Museum of the Gods

An excerpt from Kalpana’s memoir, My Lucky Book – Being Lucky.

Every day Osho was dancing with us before and after his discourses. He moved his arms to the music, which got faster and faster until it reached a crescendo then abruptly stopped. Everyone would freeze until the music started again, slowly gaining tempo. This dance went on several times until Osho had greeted all the sannyasins sitting in front of him. I wondered how he could keep up these rapid arm movements. The discourses were now very long and continued for more than three hours straight. Some girlfriends told me they could not hold out so long and needed to pee. They slid themselves, inch by inch, to the edge of the hall and relieved themselves into the garden.

During a discourse in August 1988, Osho started the Museum of the Gods, he told Avirbhava, “Collect all kinds of toys, which have been worshipped as gods. We will make a beautiful museum of the gods and I appoint you the director-general. She has brought me a beautiful bear, which walks and makes sounds very similar to Avirbhava, and when he makes the sounds he waves his tail. It is a beautiful toy.” The next evening as she presented the battery-operated toy it ran along the podium, running here and there, shrieking and squeaking as the assembly went mad with laughter. It turned out that it was a little pig that was squeaking just like Avirbhava and not a bear at all.

In the following few months, she and Anando, who was now Osho’s secretary, presented many toys and themselves in animal costumes. This was the beginning of new sewing jobs for me. Anando asked if I could make some animal costumes for them to wear. The first one was a cobra that should fit over her head with the face free. It was a challenge for me without any previous experience and not a clue how to make a pattern. I started with a piece of cheap cotton fabric and tried many versions until it looked like a snake.

Then came a tiger for Anando to fit in and a lion for Avirbhava. That was a challenge but gave me the experience necessary to make the last animal, a white horse. It should fit both Avirbhava, a rounded American sannyasin, at the front of the horse with Anando at the back end. I needed several fittings and many headaches to finish it and just for fun, I had made him a prominent hanging penis. The day came, and the horse was ready to go on stage. It was September twenty-third, 1988, during the talks Osho gave on Ma Tzu.

Before I discuss Ma Tzu and his statements, I have to inaugurate another god to Avirbhava‘s Museum of Gods. This is a very important god. I will tell you about the god before Avirbhava brings it in front of you. The name of the god is horse. It has been worshipped around the world for centuries. Even today there are places where the horse is worshipped as a god.

The horse or mare is one of the forms of the corn spirit in Europe. In Ancient Greece, Artemis and Aphrodite were associated with the horse, and Cronus is said to have taken the form of a horse… Horse worship also existed in Persia, where white horses were regarded as holy…. Here, in India, in earlier times, horses were sanctified, and the cult exists still today…

Osho, Ma Tzu, Number 08.

I was waiting for the moment when my creation, the white horse, would appear. Osho seemed to be talking so long. Sitting on the side of the hall waiting for the horse to enter I could see that Avirbhava was getting impatient. The horse was moving around, stepping from one leg to the other. It was a very warm, humid evening and they were both inside the horse made from white plush fabric. It must have been very hot inside.

Osho had been talking for about twenty minutes when in the middle of the sentence “Varanasi, in the whole world…” suddenly waves of laughter rippled through the assembly. A large white horse galloped into the auditorium from the left side of the podium. It turned once towards Osho then disappeared out the other entrance. People were roaring with laughter. And that was the end of my white horse. All the weeks of work I had put into this final animal, the horse, and those two notorious disciples had finished him off!

Then Osho said, “Avirbhava, you can come back, your horse is introduced. Come back to your seat.” A great applause rippled through the audience. It was my masterpiece and now it was finished in less than thirty seconds! Nobody had time to admire him or even notice his proud horse penis. Kalki, the white horse, was gone and never seen again. Osho continued to talk about Ma Tzu. All I could see was my Kalki, my white horse.