An open invitation

I am a sannyas kid. I took sannyas at the Hamburg Ashram in 1982, when I was four years old.

I am deeply pained by reading, hearing, and feeling the sharings of some of the former kids/teens. It is paralysing and shocking to read your stories, and it leaves me speechless…

I feel the pain, the woundedness and the helplessness of not having been heard and received. I feel deepest compassion.

It’s good that everything is coming to light. It is good that it’s being addressed and acknowledged. It’s important that the former sannyas kids/teens are truly heard and received – also in the sannyas community! I have infinite compassion for what they went through, and as a mother of two teenage girls, I can only say, “I do not wish such experiences on any child, ever.” I wish for those in need to find healing, but first and foremost, I wish they are truly heard in their experience.

What is healing?

Four years ago, the question arose in me: What is healing? And quite honestly, now – four years later – I still have this question. I know the healing in myself, and how it’s happened. I cannot say what healing is for anyone else.

Since the recent article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung came out, I have spoken to many former kids, as well as parents and teachers. Every story I’ve heard expands and widens my heart, but also my perception of the complexity of our very unique experience and upbringing.

My heart has ached many times, while reading in a Facebook group, because I feel we haven’t been listening or receiving each other, but have rather been polarizing, opposing, debating and blaming. Even more, I think that many people have actually felt ‘trashed’ there – on both ‘sides’. This is happening all over the world right now: polarization, division, separation, disconnection. For me, this is trauma!

Maybe we can all pause for a moment and take ourselves out of this righteousness, bring in compassion and simply listen.

I believe that truly listening to one another and receiving one another with compassion is essential for healing and, in order to collectively create a field that encompasses more than our small selves, we might need to step into a bigger inner space of holding. Personally, I think we have all the tools, the awareness, and the understanding to do this. Do we want this? I do.

I know that, four years ago, there was genuine caring and support offered to the kids. I also feel that there was/is a huge collective resistance in the Osho field towards acknowledging their experiences.

What the former children experienced is valid, and it was their experience, period. I’m from the same generation and have a completely different experience; it’s valid too. Each and everyone has a different and unique experience, and they are all valid, period.

The many lived experiences vary, differ and are so unique that I feel we need tremendous sensitivity, spaciousness and loving safe holding for us to come together, share, listen and perhaps ‘meet’ in some way, possibly find a little collective/individual healing?

Sharing & Listening

A few of us have created a WhatsApp group called Sharing & Listening. The intention is to meet online every few weeks to simply share and listen to each other, in this very complex experience many of us have had.

We have had the first meeting and it was strong; many felt shaken and stirred, but it was also touching, sincere and really beautiful.

This space for coming together is open to anyone who wants to be part of a respectful space of receiving each other, where every voice has a place. Healing and inclusivity IS the intention. We feel that polarising and not including all perspectives doesn’t help the situation, but feeds separation.

If you feel you would like to participate, please reach out and let us know. Many of our life stories are complex. Some of us had big challenges; it’s not about painting a good or bad picture but rather sharing the diversity of it all.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung has reached out to me, and the journalist asked me if victims and perpetrators were also welcome in the group. I said YES, that they would be very welcome. And yes, I have spoken to people on both sides and there is a willingness to come together.

My understanding is that many of us children were without protection, lacking support and presence from our parents and the community. Neglect was clearly an issue. It was painful that mothers and children had no place in the communities. Many of us kids still struggle with deep abandonment wounds, because as part of the so-called freedom we had as children we also experienced enormous ‘unheld’ chaos.

It’s also clear that we former children had to give up some of our authenticity in order to belong – a conflict we still see much of in the world. And it’s important that this is spoken about, expressed, and seen.

It’s clear that the environment we grew up in was very sexual, and for many kids/teenagers it was overwhelming and impactful. For some, there was also strong pressure to be sexual, to be sexually open and available, etc. This surely was not appropriate for those kids.

Individual responsibility – yes. I believe that accountability is essential. Some clearly overstepped boundaries back then.

And I feel that the parents also had responsibilities back then. Even when following a Master, living devotion and surrender, the responsibility always lies with the individual, and especially when you are responsible for a child.

In Pune, Osho said very clearly that it was not a place for children. Of course, as in any group dynamic, there was also abuse of power…

Hearing these things in the light of today’s times is shocking, yes. But it was a different time, a different zeitgeist – and this needs to be remembered.

Speaking to the older generation, it becomes clear that they carried the post-war trauma, rebelling and trying to find freedom after enormous oppression. Many sannyasins had extremely traumatic experiences in their childhood; they were abused or suffered extreme developmental trauma. Many I know come from difficult situations, and were able to experience life positively for the very first time in their lives when they came to Osho.

My mother, Amito, still says today that she wouldn’t have survived without Osho and the meditations – a statement I hear from other parents too. Some mothers, including mine, felt unable to be mothers, and were glad that there was greater support.

Again, it’s important not to ignore the generational trauma here. I personally feel that everything we experienced is so complex, so multifaceted, so extensive that it’s very, very difficult to talk about it out of context.

The zeitgeist

Osho spoke a lot about sexuality, and I think this was probably necessary back then. Sex is life, vibrancy, pure life force – we all come from it… We still have major issues due to sexual oppression in society today, all over the world.

I understand that the Osho experience includes everything we find in the world, every aspect of being. I also understand that we lived a lot – intensely – at the time, in a way which simply could not happen today. The richness of what I have experienced in my life, is something I value.

