Golden Ballpoint Pens for Osho

“Here are 4,000 Swiss francs,” said Ma Hari giving me a bundle of bank-notes. “With this money you are supposed to buy two gold ballpoint pens for Bhagwan – 18 carat and studded with diamonds.”

She sorted through her handbag and pulled out a scruffy piece of paper, a page torn out of a magazine showing the said pens.

“This is what they look like,” Ma Hari said. “Bhagwan found them in Playboy Magazine.” Playboy Magazine? Ballpoint pens with diamonds?

I looked at the advertisement. The pens were being offered by a company in Geneva and my mind moved into gear. “Why on earth should my master want to posses this kind of vulgar toy? Diamond-studded ballpoint pens! Have you ever heard of an Enlightened Master sporting diamond studded pens? Wasn’t relaxing into ordinariness his message? These kind of pens one was used to see lurking out of the shirt pockets of Mafiosi-types and oil sheiks. Status symbols of the nouveau riche.

And why on earth was he reading Playboy? Was this a suitable publication for the man whom I considered to be the spiritual master for the 21st century? Suddenly I was angry. I didn’t want anything to do with this.

It was in the fall of 1979 and I had been a sannyasin for only two years. Ma Hari who had taken sannyas four years earlier, was a little more experienced with the ways of the master and so she simply suggested:

“How about just buying them?”

“I’ve more important things to do. You better buy them.”

Ma Hari quietly took the 4 000 Franks back. “You don’t say No to the master,” she said.

Ma Hari and I – “ashramites” in Pune 1 – were touring the West. My book, “Ganz Entspannt im Hier und Jetzt” was to be launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair and I was in Germany to promote it. Ma Hari had come along because Laxmi had the funny idea that she should. Laxmi was Bhagwan’s secretary. Osho had called her “My perfect tool” – whatever Laxmi said was supposed to come straight from the master. No need to argue with her.

One day Laxmi had called me into her office. “Ma Hari has nice energy,” she revealed to me. “You buy her plane ticket, OK, She will be good for you.”

“We’ll be flying first class, of course,” was Ma Hari`s first constructive idea. “This we owe to Bhagwan`s reputation”. I tried hard to understand the logic, but I missed. So I booked Economy as usual and took off a few days before Ma Hari. We re-united in Hamburg and after she had managed to locate the manufacturer in Geneva and ordered the two ballpoint pens we proceeded to the Frankfurt Book Fair – dressed in maroon of course and wearing the mala. The pens, by the way, sold like cookies and there was a waiting list of three months.

When we arrived in Frankfurt at the Bhagwan booth a crowd of excited sannyasins were waiting for us.

“There’s a telegram for you, Satyananda,” they shouted.

It must have been the longest and strangest telegram I’d ever received. In a roundabout way it reiterated what I already knew and then added that it was of extreme, if not fundamental importance, that exactly the pens which were pictured in the magazine are bought. I was asked to give this task absolute priority and my full attention and energy – any other plans I might have were of secondary importance.

What a button presser! These ridiculous pens were supposed to be more important than my book which was about to become the sensation of this year’s Book Fair? I left in confusion, to put it mildly, to see my publisher. At the Rowohlt booth an excited PR-agent yelled:

“Mr. Elten, there’s an important telegram… we’ve been looking for you all over the place.”

I ripped open the envelope – the telegram was identical to the one I had read just five minutes before at the Bhagwan booth.

“Bad news?” the agent asked with a worried loom on his face.

“No,” I replied, “just something crazy.”

When I arrived back in Hamburg there was yet another urgent telegram waiting for me, nearly as long as the two previous ones. This time I was asked by Laxmi to telegraph her a full report of the progress I was making in procuring these pens.

I wrote back: “Ma Hari making great efforts getting the pens STOP Good progress STOP No need to worry STOP His blessings. STOP Satyananda”

Back came the reply: “Urgent! You are responsible. Give it the utmost priority….” and so on and so forth.

After the book fair I would have liked to get back to Poona right away but here I was stuck in the Hamburg winter waiting for these goddamned diamond-studded ballpoint pens. By the way, the price of gold was rising day by day…

When we had finally – after the 3 months – reached the top of the waiting list, the price of the two pens had risen from 3,800 Swiss francs to 5,800.

