Rajendra

(8 June 1937 – 14 March 2022)

900 Front of Krishna House - Rajendra and Dayanand

Rajendra Karsten August Gunther Stodte
A life well lived

by Ananda Sarita

Imagining the situation of Rajendra’s death is simply enchanting. He was climbing a cherished path in Arillas, Corfu which offers a magnificent view of the sea. There, suspended between earth, sea and sky, he suddenly left his body. This was a noble death, offering the impression of a life well lived. And indeed, Rajendra lived his life to the fullest!

As an ardent sailor, he embraced the spirit of adventure in the outer world, and as a devotee of Osho, he explored the depths of his inner world through meditation. His abundant creativity was put to good use in service of Osho’s vision.

He was the architect of the magnificent Corfu Buddha Hall, which stands as a sentinel on the hilltop of Magoulades overlooking a winding drive down to Arillas beach. This phenomenally Beautiful Meditation Hall has become a sacred temple and Center for spiritual transformation for thousands of Osho lovers and people on the path of personal development. This architectural marvel, attracting people from all over the world ensures that Rajendra will be remembered with gratitude and appreciation.

I remember that faraway look in his bright blue eyes as his weather beaten face surveyed the horizon, a hint of mischief playing over his fine features.

With love and gratitude, Rajendra, I wish you abundant blessings on your continued soul’s journey. I am sure that you have been engulfed in the effulgence of love, and are ever ready for the next great adventure into the beyond.

Video of the farewell celebration by friends on the spot he died.

Rajendra’s Sannyas Darshan

Deva means divine and rajendra means king; a divine king. And that’s how I see everybody – as a divine king, as a divine queen. And if we are beggars, only we are responsible, nobody else. We are meant to be divine queens and kings, and nothing less than that is ever going to satisfy you. But we have been brought up in such a way, and conditioned in such a way, that we start life as a beggar.

My whole teaching is that you can start being a king from this very moment. If you start enjoying life, you become a king. It has nothing to do with money or kingdom. It has nothing to do with power over people. And if somebody waits to enjoy life only when he has so much money, and so much power, and such a big kingdom, then he is never going to enjoy. He will die a beggar.

[Osho told the story of Alexander the Great, meeting the mystic, Diogenes. Alexander felt envious of Diogenes’ obvious contentment with life, but said he first had to conquer the world before he could enjoy life like Diogenes. See Dance Your Way to God, Wednesday, August 19th {Ch 2}] where Osho recounts the story in full. {not found, ed.}]

When I say that everybody is a divine king or a queen, I mean you can just declare it this very moment, because no kingdom is needed for it. It is just a change… an inner change of consciousness.

Rather than preparing, you start celebrating – that’s the only change there is.

Rather than preparing for tomorrow, you start living today.

Rather than sacrificing the present for the future, you forget all about future, and you dance the dance that is possible this very moment, herenow – and immediately you are a king.

And the kingdom is such that it cannot be taken away from you – that’s why I call it a divine kingdom.

That’s what Jesus means when he says again and again, ‘The kingdom of god is within you.’ He was not talking about the political — he was misunderstood. The Roman Emperor became afraid that he was talking about a kingdom… maybe he was after his kingdom! The priests became afraid — maybe he was after political power. He was not talking about politics at all.

So when I call you a king, I’m not talking about politics… not the kingdom of this world, because these kings are just beggars – rich beggars, maybe, but beggars all the same!

And by giving you sannyas I declare this. Now it is up to you to accept it and start living or not, but you are responsible. I don’t say that you have to prepare for it. From this very moment start enjoying the simple things of life… and they are fantastic! Simple food, simple sleep, simple love… the stars and the moon and the trees… the wind passing through the trees, and the sound of the water… children laughing, and a small girl giggling – all is tremendously beautiful. Just start enjoying….

