A sudden decision

As usual, as soon as I stepped off the train, I was surrounded by a surging crowd of men with business cards in their hands. Everybody pushes and everybody wants you to follow them to the best hotel in town for the cheapest price…

In Bombay, after that train ride, it was especially bad. The platform was not very wide and everybody was pushing. I couldn’t even walk, and a few times had to shout, “Stop this! Don’t push me! First I get off the platform, then we can talk.” But nobody listened. The pushing was going on and on… I got so angry with them. Every few meters I had to stop and make room for myself so that I could walk. Those guys were getting heavily on my nerves!

Finally I made it into the big station hall. I was still in the middle of the crowd; defending myself from cards being pushed into my face; defending myself from hands grabbing my arm and trying to drag me out to their rickshaws; defending myself from drivers trying to grab my bags so that I had to follow them.

A huge animal cry exploded from me: “Stop. Stop all this!”

It must have been such a desperate shout that actually this time they heard me! And some of them gave me some room.

One of the pushers seemed OK and could speak English. Suddenly a thought arose: Before I go to a hotel, I could already ask right here where the station for the bus to Goa is, and how many buses a day leave for there.

The man pointed to the far end of the hall and said, “Bus station outside there, only a five-minute walk. Many buses every day, but you have to make reservation and buy ticket for next day.”

Then the pushing started again. My primal shout had kept them off me for only a few minutes. My guy was also pushed away and I shouted towards him, “Is that the same station for the buses to Poona?”

“Yes, yes, same station.”

Then he said something that maybe he shouldn’t have said, another very small, but life-changing moment: “Last bus to Poona leaves in 20 minutes.”

I don’t know what made me do this next thing. Was it maybe my way out of this pushing crowd? I didn’t even think in that moment. I just changed direction and ran out of the railway station. And there I saw the bus station.

“…to Poona?”

A conductor pointed to a bus which was just closing its doors. I ran. The driver opened the door.

“Can I pay here? I didn’t have time to get the ticket.”

“Yes, yes, get in.”

He ripped off a ticket, I paid, and I was on the way to Poona. And I had a seat. And it felt good. And the crowd of pushing agents had gone – I had escaped.

Poona it will be first, then. The bus was half empty – surprise – and from talking to other passengers I quickly found out that we would be arriving around 12 midnight or 1 o’clock.

Somehow a stupid time, I thought, to arrive in a new town which I knew nothing about. Not even a hotel where to sleep that first night. The Bavarian in Berlin hadn’t prepared me for Poona! I remembered the article in Stern magazine and I knew that Chandus with his dog Panda and the German couple [whom I had met in Istanbul, ed.] wanted to go there. But they didn’t know much more than me. The only thing I was pretty sure of: there would be other foreigners somewhere in Poona.

When I arrived in that city, at 1 am, I had to trust that the first rickshaw driver I found would take me to a cheap hotel. A long ride in a motor rickshaw. We had left all main roads a while ago… He finally stopped in a very small street in front of a house. No sign outside that it was a hotel.

For a moment fear came up – maybe he wanted to rob me?

“Cheap Baba, really cheap.”

Inside there was indeed some kind of small reception desk, a guy sleeping behind it on the bare floor. I had arrived at the worst dump of my entire journey. Yes, cheap. A room with no windows, one bare light bulb, and so dirty!

“Better than nothing,” I thought.

I needed some sleep now. Just a few hours and then it would be another day. I could look for a slightly better place, and find this ashram that Stern magazine had written about. Lights out. I closed my eyes.

Something ran over my face. I jumped up in shock, switched on the light – and then I saw them. Cockroaches. Battalions of them, everywhere, running along the walls, over my mattress, over the floor. Disgusting!

I don’t mean a few hundreds, no, there were thousands! I started to squash them with a piece of paper. A killing frenzy! But gave up after a few minutes. Killing 10 or 100 was just useless. They were everywhere.

I went down to the reception and woke up the guy sleeping on the floor behind the desk. After I explained my plight he gave me a spray bottle. It was almost empty.