“What now?” I asked Ma Hari. “One pen will also do, don’t you think so?”

She didn’t think so at all. She thought that the wish of an Enlightened One is law to his disciples. It would be utterly inappropriate to simply decide on our own to cut this order into half.

To avoid any further complications and to get over with this mad game I could have, of course, simply paid the difference – 2,800 Swiss Francs out of my own pocket. After all I had been living in his ashram for a whole year, writing a book about my experiences in his presence. The book was on its way to become a bestseller, and nobody had asked me to surrender the royalties to the ashram.

If I had been in the heart I would have paid. But after one year with the master I was still in the mind. And my mind was very busy thinking up all kinds of arguments which would allow me to hang on to this 2,800 Francs with a good conscience. I still believed that a master would fulfill my expectations.

So I suggested to Ma Hari that we send a telegram to the rich Austrian Ma who took the part of the donor in this game. We asked her if she was prepared to push another 2,000 Francs over or if she felt that one ballpoint pen would be fine. Her answer came next day: “One pen OK.”

No sooner had Ma Hari reduced our order to one pen another telegram arrived from Poona: “Where are the pens?” Pens in the plural, not one pen! Was Laxmi still assuming that we were bringing two? Where should the second one come from if the donor had refused to cough up more money? Again the ball was in my court. Should I after all….? My ‘higher self’ began to assert itself. Only a little consciousness was needed to defeat the mind. But this consciousness was, after all, painfully lacking. My mind refused to support what he thought was bad taste. The truth of the matter was of course that I was simply too stingy to buy a little luxurious present for my master. A year later I donated all the money I still possessed – unconditionally. Obviously I had – by then – arrived on a higher spiritual plain.

A few days later we collected the pen from a jeweler. Now off to Poona asap! But all flights were fully booked. And there was another urgent telegram: “Where are the pens???” It so happened that Ma Astha was leaving in a couple of days, and thank God she was prepared to take the precious gift to Poona. “Maybe it will help with my enlightenment,” she grinned.

Ma Hari and I departed a week later and when we met Astha in the ashram she greeted us with a “You’ll never guess what happened!”

Then she told us how she had gone to Laxmi’s office and handed over the package with the pen.

Laxmi took the pen out of its box, held it under her nose and looked at it sideways and upside down before exclaiming: “This is supposed to be for Bhagwan? I don’t know anything about it.” Astha quietly left the office.

Next morning she had to go to the medical center because she had a temperature. She’d hardly been there five minutes when Swami Hassid, a Swiss ashram doctor burst through the door and shouted, “My God, listen what happened!” And he tells Astha and the other patients waiting for him, how he had gone to darshan the night before and Bhagwan had asked him to come forward. Hassid: “I sat down at his feet with a throbbing heart because I had no idea what he had in mind with me. And Bhagwan leaned forward and gave me this thing!”

Astha remembered: “Hassid stretched his hand out and there was our diamond-studded ballpoint pen!”

“You’re joking,” I exclaimed as a hot flush passed over me.

For years I felt ashamed and even after I had donated my life-insurance and put almost all of my cash into the Ranch in Oregon a bad conscience plagued me. And there were moments when my mind (who cherished this situation!) whispered into my ear: “You see all these wonderful diamond studded watches and bracelets which the master gives away to almost everybody? And what did you get? A Chinese straw hat which you can buy for a dollar in a Hong Kong bazaar. And it was even two sizes too small!”

By now I know that a master is never disappointed nor is he grateful. He has no illusions and simply helps people to grow. His game with the ballpoint pen was simply a masterstroke and I feel almost honored that I received the hit.

Satyananda (aka Joerg Andrees Elten) was born in Dresden, Germany, and survived WW2. He pursued a career as a Near-East and Africa correspondent before becoming a well-known international political reporter for Stern Magazine. Assigned in 1977 to report about Bhagwan and the ashram, he became a sannyasin himself, dropped his career and made the ashram his home. His first book about his experiences – Totally Relaxed in the Here and Now – was published in 1979 and became an instant hit. Nowadays he lives in Northern Germany and gives seminars and workshops at the ‘Institute for Creativity and Meditation’ together with Gitama. He continues to write articles about current news and spiritual themes and is frequently invited as a public speaker. www.hierjetzt.de