Osho, Blessed Are the Ignorant, Ch 11

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VLUU L310W L313 M310W / Samsung L310W L313 M310W

Rajendra: a very personal retrospective

by Madhuri

What a beautiful man! So sweet, so feeling, so good, so creative, so alive. I first went to Corfu in April 2011, and he had already been living there for some years. He took me on expeditions to remote coves, to wildflower-strewn uplands, to a monastery with chilly vibes, high on a hill… and out to dinner in Afionas. We went hiking through rocky scrubland and ended up in a phalanx of sticker-bushes with a mini-cliff on the other side! (Rajendra, in his Human Design, had the channel of Transitoriness – wild, adventurous people who love to strike out cross-country where no path has been cut and made boring by the tramping of other humans. They do things with their whole selves, and often end up in awkward places – it’s part of the learning they do for all of us.) He told me, much abashed, that he had accidentally set fire to his sailboat while taking Miten and Premal on an outing! They were close to shore, and he soon put the fire out, but his legs were very badly burned and he had to be flown to Germany for treatment. Recovery took quite a while. The whole experience must have been so painful! (That was the same boat he had sailed, via a circuitous route, all the way from Germany to Corfu when he had gone to live in Greece.)

But this is the same talented, devoted man who built the graceful, beautiful octagon of Buddha Hall high on a mountaintop at Magoulades, where for so many years so many of us have revelled in meditations, music, satsangs, festivals, groups, and much more. That lovely talented building with the kitchen on the lower level and the windowed hall, as well as parkland and swimming pool, on a little upper plateau of olive-shaded ground – with 360-degree views over celestial land-and-sea-scapes: hills covered in olive and cypress, then the gleaming sea, and islands in the distance…

I first met Rajendra at the Ranch, where he’d come with his wife Mamta and their little girl Maja. I didn’t know him well – just saw him around – but after he and Mamta split up we enjoyed a few soulful hugs, and I thought him a juicy and deep-feeling man, and handsome too – with his bright blue eyes and generous mouth, his deep voice… just too old for me!

I saw him again in Poona 2 – in 2000 – and one morning, when I was working at the Communications Centre, I was outside putting the faxes into the boxes for people to sort through – and there was Rajendra; we had a long hug with lots of eye-gazing. I felt that he was so sincere – I felt that his presence was reassuring and rich with gravitas – and I thought that he must be enjoying the moment, like most of the guys in the commune; but not interested in more. For he said nothing… just gazed. At the time, I was still with Bindu, but Bindu, bless his heart, was a cheerful bigamist, and had sloped off to Goa with his other girlfriend. So I was at a loose end. And if – if – that day – Rajendra had given me a clear invitation, I might very well have gone towards him. And who knows what new destiny might have opened? I was waiting. But he did not ask… and I was certainly shy, despite what experiences I had by then passed through. So he went on his way, and I went back to work.

And much later, when I was older too, and I went on a short visit to Corfu, and Rajendra thought this might now be the time for us to get together… I was in a committed relationship in Missouri.

All this could seem like silly old gossip – but the day Rajendra left his body, he had a joyful lunch with Srajano, and shared about the self-enquiry retreat he had just done with Ganga, which he had really loved, and gotten so much out of. And he also told Sraj about that morning in Meera when he had hugged me, and how it had haunted him for ever after! (In fact, Sraj told me they talked about me a lot!) I had not known… (So if you love somebody – say something!)

He also told Sraj of the new creative projects he was starting – he was a painter, sculptor, a maker of driftwood mobiles, and more – and he was full of innocent enthusiasm.

After that lunch he walked along the beach – and later, perhaps with some difficulty, up the steep cliff-path to where his car was waiting. He realized that he’d lost his car-key – and was thinking (I have heard) that he would have to go back down the path to look for it. And right then he fell down on the dirt road beside the thick brush at the cliff’s edge. And he was gone.

He had had heart attacks before, and heart surgeries – so he’d known for a long time that he might go just like that.

Two days before Rajendra “popped out,” as Osho says, he was at the beach and Sraj took a photo of him, draped in a big white towel and leaning back against the sun-warmed rock, smiling with a kind of quiet, diffident joy. When I got there, in May, the photo had been mounted and placed at the site of his going, right up there on the cliff-top. People had put flowers in front of it. It was a little memorial, propped there with a backdrop of the big high sky, and the long lapping aqua/green sea far below, that stretches out to the far horizon, where imaginative clouds often pile, or run along for a hundred miles in a misty bank.