Went up, sprayed the remnant from the bottle into the room and sat outside the door on the floor waiting for the smell of the poison spray to go away. Soon all would be dead and I could sleep… I opened the door after 20 minutes: I guessed around a thousand had been killed, the floor littered with dead bodies.

Checking the walls, my mattress and under it, I couldn’t see one having survived the battle of species. So I had succeeded! Switched off the light and went back to sleep.

Minutes passed, I was almost there, sleeping. I was so exhausted from the 24-hour train ride and 4 hours in the bus… Again a thing was running over my face, stopping on my nose! I got that one. Jumping up, switching on the light – the roaches were back in full strength.

They had just been hiding until the smell was gone and it was safe for them to come out. Did some American entrepreneur produce gas masks for cockroaches and sell them to India?

At least a thousand had been killed before, but another ten thousand more had survived. They were not shy, not afraid of me. The room was obviously some kind of holiday home for them, like for us going to a Spanish beach, joining another ten thousand people, sunbathing side by side in neat rows.

Shit!

At that point I gave up. It was around 3 am anyway. Sat on the bed and watched the cockroaches having a good time. I started to think about my life and what I was going to do next, as soon as daylight was to be seen.

Poona arrival: 29th March 1978

1st Day

Watching the legions of cockroaches was quite funny for a while. I couldn’t sleep, just defended myself for the next two hours from being run over. I paid my room and left at 5 am in a hurry, and found a rickshaw just outside, the driver sleeping on the backseat.

“You know this place with the red people? Some kind of ashram?” I asked while shaking his shoulder, trying to wake him up. He woke up immediately and a big smile appeared on his face, his head nodding fast. It seemed the place was well known.

“Yes, yes, everybody knows, too early Baba, 7:00 or 8:00 open. Baba, not now.”

Right, it was only five o’clock. I let him drive around until I saw some kind of small roadside eating place that was already open. I spent the next two hours drinking many coffees, trying to keep awake.

At 7 am I arrived at a huge, modern Front Gate. It was closed. Looking around, I noticed a guy in red and a necklace, sitting on a low wall opposite the Front Gate. Dumping my backpack beside him: “Is this the ashram?”

He studied me curiously. He was a foreigner like me.

“Yes, but you too early. It opens at 9:00,” he replied in German.

His name: Garjan. He was from Munich.

Yes, many people here. Yes, they have a list inside with cheap hotels. Yes, I should first register in the Front Office. They would give me more info.

This ashram was all about this Indian Rajneesh. I heard his voice coming over the wall while we talked. Real bad Indian-English, I didn’t understand a word.

The doors opened just after nine and I was amazed how many foreigners like me were streaming out. Hundreds and hundreds, all dressed in red and orange with a necklace hanging down over their chest.

Wow, what is this place?

I was curious. After all, this journey was all about getting to know new things. Being open to learn and follow every opportunity that life offered to me. Registering with my passport, I got a run-down on the few rules.

If I wanted to do therapy groups I had to go to the Main Office and first talk with a woman there, called Arup.

If I needed a cheap place to stay, they had a list to look through. I picked the cheapest, and one hour later I had my own mattress in a dormitory, at Wakefield’s – an old Indian colonial house which had seen better times maybe 50 years earlier.

My first two days in Poona: studying the situation. Staying all day in the ashram, watching people, listening to conversations, trying to make up my mind if I liked it or not, if I should stay a few days or pack my backpack and continue my journey to Goa.

So many foreigners, hundreds, thousands, from all countries… that made me really curious. At that time, probably a few thousand foreigners lived in a radius of two kilometers around the ashram.

Everybody was in a good mood. Everybody smiling. And I felt good. It was so totally different from the world I had come from, Berlin and my studies at the University. Nobody told me what to do. Whoever I talked to – nobody told me to join or participate. Nobody tried to convince me of anything. They talked about themselves and their experiences without ever suggesting that I should join in.

They talked about meditation. “What’s that?” Never done anything like it.

They talked about enlightenment and how to get there. “What’s that?” I had never even heard the word before.

