Enlightened Trickery

By S D Anugyan

We are all well aware of Osho’s sense of mischief, having each experienced it in different ways. I recall the writer Tom Robbins declaring Osho’s numerous Rolls Royces one of the greatest practical jokes ever played on American consumerism. Always the jokes were there to hold a mirror up to us, to enlighten, and it wasn’t always comfortable seeing oneself so clearly.

When it comes to actual magic tricks though, I recall the story of the two Zen disciples talking about their respective Masters. While one is boasting about all the miracles his Master can perform, the other responds by saying his Master is so great, he doesn’t do any of those things. Although I have heard some mysterious stories from people who have been physically near Osho, overall these stories are never given much attention. Ordinariness is key.

Superficially, the approach of Neem Karoli Baba, Maharajji, was very different. Reading Miracle of Love, anecdotes compiled by Ram Dass, one comes across astonishing stories on almost every page. I have to say it is also one of the funniest books I have ever read. Maharajji to me comes across often as an enlightened Master using physical comedy to convey the Beyond. The contortions and variations that he could perform with his body amazed his disciples. He could also teleport or be in two places at once.

One of my favourite stories is when he was having his beard cut and the barber kept going on about how his son had disappeared one day and never came back. Maharajji interrupted him to get out of the chair and go outside to pee, returning a few minutes later. The next day the barber’s son walked in the door and explained that he had been living in a town over a hundred miles away, then the previous day a strange fat man with half his beard shaved had come up to him, put money in his hand, and told him to go see his father.

On the surface it would seem that Maharajji is emphasising miracles and magic, but it’s continually grounded with a mundanity – as if it’s no big deal – and humour. In one incident, an elderly woman comes to darshan and exclaims that she knew him when she was seven years old, her father knew him for forty years before that, and he hadn’t changed in all that time. Maharajji’s way of keeping everyone grounded with this revelation, it appears to me, was how he forbad anyone to talk with her afterwards. Yet with another old woman, but might have been the same one, who was confused by seeing him unchanged after so many years, he said, “Ma, I was dead. I have been reborn in the hills.” There is the Mystery, and there is a grounding of the Mystery. Balance has to be retained.

Gurdjieff was renowned for his ability to be different people, even at the same time, depending on who was observing him, and from what direction. Ouspensky relates a tale of when he and others had gathered to see Gurdjieff off at a station.

In the window we saw another man, not the one who had gone into the train. He had changed during those few seconds. It is very difficult to describe what the difference was, but on the platform he had been an ordinary man like anyone else, and from the carriage a man of quite a different order was looking at us, with a quite exceptional importance and dignity in every look and movement, as though he had suddenly become a ruling prince or a statesman of some unknown kingdom to which he was travelling and to which we were seeing him off. […]

G. had explained to us earlier that if one mastered the art of plastics one could completely alter one’s appearance. He had said that one could become beautiful or hideous, one could compel people to notice one or one could become actually invisible.

P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous

Some of this may relate to six-dimensional awareness. As Gurdjieff explains elsewhere, when one puts one’s hand on the table at a particular spot, with six dimensions it is also in every other possible spot. This concept, of course, will be familiar to those who know about the many worlds theory in quantum physics, even if through watching science fiction movies such as Doctor Strange, Back to the Future 2 or the magnificent Everything Everywhere All At Once. (You see, physics is not that difficult – you can learn about it by watching a film!)

I have often felt that shapeshifters, common in shamanic cultures, may be manifesting six dimensions with their bodies. In my novella The God of New York I depicted our world as if it has expanded from its usual four dimensions of space and time, to six. The central protagonist is a shifter who not only changes his body physically, often suddenly and unexpectedly, but his clothes change too. His reality changes. The irony in the story, which is part of his journey, is that he is aware he himself does not change, with a suspicion deep down that he may in fact be quite boring.

This ‘boringness’ may be quite important when dealing with six dimensions. If you get lost in the flux, you can go mad. I thought Terry Gilliam’s film Twelve Monkeys did an excellent job in reflecting that danger, where the whole question of what was real and what was not, kept shifting. One of the most startling moments of the film is when the Madeleine Stowe character suddenly shifts her perspective, accepting the ‘mad’ reality to be the true one. As the viewer, you yourself are kept on your toes, not knowing what is ‘true’ or not. The challenge is in remaining centred amidst the continually shifting landscape.

The key is very much self-knowledge, knowing who you are. If you are overly identified with one role in life – say that of mother, or hero, or nerd, or with a particular job, or nationality – you won’t last five seconds with six-dimensional awareness. Such rigidity is not to be spared, for you are far more than that one role. And it does help to perceive it as a role, which emphasises Osho’s declaration of acting as the most spiritual of professions. Past life work can also help, for once you experience yourself in various roles in other times, you may no longer be overly identified with the current one. In a shamanic meditation I once saw people’s ‘true selves’ as being like an appliqué pattern on a shirt or vest. That is, a composite of their various lives. The Self is not yet transcended, but it is far more complex, multifarious and wonderfully rich than normally imagined.

Self-knowledge is vital. On occasion on my inner and outer journeys, I have stumbled into six-dimensional spaces, and found them colourful, exciting, stimulating, bewildering, dangerous – and enlightening. They really shake one up, forcing questions of what had been taken for granted. I do have a guide who turns up sometimes and who is completely at home with the continual shifting of perspective and form, but often as not she tends to leave me to fend for myself. Which is annoying.

Maharajji’s identity often merges with that of the monkey god Hanuman, known amongst many things for his mischieviousness, and much of what I have described above is familiar in shamanism as the province of the Trickster. With spiritual masters like Maharajji, Gurdjieff and Osho though, we inevitably come full circle, having passed through the storm of wonders and bewilderment, to something very simple. It reminds me of the saying, ‘Before Zen, chop wood, fetch water. After Zen, chop wood, fetch water.’

For myself, circumstances have curtailed my many adventures, and I do find I’m deriving great pleasure in simple things in life.

It’s actually quite wonderful, being ordinary.