A question Nirvan asked himself already as a child. An excerpt from his new book, Prelude to Disclosure.
As a child I remember asking myself what love was. I had heard it mentioned repeatedly by the priests and nuns at school, but never got a satisfactory answer from them. They only gave me repetitious threats about hell and enticements of an unclear heaven. These gave me no solace, as to my yearning. God I was told was loving, but the sad image of his son Jesus hanging from his cross did not seem to be very loving. It didn’t take much insight to see the heavy sadness surrounding the religion I was brought into. I had heard love talked about on TV and in books, but for the life of me I just didn’t feel this supposed wonderful feeling called love in my life. Surely some of the characters on the shows seemed to be thoughtful and concerned, but often they were wooden and too predictable, and for sure nowhere near the image of the people I had to deal with day to day. Both my parents seemed to be at each other’s throats, arguing and shouting all the time. My father was distant and cold. Most of my interaction with him had to do with being told I was stupid or worse. My mother was caring, but she was also somewhat stoic, and thought I was too attached to her. In truth I felt abandoned by her although I know her actions were done to develop a sense of independence in me. Independence was her own desire, and, of course, what was good for her was good for me. Neither of my parents were people you could have a deep conversation with concerning life’s difficulties and challenges. As for my sisters they were often there for me, but caught up in their own worlds, and dealing with my parents themselves.
My grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins were quite close to me, but I still missed a sense of love. All these people were not very demonstrative of what I had thought love was supposed to be. They were never very physically affectionate, nor did anyone ever say I love you. Neither were they wellsprings of positive feedback, nor was I able to be vulnerable with them with the expectation that they could listen and truly respond in kind. I experienced more fear in my childhood than love. Hence, I ended up pondering, what love really is. By the time I found Bhagwan I’d had a girlfriend and explored passion and intimacy, but I was never sure I was in love or was truly loved. So much about relationships seemed to be about compromise and just getting along. I sensed much was missing. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the physical connection of sex, but was that love?
Love was elusive, until I met Bhagwan. Just listening to him I felt for the first time that someone really knew me. He connected with my fears and my desires, my thoughts and feelings. Listening to his taped discourses while in Boston I began to have an inkling of what love was.
Sitting in Buddha Hall with Bhagwan with two thousand of his lovers heightened the love I glimpsed while in Boston. In the profound silence deepened by so many other souls, Master spoke about how society in general including parents, relatives, teachers, friends, priests, on and on gave us our beliefs out of their beliefs. With those beliefs came guilt and shame, anger and sadness, and with these feelings came protectiveness and the enhancement of a sense of us against them. It reminded me of how proud I felt for being an Italian as if that was a badge of honor, no, a protection against the outside world.
He spoke on how the rules of society so often condemn what is so natural in the world: sexual taboos, taboos around death and dying, the holding back of women, the discrimination of large groups of people by other large groups of people; including the layering of people into classes and more were expounded on by Bhagwan. These things we have been taught in a thousand ways he told us. We believed them even at times despite ourselves. Love and society as such did not appear to walk hand and hand together, but rather it appeared that society walked a path opposite to love. We had to find out who we were before society took root in us. So heartfelt was the master’s understanding of these things, and so eloquent were his words that conveyed this understanding that the thousands listening could only absorb the truth of it. Bhagwan, although sitting so far away from me on the podium in Buddha Hall instilled an intimacy so profound as to elicit powerful feelings of love that I had only guessed at before. In a moment I realized that love was experienced whenever one felt really heard, totally seen, and completely accepted by another. Later, I was to learn that love does not even need another to be experienced, but at that time his miraculous understanding of the human condition and his ability to share those feelings arising out of it and his complete acceptance of them was love.
My deepest question was answered and by someone I didn’t really know in the conventional way. We never had a one-on-one conversation, nor shared a meal, nor even casually conversed at a party. I loved this man more dearly than I had ever loved another, yet we had no relationship as such. True intimacy does not necessarily even need a relationship. I had come to India to seek out a spiritual master, but what I found was so much more – a true human being. True intimacy is sharing a profound sense of humanness with another human being.
Prelude to Disclosure
by Nirvan
Richard M Santoro
Jetlaunch, July 2023, 348 pages
ASIN Kindle: B0CCQ885MP
ASIN Paperback : B0CCCXC2R6
ISBN-13 : 979-8988160304
Kindle and paperback available from bookshops and from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, Osho Viha, Barnes & Noble
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