On the second of April, I decided I had to try out something, otherwise how could I know what all this was about? I hadn’t seen this Indian guy yet, hadn’t gone to his lectures that he gave every morning. Best thing is, I do one of these groups they were all talking about.

Since I had never done a therapy group before, it was clear to me that I wanted to do the group that was mentioned in Stern magazine. But to do that, I first had to talk to this Dutch lady in the Main Office. From these two days of conversations and listening to people I knew how it was supposed to work with her. You go in and ask what is good for you. Then she will select the groups you can do.

I didn’t want that, I didn’t want to waste my money for useless groups. I wanted one group – the best! If I did that, for sure I would know about this place, this guy, and know if I liked it or not – then on to Goa.

I sat down opposite Arup. The conversation ran differently than what everybody had told me.

“What do you want to do here?”

I was surprised. She had asked me, and I was prepared to somehow convince her that I wanted to do this Encounter Group.

“The Encounter Group!”

She looked at me in surprise, then studied me with her gaze.

“That’s the hardest group here. You know that? Not many want to do that group.”

“Yes.”

A moment of silence. “Have you done any therapy groups before?”

“I studied Psychology in Berlin. Yes, I did.”

That was a lie. I had never done any therapy before. “The hardest” – what did that mean? I did not have the slightest idea about groups, but the hardest was just fine by me, whatever that meant.

She leaned over to another woman, probably her secretary, and said, “Okay, he can do the Encounter Group, starting on 21st April.”

Turning her head back towards me she said, “Okay, you can do it. But it would be better if you did two smaller groups beforehand. Is that okay with you?”

“Yes, as long as I can do the Encounter Group.”

“Okay, register today. Start with the Centering Group from 4th April until 10th April. Afterwards do the “Who am I?” group for three days, and then you are ready for the Encounter Group.”

And out I was. It was the second of April, I’d been three days in Poona, and in another 26 days I would know what I was going to do with myself. That was okay by me. The place was not bad. People smiling. No drugs, good food, the dormitory only cost me $1.50 a night. And I would learn something about psychology. After all, I had studied it in Berlin…

4th April, a good day for me to start the Centering Group: my birthday. At lunch, sitting with some people I had met before – they immediately asked. “So what groups are you doing? What did Arup tell you to do?”

“The Encounter Group. She didn’t tell me. I asked for it.”

They all looked at me.

“What? But you have just arrived. Nobody gets that group.”

“Don’t know – but I will do it.”

What groups you were doing and which ones Arup had said would be best for you to do, seemed to be the favorite topic to talk about. The other topic of conversation was always: How far are you on the way to enlightenment? Who is close to enlightenment? When would it happen to you?

Probably about 40 different kinds of therapy groups were offered at that time for people to join, pay for, and learn from. Having already finished two years of psychology studies in the most progressive institute in Europe, I had heard fuck, zero, nothing about groups until then.

The Encounter Group seemed to be the hardest among all of them. Luckily for me, it was the only one mentioned in that Stern magazine.

When people found out that I was going to do this group, they always reacted by telling me all these horror stories. That it was a no limits group; broken arms and legs, knocked-out teeth, fights with lots of blood. Everything was possible in that group, something which would not have been allowed in Europe or anywhere else. I listened to all these stories but always felt OK. They didn’t frighten me at all. To do the hardest is tough, maybe, but the best way to know quickly why everybody was hanging around this Indian guy.

Centering group. Sometimes meditating, sometimes sitting across from another person, telling my story and listening to their story. Soft music, about 40 people participating. We had to do Dynamic Meditation before group each morning at 6:00, and afterwards listen to this Indian guy until 9:00. The group would start at 10:00, and last until 10:00 at night or later.

Dynamic Meditation I didn’t like, all this shouting and moving about – stupid.

I skipped going to the lecture in the morning and listening to this guy Rajneesh. Maybe I needed time for myself – so, instead, I left the ashram and had breakfast at Cafe Delite – scrambled eggs and croissants.

Being in this group for 12 hours every day – we had to lie down sometimes and listen to quotes from his lectures. I had a hard time understanding anything. My English was just basic; what I had learned at school. And he had this strong Indian-English slang which took a while to get used to.

