Sudeva’s path into sannyas.
I was walking along the ‘Backs’, the meadows that line the River Cam behind some of the best known Cambridge colleges. I was heading towards the rooms where I lived in the centre of town. I had been for a longish walk through the water meadows and was already quite tired and ready for home.
Looking over toward the river I saw a young woman sitting cross-legged by the bank. How surprised I was to see white light radiating above and around her. This was not a drug experience. I was familiar with those – this felt much more ‘real’. I could not just walk on by. In those days I was far too shy to approach a strange girl, someone I did not know. Yet somehow I did exactly that. I sat down beside her and asked what was happening.
Unfazed, she explained that she was meditating. Well, I’d heard of that but not really gotten into it. She told me she was practicing techniques she had learned at the feet of Guru Maharaji, a thirteen year old boy newly arrived from India to offer his teachings in the West. She said she had ‘taken knowledge’, a process of initiation delivered by one of his close disciples. We walked back into Cambridge together and she told me more. She told me that her name was Barbara Light. I don’t think I ever saw her again.
When I was next in London, just an easy train ride away, of course I sought out the guru. There were no hurdles to jump through. He was not yet well-known and there was room for everyone. I asked for ‘knowledge’ and I was taught four ‘secret’ meditation techniques. Not a lot happened for me when I tried them and soon my interest in Maharaji waned. What did stay with me was the vision of the light that surrounded Barbara. That was unquestionably real. Yet outside of what I had until then understood to be reality.
For the next fourteen years I tried this, that and the other on my path to find that light again, to find out what is meditation, what does enlightenment even mean? Many other things caught my attention. When I flirted briefly with the anarchistic Angry Brigade, a friend told me to stop my youthful folly, look inside and find out who I am. Wise words that stayed with me, but how do you do that I wondered? I spent a lot of time listening to music, from the Beatles to Ravi Shankar – we were blessed by the music that was flowing all around us in those days. I found that as I sat quietly alone with my stereo my mind became quiet and I entered into the pattern of the sounds.
I was delighted by the ‘Hare Krishnas’, roaming up and down Oxford Street in saffron robes chanting mantras and offering prasadam. This was delicious Indian food they made available for free in an upstairs room nearby. The chanting seemed wonderful and I visited Bhaktivedanta Manor, a great old house gifted to them by George Harrison. I was sure they must know the secret I was seeking.
Distracted by so many other events, it was many years before I actually spent a few days with them. The disappointment was devastating. I found a bunch of rather intense men and women, busily repeating Hare Krsna, Hare Ram as fast as they could. Gone was the happy rhythmic chanting, this was serious business. They had to do 16 rounds a day of 108 repetitions, counted off on their malas, in addition to their ordinary work. Getting on with it was the order of the day and no sleep until the task was complete. The men interspersed this activity with shaving each other’s heads. The top-knots they left unshaved – this was to give Krishna something to grab them by when he lifted them into heaven in the final days. Really! Lack of sleep was not helping their intelligence it seems.
It was about the same time that I first visited the Edinburgh house where the ‘Rajneeshees’ had their Meditation Centre. This was in 1983. So many diversions since my student days, and now at last I came across a bunch of people who were truly alive. I was not sure I wanted to wear red or a mala around my neck. Still I kept going back there, although I lived 70 miles away in the Scottish Borders. I’d had many wonderful experiences and made many beautiful friends in those fourteen years. This was the first time since seeing Barbara Light that I felt I was onto something that was out of this world…
I had four audio tapes of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and listened to them again and again. We knew him as Bhagwan then and loved him by that name. I visited Rajneeshpuram in Oregon for the World Celebrations in 1984 and 1985 and still that something eluded me. I knew I was in the right place on the Ranch and yet something was missing. We all received a gift one year, a book – mine was the Tongue Tip Taste of Tao. That is how it felt, so close…
In January of 1987 Bhagwan came back to the ashram in Pune and a few days later I was there too with a bunch of friends. We dropped everything and flew over from London as soon as we could. We didn’t know India and had a phenomenal time getting from Bombay (Mumbai) to Pune. A friendly guy at the airport found us a comfortable and air-conditioned van to take us there. After a few miles it ‘broke down’ in the middle of the slums. It didn’t feel very safe to hang around there. So we were convinced to board an ancient and rickety little bus instead.