There was clearly also a dark side to our community. And there was clearly also a light side to our community.

My story as a kid

I took sannyas out of my own initiative. I only understood what this meant when I saw my own daughter at four years old, with her pure vitality and true will to go for what she wanted, from her gut.

I spent time at the Hamburg Ashram, six years at Ko Hsuan, and then many years in Pune. My mother didn’t want to be separated from me during the time of Medina, so I didn’t go. For me, personally, the six years I spent at Ko Hsuan – children with children – was the most precious time of my life, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

I experienced present and loving teachers, joyful learning, fun cooking and cleaning together, and so much more. The friends I have from that time are my family for life. I am still grateful to my parents for working so hard to finance the six years I spent at Ko Hsuan.

Maybe what makes a difference is that I was there on my own initiative and that it was not something that was imposed on me? I don’t know. But I do know that sannyas wasn’t all holy, or only good. I remember saying very early on, as a teenager, that sannyas had two sides, just as we live in a world of duality.

My own healing

There was a lot I had to heal in myself, recalibrate, do the inner work around the values that we simply absorbed as kids, around boundaries that didn’t exist, around so much more… Even before sannyas there was very little holding in my life, a lot of chaos, many drugs, little presence, lots of love and yes, that abandonment wound is very much something I have to face in myself still today. I think many of us kids have a deep wound of abandonment. Personally, I cannot relate it to sannyas only.

I do know it’s mine – having shared it with my parents, expressed it; and I have been able to share the healing journey through actually doing groups together, family constellations, etc. But mostly I know it’s mine because I had the willingness and the clear longing to do the inner work.

I know that what I have gotten through Osho, or the Field, or whatever you want to call it, is a lot. I got the means to express, share, process, to stand up to my parents, find and use anger as a resource, and be on my own journey, while staying connected with others. Something I still do not see much of in the world today!

…and as a mother

I now have two teenage girls. I simply have to say that so much of what I embody and transmit as a mother today is what I have learned, lived, and loved at Ko Hsuan, in Pune, from Osho. The tools we were given, the intimacy and closeness, the authenticity, the nourishing deep level of connectedness… which is so hard to find in the world and which so many people long for.

My girls both say it’s not easy to find such open, authentic, loving, and joyful people in the world. As they are now teenagers they have become part of my bigger family, so naturally and easily they are sliding into the field of deep and honest inquiry, sharing and meaningful exchanges…

I’m a mother speaking of my own children, so maybe that doesn’t count, but when I look at my daughters, Zoe (16) and Kaya (13), I see two emotionally intelligent girls/women, who feel good about themselves, have good boundaries, but also have trust in themselves. They are full of life and open in conversations with people of all ages. Above all, we as parents never lost touch with our children, even during their puberty.

I think every generation might be able to do a little better than the previous one…

But it is still extremely difficult to find an intelligent school, that teaches something that goes beyond our societal performance pressure, and is in fact one of the most challenging things about being a parent.

For myself I can’t say where sannyas begins and where it ends!

Sharing my understanding

It’s clear that many of my traumas were present in my life before we came to Osho. I did not experience sexual abuse, but I have certainly experienced a lot of developmental trauma. I have gone through a lot of therapy and processing and I know and feel the healing within me. I know my parents were there, listening and taking me in, as I expressed my anger, resentment, and pain at them.

I think that many sannyasin parents were perhaps not as open to having conversations with their children because they felt they had already given their best. Compared to their own experience as children, they thought what their offspring were able to experience was very precious and valuable, and therefore they weren’t really open to listen to or receive their children.

There might be a big difference between being born into sannyas and taking sannyas from your own initiative.

Personally, I would not call it a sect or a cult, because for me it was always freedom. I was there, I wanted to be there, and it was of my own choosing.

What Osho’s field has given me, when I feel it in its essence, is joy in life, a YES to life, the courage to face life, to be spontaneous. I feel like I’ve learned to trust this greater something, to trust the Divine. I feel like it’s connected me to a vast, expanded space beyond. There was magic every day. There still is magic every day!

One of my teachers from Ko Hsuan said to me that he had had many sleepless nights, thinking it all through, wondering if he had missed anything. After much thought, he can now clearly say that the truth is that 95% of the people in Ko Hsuan were 95% of the time super-happy. I think the shared level of aliveness and joy we lived is something that is very rare today. And yes, there was everything else also, but the ‘experiment’ was quite a phenomenon…

Can we hold it ALL?

The understandings, the tools, the language, the expanded horizon, the awareness I feel I was given by my experience of being around Osho is tremendous. Seeing my two girls mostly grown up now and moving out into the world, is for me like picking the harvest. I am mind-blown by their maturity and strength and beauty.

I am certain that in some way, because Anu and I had parents who weren’t able to be fully present, we are able to be such good parents. We have maintained a beautiful connection with our kids, have worked through a lot of the childhood trauma that arises when you have kids. The journey is a blessing, not always easy or light but tremendously rewarding. And the means to stay, to hold space and have family meetings, work through my own shit, while being present to my kids – this gift I received being in the Osho field.

I am left with many valuables from this experience. At the same time, I can feel that many of my brothers and sisters are still hurting and are not feeling seen by their bigger family. Maybe we can do the work that needs doing in a small family – which is to share, listen, receive, grow together – also in this big family? That would be the biggest gift of all…