On the 8th of April, again we all had to lie down on the tiled floor, relax and listen to a quote from a morning lecture. Mostly I dreamed away in my own thoughts while he was talking. Suddenly I heard the word, “psychology.” This guy is talking about Psychology.

Because of my studies, I understood the next two sentences:

“If you are miserable inside, how can you help other people?”

“If you are unhappy, how can you help other people?”

Thousands of light bulbs switched on in my head. Flashes of understanding shooting through my brain.

I was studying the wrong thing! What is the use if I become a professor of psychology and I am unhappy and miserable? I can’t help anybody like that. The only thing I can do is spread my unhappiness onto them.

I remembered the two hours with Professor Holzkamp. The guy was unhappy. He couldn’t even look into my eyes. And when I had asked him why he didn’t look into my eyes, he fell apart right in front of me. He became so nervous, trying to cover up his inner being with more intellectual words. Words, words, words – that’s all he was. Deep down he was a miserable man. He couldn’t help any of us. He couldn’t even explain one of his thoughts so that we could all understand it.

I didn’t want to be like that!

First, I had to make myself happy. First, I had to find something which made me happy. First, I had to learn about my misery. Only if I am complete inside and happy, then I can help people, then I can look straight into their eyes when I talk.

Conclusion: My studies were a waste of time!

This string of thoughts and this flash of understanding happened right after I had heard those words. After the group session the natural follow-up of these flashes of insight, was to walk straight into the Main Office.

Arup was just getting up from her big office chair, ready to go for lunch.

She recognized me. I was surprised…

“All okay?”

We were alone in the room.

“Yes. I want to take Sannyas. Tonight.”

That was an expression I knew by now. To take Sannyas meant becoming part of it. To sit in front of him alone in the evening session, in his house. He talks to you personally. And at the end he will give you a new name. He will give you a necklace of rosewood beads with a small locket, his picture inside.

Every day so many people wanted to take Sannyas that most of them had to wait up to two weeks before they got scheduled for an evening session. Until that moment I hadn’t even been to one of his lectures… I only knew him from the photos which were everywhere in the Ashram, and from the big photo in the group room.

Arup was surprised. Sat back down in her big chair and took up a clipboard. Studying eyes sweeping me for a few seconds; silence between us. Checking her clipboard: “We are so full. Tonight, is not possible! Sorry. But your group has the last-day Darshan with him in two days, the night of the 10th.” (On the last day of a group, all participants were invited to sit with him in the evening. I hadn’t known that until then.) “It’s actually full for taking Sannyas, but I will squeeze you in. You take Sannyas with your group. That sounds good.

“You happy now?”

That struck me. The same words the director at the Oberhausen College had asked me six years earlier.

“Yes, very happy.”

On my way out, I knew something important had happened for me. I felt light. I felt happy. I felt at ease. Something had fallen out of my system. The past was past and so far away from me. Berlin, my studies, Irmgard, everything had disappeared. My decision was the right one!

I do hope that all readers have followed me so far. If you are about to put the book aside because it’s going to be about something strange like a sect, a crazy guy the newspapers have written about a lot, please don’t do that. Follow me through my life.

All felt so good now.

Nothing else of importance to say about that 6-day group.

Only those three minutes had been important for me.

A section called ‘A sudden decision – Cockroaches – An orange world’ from chapter 13 (edited) of Chitbodhi’s book, One Life

Related articles

• Oberhausen College – too good to be true – From Chitbodhi’s memoir, One Life. Co-protagonists are: “A teacher, Dr. L. and 26 incredible classmates!”
• Holzkamp – Chitbodhi remembers events during his days at Uni in Berlin
• Squatting a Church (16 December 1977) – Chapter 8
• Follow the whole series of excerpts on Osho News: One Life by Chitbodhi

One Life: A True Account
by Chitbodhi (Karl Ludwig Malczok)
ASIN: ‎ B00T1LKX6A
Kindle eBook: Amazon*

The eBook is also available in a German version:
Ein Leben: Eine Wahre Erzählung
ASIN: ‎ B01F7YK6U2
Kindle eBook: Amazon.de