There is a steep hill on the way from Mumbai to Pune, and more traffic than I had ever seen. Every time we stopped the co-driver jumped out to put a brick, an essential piece of equipment, behind the back wheel. This made up for the lack of a hand-brake. The steering was not much better and we meandered from side to side of the road to the great amusement of our driver. Nonetheless, we arrived, exhausted and very much alive, at our hotel. We had breakfast outside in their Indian garden; that was a great experience. The bedrooms were not. The sheets were grey with a few well-spaced holes and nothing felt quite finished, as though the cleaners had been interrupted half way through the job. Our attempts to explain the problem were met with an air of mystification. “But yes sir, our very best sheets are on your bed. Please don’t be worried. They are freshly cleaned.” Giving up, we got down to a much more important matter – reaching the ashram.
There were rickshaws lined up outside and all the drivers understood ‘Rajneesh Ashram’.
In a kind of whirlwind we drove up to the ‘gate less gate’. Here there were a few hurdles before we had our entry passes, but well before dusk we were in the short line to go in to Chuang Tzu auditorium. Osho was coming out to speak twice a day, not many of us had made it to Pune so quickly, and Chuang Tzu itself was small. No longer sitting in the midst of Rajneesh Mandir, the enormous barn-like building on the Ranch with our beloved master scarcely visible in the distance beyond row after row of sannyasins. Here we were up close. I could not believe where I was, and yet I was there. My heart was opening and opening… The unknown was getting closer and the unknowable was already here.
The ashram had been more or less unused in the years since Osho went to America. The few Indian disciples who remained had focused to keep Osho’s residence spotless and ready for him to return at any moment. The rest they had not been able to keep clean. It was layered with grime. We joined in the great dusting off and washing down party, scrubbing through the layers of mire till we could see through the windows once again and sit down without worrying about our clothes. It felt we were polishing ourselves on the inside as we polished the buildings on the outside.
Still there was also time to walk up the stairs to Krishna House roof. The name made me think with a smile that perhaps Krishna hadn’t forgotten me, despite my quick escape from his devotees. I was there for my first ever Vipassana meditation. Sitting silently, watching the breath, receiving an occasional wake-up tap on the top of my head from the Vipassana stick. Facing a garden which I slowly slowly realised was the Master’s Garden, Osho’s garden. I saw it in glimpses between the sheets that hung over the roof from bamboo poles, protecting us from the ever-present Indian sun. The light gathered in and around the garden and began to shower down upon me. From above, from beyond, from everywhere. The meditation lasted only an hour in ordinary time. It seemed like eternity, I was dancing in this light. I had never bothered with the terms and definitions that enable one to talk about enlightenment. Later I learned that my experience had a name: Satori. I only knew that this was what I had been searching for.
Immediately and enthusiastically, I enrolled in the 7-day Vipassana group. There was just time to complete it before our flight home. Seven days sitting in a circle on a tiny patch of grass, a small group of us ensconced in a corner of the ashram near the Back Gate Road. You could hear the rickshaws zipping by and the street wallahs selling their wares, the trains hooting and shunting in the distance. Yet all that felt a million miles away.
There was just room on our grassy patch for us to get up every so often, walking a slow ‘Buddha walk’ around the circle. Everything I perceived as perfection except me, endlessly disturbed by a freaked out mind that did not shut up for a second. “Where is the silence? What happened to the light? Why does this feel so bad when on the roof it felt so good? What is wrong with me?” That was the beginning of a long process of realising that you cannot hang on to even the most magnificent and magical experiences of awakening, although it took a lot longer before I appreciated and felt grateful for that learning. Even the most magical states come and go. And yet, every time I went into Chuang Tzu, even before the door opened for Osho to enter, silence descended and I disappeared. Until he stopped speaking and, which never stopped surprising me, I picked up my mind again as I left…
There have been many moments since then I’d like to describe; both in the next visit to Pune and the years that followed. For now this feels like enough.
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