Article by S D Anugyan
Glancing at the title of an Osho quotation recently on MySamasati, I read it as ‘To tally in the moment’. This gave pause for immediate reflection, that this is what I should do more, just slow down, ‘hang around’ in the moment, draw it out in a relaxed manner. Then I realised I was thinking of ‘to tarry’. ‘To tally’ meant to count, to measure something. To measure the magnitude of the moment? Going back to the page, I realised that, of course, it was ‘Totally in the moment’. Yet the misreading had granted me unexpected dividends.
I recall Osho saying once that he appreciated a questioner’s beginning ‘I have heard you say…’ as this was how people would begin their questions to Buddha. The phrase does not state emphatically that the Master said or meant anything in particular, but the disciple heard something and interpreted it in their own way. It is taking responsibility for one’s filters. It is with a gleeful respect to that tradition, that I am not going to pedantically check Osho’s discourses to verify what I say here, acknowledging wholeheartedly these are my responses to what I heard him say, and nothing more. What has prompted this, is an accumulation of things I heard in discourse or read in Osho’s books and didn’t understand at the time, but feel I do now.
I took sannyas in 1983 – though I think it is more accurate to say sannyas took me – when Osho was in his silent phase. I heard it said that those who became sannyasins at that time did so because they weren’t drawn to his words, but his silence. This felt very true for me at the time. As a writer, I knew the limitation of words and that there was something much deeper going on, something ineffable. When he did recommence talking, there was still something deeper going on, as we all know.
The first time I visited the ashram in Pune, discourses were in Chuang Tzu auditorium. One thing I heard him say then was regarding a sannyasin who had written to him that she was having random sexual encounters with strangers, not even bothering to learn their names. I then heard him say this was how it should be, going with the wind, drifting, living in the moment, forgetting about the past and future. This wasn’t surprising in itself, fitting in well with hippie ideals and the bohemian lifestyle of which I was a part. Thus, it confirmed what I had already understood.
When I returned a year later, he referred to someone whom I presumed was the same person – yet this time I heard him say something to the effect that ‘This stupid woman hasn’t understood anything I’ve said. Where is the commitment, the depth?’ The startling contrast with what I heard a year before emphasised even more strongly, that ultimately I had to take responsibility for myself, not turn anyone’s guidelines into rules. Not even Osho’s.
Rising out of the silence, however, certain statements have stayed with me hauntingly, teasing me to discover their mystery.
One was a response to a questioner who said that they found they meditated only when unhappy, not when everything was going well. At the time, I resonated with that sentiment. (Tough break-up? Time to do Dynamic. Busy cluttered mind? Vipassana should sort that out.) His response, as I recall, was that that attitude to meditation could only ever remain superficial. This also struck a chord, for it reflected my own tendency to shallowness; so I was ready to work on it, and nowadays I am as likely to witness my happiness as my sadness.
His response to a remark that the questioner kept wondering what Osho was doing in his room in Lao Tzu, I remember being ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m wondering what you are doing out there!’ Again, I resonated with the questioner more, but there was a glimmer of something for me in Osho’s response. This was encouraged by the story of villagers coming to Rabiya’s hut, saying ‘It is a beautiful day. Why don’t you come outside?’ Her reply, ‘It’s a beautiful day inside,’ has become relatable to me as I grow older and more rooted in meditation.
Similarly, but more extremely, a remark I heard from Osho regarding travel, that it was uninteresting to him because wherever he went he met the same mind, I could not relate to at all. Travel was an enormous, enriching part of my life, as I learnt about different cultures, attitudes, everything – how could he say it was all the same mind? It took a while, but now I get it. I’m not sure I can put it in words, but any travel has become more focused on connecting with loved ones and my extended family rather than cultural enhancement. He is right – no surprise there – it is all the same mind. 1
I recall someone questioning whether enlightenment was even desirable: to not be reborn, experiencing the beautiful sunsets and other wonders the world has to offer. His response, as I heard, was that when you really listen to birdsong there is something mechanical, repetitive about it; and whilst love and other dramas fill our lives, there is always something missing, something not to be relied on with these externalities. (I may be combining two discourses in my mind here.) I feel that I’ve been at that point for a while now, that even rebirth has a tediousness to it. Stop the world, I want to get off – not because I want to escape, but because I’m really really bored with it. And the golden key is, of course, witnessing. There’s no getting around that one.
