The day Osho left Buddha Hall in the middle of discourse…

“…or rather ‘in full flight of discourse’, as Anando put it, ahead of our evening gathering the next day in Buddha Hall” – by Radhika

…Or rather ‘in full flight of discourse’, as Anando put it, ahead of our evening gathering the next day in Buddha Hall. We had been flying high on Osho’s talks during the YAA-HOO! The Mystic Rose discourse series. Here, everything considered holy, serious or respectable was unmasked and exposed by him, to an extent where such things sounded entirely antiquated and witless. It almost took one’s breath away to hear his sophisticated ways of, almost lovingly but relentlessly, mocking the spade by calling it a spade.

He offered such exceptional highlights throughout these talks, that we had become giddy, bubbly, giggly, almost proceeding towards a sort of meltdown as we were riding on waves of laughter and marvel. How? It was not only those mind-blowing jokes that Osho brought into play during the evening gatherings, but his method of gently but unabatedly ripping off the veils and masks of all things rotten, false and long outdated. Adding to that, he simultaneously developed his very last, and possibly the crown jewels, of his revolutionary meditation techniques: Mystic Rose, Born Again, Gibberish, and Let-Go, which last he introduced in stages during our evening meetings in Buddha Hall. Listening to the discourses, one is again witness of what he, our personal and spiritual growth in view, initiated in refined magnificence.

The very day we were to ‘let-go’ in Buddha Hall at Osho’s suggestion – by letting ourselves fall or sink from our sitting posture to the soft shimmering marble floor – we were bursting with excited expectancy. Because it was a few thousands of us! As some others present must have done, I tried to anticipate how hard the floor would be the moment I would ‘fall,’ or come to land on somebody else’s elbow or shin bone by chance.

The questions chosen for that day’s discourse were so hilarious that all of Buddha Hall was crackling fireworks of laughter, fed by our jumpy excitement. And although we all tried to follow Maneesha’s reading of the questions, it was of no help that Osho surprisingly omitted his answer to the first question to suggest her reading the next. He joined our outburst of bubbly jollity and began to chuckle, so his voice failed to continue, until he asked us: ‘I don’t know what to say.’ And then: ‘Should we do the exercise?’

There is a video available online of that event and seeing it, one is offered a lucid impression of what, as Osho at one point had commented, was ‘the house of laughter’.

Alongside this, he invited us to delve into extended depths of silence and profound realms of meditation. I opened one of my privately asked questions with: ‘Beloved Master, you take us to the highest heights and deepest depths.’ As if he hadn’t already known!

There seemed to be no limit to the great art of this mystic, and looking back from the distance of decades, I’m in awe of Osho’s outrageous ways of enticing us to follow these unknown paths courageously, as well as of his sensitivity in adjusting his methods according to our potential to enter new dimensions. One never knew what would happen the next day in discourse!

Several days later, as we all were still in full flight, the first, and beautiful question, which addressed the path of the inside journey to the highest level of consciousness, was responded to so very profoundly, taking us deep into a silent space. It was monsoon, with torrents of rain, and a storm had been howling for days, pulling and pushing the gigantic roof construction above us while the towering bamboo trees that surrounded Buddha Hall were swirling and bending, shedding more and more leaves to the ground. The steel cables that supported the roof and kept it in place were moaning and screeching ceaselessly.

Osho spoke with a tender voice that evening, almost hypnotically, about the pathway to the inner being, which he called one’s opening of the inner ‘Mystic Rose’… when all of a sudden loud laughter from a female voice broke in. It wasn’t a pleasant laughter, and at that moment there was nothing to laugh about. Osho proceeded, and so did the laughter, loud and empty at the same time, strangely hysterical and rather exhibitionistic, clearly disturbing the silence of the people present and Osho’s beautiful talk. This laughter can be heard occasionally and fainter in some earlier discourse recordings. I have no knowledge to whom it belonged, and there is no need to know. It seems to stand as a symbol for our ego with all its afflictions and trickeries, in an attempt to persist in the midst of Osho’s invitation for the New Man to appear. Then a few other voices joined in.

Osho paused for a moment, and when the laughter continued to disrupt our almost tangible silence, he sternly stated: ‘This is out of the joke.’ ¹

But that voice didn’t listen, and the wilful giggle continued to hover awkwardly in the air, merging with the howling of the wind and the screeching sounds of the steel cables. It was a ghastly moment!

Then Osho put down his clipboard, gracefully and gently as ever, stood up from his chair, folded his hands to bless us in Namaste, raised his arms for our bewildered response of calling out ‘Yaa-hoo’, and left Buddha Hall. Those sitting in the first few rows heard him say: ‘Don’t wait for me to come out tomorrow night.’

We were left shocked and dumbfounded. This had never occurred before!

Some people stood up and looked around, or towards the empty space where Osho had sat just a few moments before. By and by a few people were leaving, and as I was dazzled in that moment, I can’t recall how long I remained sitting there – it was quite a while. Like numerous others, the next day I wrote a letter of apology to Osho. We had no information as to whether he would continue the discourses.

That evening, when we had all returned to Buddha Hall for our gathering, Anando took the microphone and told us about how Osho was ‘finished, and didn’t want to come back’; how they had pleaded with and begged him, and that he had finally agreed to return. She spoke of the immense pain he was experiencing in his body, and that he never complained, that he came out for discourse only for us. That he would accept our apology by our celebrating – our singing and dancing and clapping of hands to welcome him back. And that this time, it should be of maximum intensity.

And when, after a while, we saw the car slowly approaching, that storm was still howling, and Buddha Hall was nothing but a luminous festivity.

When Osho began to speak, after listening to a beautifully articulated apology letter written by Zareen, he said: ‘It was not your fault. It was my fault because I have loved you too much. I had not kept a distance between me and you. That’s why it became possible for a few people to misbehave. They did not hurt me, they hurt you all. Otherwise there was no need, because you can see – a bigger storm has come and there is no need to laugh. In fact it gives you an opportunity to be more silent. If you cannot be silent when there is storm and darkness, your silence is not true.’ ²

That night, the silence seemed of an even greater intensity during the ‘let-go’ phase. Even in adversity there can be blessings. That natural discipline that can be seen amongst Osho’s fellow travellers is nourished by deeper insights, not by external reprisals or regulations. The hit of a Zen master is hard, but it is his love for the disciple that manifests the hit.

From among the hundreds of ‘let-go’ moments during those meetings, that evening was the gentlest fall. Not really a fall, but a release, light as a feather, into a resting position, limbs upon limbs, belonging to whomsoever; we would melt into what Osho called ‘a silent lake of consciousness’ – where boundaries of physical bodies become blurry and we turn into an ocean, merging into one single boundless meditative state.

There is much more to marvel at in this discourse series. One can explore the talks in a state of abundance.

1) Osho, YAA-HOO! The Mystic Rose, Ch 20, Q 1
2) ibid, Ch 21, Q 1