How Maneesha coped, as a question-asker, when Osho was playing with us
Watch the video on YouTube
I’ve been asked how it was to be in the role of question-asker in a discourse such as this – when Osho was playing with us in such a fun way.
Because, rather than my simply asking the question and he responding, this was an ongoing exchange of sorts, it was less clear when I should continue with the reading, and when I should wait because he hadn’t quite finished with what he wanted to say. I was also laughing, of course, and enjoying the lovely and spontaneous interplay!
His making fun of our seriousness reminds me of another incident. It was when we had just got back to India after the world tour. Amrito and I had been partners throughout the past couple of years but now were apart, he in the UK attending to some business while I was one of a few Western sannyasins in Bombay with Osho. I loved just being focused on the discourses throughout my every waking hour – either preparing for them or being present in them, in my role as question-asker.
One day I was called in to see Osho alone. In the course of our conversation I said something to that effect that I didn’t feel I wanted to continue my relationship with Amrito: I was just so totally happy to be alone, with this as my whole world. I recall Osho listening with his full attention, as he always did, and perhaps nodding his understanding or – perhaps as I interpreted it then – his approval of an expression of such devotional intent.
The next day Neelam (who was acting as Osho’s caretaker temporarily) told me that after Osho had seen me, he’d asked her, ‘What’s with Maneesha? She’s so uptight!’ When she told me that, I burst out laughing. I loved Osho’s gentle mockery, and loved, too, the feeling of my laughter pricking so neatly the bubble of my pious ego.
Maneesha for Osho News
When Maneesha started to write for Osho News she asked Punya what she should write about. The immediate suggestion which popped up was: “How was it to sit in front of Osho and read the questions? I would have been scared stiff.” The answer to this became a series of articles which we have published during our first year. Here are the links to all of them:
13 – Osho Making Fun of our Seriousness
12 – Women’s Jealousy
11 – The Barbarous Mind
10 – The Bursting of the Boil
9 – The Device
8 – An Old Sinner
7 – Living with a Contemporary Koan
6 – The Irreplaceable Melody
5 – The Incomparable Privilege
4 – Our Final Questions
3 – The Whispered Transmission
2 – An Experiment: Mind Over Matter
1 – Reading the Questions to Osho: How It All Started
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