really developed some beautiful meditative things for myself and I feel a bit apprehensive…

You will have to be a little alert, because when there is nothing like meditation, there is nothing to lose. But when meditation starts and something is growing, there is much to lose.

The devil becomes a temptation only when God is very close by, otherwise not. The devil never goes to tempt devils – never. He always goes to tempt a Jesus, a Buddha. The temptation is always when you have something to lose. So ordinarily I don’t say to people to be alert about sex because they don’t have anything to lose so it is perfectly okay. If they don’t have anything to lose and they become too alert about sex, their alertness will function as a repression. It will not be a gain, it will be a loss.

But to you I would like to say to be alert because now you have something growing… it is very soft, fragile, tender. Just a small moment of unawareness and you can lose it. It can be crushed by anything.

And when energy is rising higher, sex can be dangerous. It pulls down the energy. It creates a contradiction in your being. One part is going higher and another part starts going lower. Then there comes a deep tension, a bifurcation, a split. So for you, the temptation is going to be there and you have to be alert. The greater the temptation, the greater is the possibility of being alert. So don’t take it negatively. There is nothing to be afraid of. It’s simply as it should be.

It is a challenge, and it is good. So when you are there be very watchful, be loving, and if sometimes sex happens as part of love, then there is nothing to be worried about. But it shouldn’t be the focus. The focus should be love. You love a person, you share his being, you share your being with him, you share the space.

That is exactly what love is: to create a space between two persons – a space which belongs to neither or belongs to both… a small space between two persons where they both meet and mingle and merge. That space has nothing to do with physical space. It is simply spiritual. In that space you are not you, and the other is not the other. You both come into that space and you meet.

Once it happened that I stayed with friends in Agra. They were two brothers, both mad and very rich people. I had never been to their place but they had been asking me again and again. Once just passing through, I stayed with them for four or five hours. I had known that both of them were a little neurotic, but their neuroses became clear-cut in those hours I stayed there.

The elder brother had come to receive me at the station and the younger came too, but a little late. So the older took me to his part of the house. I became aware later on that the house was divided in two. When the younger came back from the station, rushing, because he couldn’t find me, he came into the common hall where I was sitting, just like this. They had a common hall in which both could come and go and then two separate parts of the house.

The younger brother said to me, ‘Either come to my place or at least to this common hall where we can both sit. Otherwise I cannot enter his territory and he cannot enter my house.’ They were very inimical to each other but even they had a common room where they could both come.

So even if two persons are not as they should be, they can still have a common room. Even neurotics can have a common room. And that is what love is. If it grows, then that common room becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and then both the houses are dissolved into it.

So sometimes if you share space with somebody, a husband or friend or anybody, and sex happens as a spontaneous phenomenon not something brooded upon, not something sought after, not something that you were planning, then it is not sexual. There is a sort of sex which is not sexual at all. Sex can be beautiful but sexuality can never be beautiful. Sexuality means cerebral sex: thinking about it, planning it, managing, manipulating and doing many things, but the basic thing remains deep down in the mind that one is approaching a sex object.

When you look to a person through sexuality, you reduce him to an object. He is no more a person and the whole game is only of manipulation. You are going to land in bed sooner or later. It depends how much you play with the idea and how much both of you prolong the foreplay. But if in the mind the end is just sex, then it is sexuality. When the mind has nothing to do with sex, then it is pure, innocent sex. It is virgin sex.

That sex can sometimes be even purer than celibacy, because if a celibate continuously thinks of sex, then it is not celibacy. When a person moves in a deep love relationship with somebody, not thinking about sex, and it happens because you share so totally that sex also comes in, then it is okay and nothing to worry about, so don’t create guilt about it.

So two things: first, don’t make sexuality a temptation. Don’t allow it to tempt you. Be alert and don’t allow it to become part of your mind. Relax and meditate and when the energy is urging you to become sexual, close your eyes and allow that energy to move upwards. But sharing a space with somebody and it just happens as pure, animal, virgin sex, and you have not been thinking about it at all, there has not been a single thought about it, but it is simply following as a shadow of your love, then it is perfectly alright. It is prayerful.

That’s what the Bauls* insist. That is the zenith of the tantra attitude. Energy has to move more and more towards your meditation. Much is going to happen. It is just a beginning… higher peaks will soon become available.

Osho, A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose, Ch 15

As was my usual way, I had a song to sing to him; this is what I sang:

I see how much I love you, how much I want to stay
I see I make it hard to say goodbye.
I’m gonna sing I’ll see you later, and dance out of your life
I’m gonna sing and dance while I say goodbye.
I keep in mind no promises we make, Bhagwan

If it’s meant for us we’ll meet again somehow.
Our cosmic love, my dreams are realized, Bhagwan
Now I know – eternity is now.
All promises are false, no dates for you and me
We’re children of the universe – we’re free.
If it’s meant to be, we’ll meet again – the moment will be now!
Our love experience showed me how.

I left for California the next day continuing my journey as a beloved of Osho’s forever.

I went to the Geetam Ashram in the California desert and brought all my tapes with me. They were most welcome because Krishna Prem and I were authorized to begin a tape business, sending out tapes around the US and my tapes became the Master Tapes to copy. It wasn’t long before we received queries from a few of our customers asking who was the woman who was singing on the discourse tapes? Was she part of the ashram program? How to explain this funny situation that grew out of my bliss on that porch in Pune?

I continued to live at Geetam where life was the most informal I had ever experienced. We lived in a vast California desert, a bit primitive, and we lived naked – an unusual costume with only our malas on to show we were still part of Osho’s beloveds. I had a bed under the stars away from all that went on. Friends continued to come, and we as residents had our jobs to do. I facilitated Dynamic every morning, I had the key to the library, and I continued to work with the tapes, creating a Tape of the Month for our clients around the US. When KP and I would be sending out an order of Osho tapes, we both knew it was a “bomb” going to Arkansas, or Mississippi – to awaken the lives of those who received it.

I lived there for a year and then moved on to return to Pune. After I left, the ashram took over and it became a major meeting place where therapists worked year round and hundreds of friends came to discover themselves.

* The Bauls are mystics who follow no creed, no ritual, but move individually…dancing, singing, loving. The word baul means ‘mad one’.

Text by Jeevan for Osho News