Rajendra was a much-loved person in Arillas, because he was, simply, a being full of love – open and warm and humble – the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners with laughter – the way he was so present with any meeting.

Mamta, his ex, died unexpectedly and young in Boston during the 90’s. His daughter Maja, a Veterinarian, is the single mother of twins, and is planning to bring them at summer’s end to take care of practicalities. Maja had as a teen rebelled against her upbringing (as one does), and Rajendra was often worried about his relationship with her, but it seems that towards the end of his life there was much happy congress due to the twin boys’ appearance in the family. Rajendra loved being a grandfather, and had regular WhatsApp meetings with the little ones. Whatever Maja’s objections to some aspects of her parents’ paths, she loved and admired them a lot, and says they had many wonderful adventures.

Rajendra’s going was felt, I think, like a great bolt of love – like a lightning-bolt – through the Arillas community. He had been in such a good space – and he was so much respected, and was so likeable – and then he was gone, and everyone felt the ripples and waves of his going like some mysterious sky-quake. He was, I hear, given a very, very good send-off, and people were blissed-out afterwards…

Goodbye, dear Rajendra! Love goes with you, and you are welcomed by love –

Scheisse or shit?

by Srajano

Memories of you Rajendra, so full of light and laughter. Except that day when you asked me to accompany you to hand over your beloved yacht to it’s new owner. You were so sad, and all I could do was listen to your struggle to accept the aging of your body. And more recently, sitting next to you in your car, I didn’t laugh much either – it felt like playing Russian roulette.

All the other times: Your grumpiness – and how wonderfully you owned it with that boyish grin – was a source of delight. Your endless fountain of creativity will remain a source of inspiration.

Your last day…. you were so happy, full of life and creative ideas. Again and again you said how wonderful the retreat with Ganga and your Arillas family had been. You talked about the bombing of your hometown, when you were a little boy, showed me pictures of a dog you loved (I showed you pics of mine), and shared your joy at seeing your twin grandsons grow into their individuality…

On your way out, to go swimming, you gave me a new perspective on a sculpture I had been stuck with for a long time. I had looked at it from every angle, except that one. “See,” you said, “if you tip it, all the
lines make sense, all the energy flows upward.” Thank you for that! When it’s finished, I hope Buddha hall will accept it, and it will be
called ‘Rajendra’s Farewell’.

Thank you for the time spent together.

PS: I do wonder sometimes what your last thought was before you fell. Was it “Scheisse”, or “shit”?

A most generous gift

by Atmo Ravi

Today I received a link to scans of magazines from 1981. I have seen a couple of copies on the shelves of my friends but never went deeper into them. This appears to be the last issue of Sannyas magazine of the Osho community in those days.

What is special here is that in the middle of this photo I see my dear friend Rajendra, whom I met in 1993 and stayed friends with through these last 30 years. Last time we phoned was in March last year. He invited me and Lalitya to come over to his place in Corfu in Greece. And a week later Rishi informed me that Rajendra had left his body right on the seaside walking up to his house from the beach.

He was an architect and a painter and a piano player who loved life and lived it as intensely as he could. He was a successful architect in Munich up till 1976, when he and his wife decided to drop it all and go to India. They bought a VW bus and went driving all the way to Pune where they stayed till 1981 and went on to USA with Osho. Rajendra returned to Germany only after the Ranch was over in 1986.

By the time we met he had an architect firm with a few partners and did not enjoy it much. He started to visit the Osho Resort again around 1994-95 and did a Mystic Rose group. Around 1999 he took his retirement and left for Corfu, Greece, where was a part of sannyas community. He designed the Corfu Buddha Hall.

We had a lot of fun and jokes over the years. I will be forever grateful to him since he was the one who made me the most generous gift so that I could afford to go to India the first time I was there in 1994.

To the Master – A poem by Rajendra
Silent Poems – Rajendra talks to Punya about his mobile sculptures that were shown in Corfu Buddha Hall – August 2020
Corfu Buddha Hall – Interview with Vasanti who built the Buddha Hall – August 2010