There was also something Buddha said that bothered me. Now, I can’t even say ‘I heard you say’ regarding Buddha, because I wasn’t there; it’s possible I heard this from Osho. Supposedly one of the first things Buddha said after he was enlightened was: ‘This cannot be taught.’ As an ex-teacher, writer and lecturer, this statement really bothered me. I thought it was a cop-out, for surely everything can be taught. It’s simply a question of finding how. Now that I’ve been foraying into higher dimensions, courtesy of Osho, Gurdjieff and a few others, I understand this sentiment totally. Especially when I deal with higher dimensions, I despair of sharing anything correctly. And this is nowhere near enlightenment.2
Age has granted me more resonance in that I remember Osho saying that after enlightenment he no longer read books in search of understanding, but instead to seek out others who had comparable experiences. I was definitely still in search of understanding then and still am, but the x-dimensional research, as I call it, has sent me in quest of others who might have experienced what I have. And actually, as so often, it is seven dimensions, which Ouspenksy calls ‘negative’ or ‘imaginary’, that are proving the most elusive. So far I have come across passages from Shakespeare, Dante, Swedenborg, Blake and – surprisingly, for he was never a poet I admired much – Shelley. Again surprisingly, I have found little from Eastern traditions. It’s like they skipped that bit! The quest goes on, if it can be called that.
Finally, some of Osho’s last words haunted me for years, that we are only to speak of him in the present tense. In typical disciple-obtuseness, I thought that a bit silly. Indeed, one ridiculous conversation reported to me by a friend was someone saying, ‘Osho will love this…’ To which my very down-to-earth friend responded, ‘Don’t be absurd. Osho is gone.’ To add some pedantic weight to her response, I could point out that the person was speaking in the future tense anyway.
What I feel now is that most of us get it wrong. To digress a bit: where I live most of the year in west Cornwall3, there appears to be a very thin veil between this world and the next. People tend not to talk about it until they trust you sufficiently, while others drink and take drugs to cover their feelings up, because you can become very vulnerable; but most appear to have had unusual experiences with the Beyond including ghosts, messages from those departed, and non-linear exposures to time. There’s a joke that we’re ‘living in the bardo’, because it does really feel like that.
One of the aspects of living in the bardo is the realisation that no one actually dies. On the face of it, I have experienced a lot of death here, physical and relationship-wise. Deeper down, there is the sense of form having changed, but essence remaining. The frustrating part of it is the waiting room scenario of the bardo, that one is surrounded by strange sounds and lights but nothing really tangible to hold onto.
When a friend and I got up early to get to the train station a few weeks ago, we were on the north coast. As she was throwing some things into the car, I took in my surroundings which were cloaked in mist and an eerie silence. There were dark shapes here and there, and the sense of the sea, even if not its sound, nearby. As we set off across the peninsula to the south coast, with the road only just visible in the whiteness, there were moments when we actually started sharing thoughts together. This whole experience was as blatantly bardo-like as I have ever had.
The point I am coming to, what I understand now, what I am living now, is that there is no death. Nobody dies. They don’t go anywhere, it’s more like we ‘the living’ do. So when I hear Osho say, ‘Speak of me only in the present,’ my understanding is that this is not symbolic or mystical, but a factual observation. It is the truth.
Finally, I get it. Of course, there are all the things I have heard him say that I still don’t get. Gulp.
Notes
1 It has been pointed out to me that this doesn’t deny the transcendence of natural environments, of being transported by the beauty of existence. This is true, and I remain as much in love with nature as I always was, but there’s a distance now between us, as if I’m observing a beautiful backdrop to the same story each time. And see 2 below!
2 This is revealing more than I intended, but it is through these explorations that I have glimpsed wonders such as infinite oceans, of which the physical one we know is only a small aspect, a reflection of something much greater.
3 This was written over a year before publication. I have now crossed the border into Devon, and gaze wistfully across the estuary to my old life in Cornwall. Have I left the bardo behind, I wonder, ready for the next phase?
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Madhuri, Punya and Bhagawati. This was a difficult essay to write, and they helped me arrive at a place where I felt at least reasonably satisfied.
Featured image: ‘Tenses’ by Amiten
Comments are closed.