A story – with a painting – by Sudas
Every time S. returned to the West after spending time in Poona, he found it very hard to answer the questions of relatives and friends, who were eager for gossip, and for any excuse to paint a picture of Osho – then Bhagwan – that had nothing to do with reality. They talked about an ashram where, according to them, the guru drove around all day in a Rolls-Royce and the disciples did nothing but have sex from morning till night. With all the inevitable variations the topic invited.
S. was not generous enough to try to change the ideas of the malicious-minded and clarify what was really happening. Most of the time he put on the mask of the “false and courteous man from Torino”, athough he often got struck dumb with surprise by their imagination.
“May I see your dog?”
“Which dog, madam?”
“The wire-haired one in the photo you’re wearing around your neck…”
Once, an aggressive fellow challenged him with:
“Why do you wear that photo around your neck?”
“It’s my Master.”
“Master of what?”
“Skiing.”
Before meeting the Master and staying at the ashram in Poona, S. had never had much to do with the word Mind. Now he noticed that it cropped up in every other sentence the orange-clad people uttered.
One night he had a dream. He met people, many people, whose faces were embedded in a strange hologram that rotated continuously. It reminded him of those odd machines that preceded cinema and showed moving images. A… scope; S. could not remember what it was called.
Someone said to him that thanks to this hologram, people’s brains were empty and all their psychic and mental products had been transferred outside of themselves: all mental activity could be seen – someone explained to S. – “in the light of day”. People’s conscious, unconscious and subconscious minds were all on display.
People did not seem happy, far from it. They glared at each other with hostility. The fact that everything was out in the open was not reassuring – at all.
In the dream, a voice said that the most difficult thing to preserve in the hologram was… awareness.
The voice added that awareness without love turned the world into a Nazi slaughterhouse, while love without awareness produced unbearable sentimentalism.
Only later, in the dream, S. asked himself what on earth all this had to do with that Saturn ring around people’s heads.
All these people were heading towards a massive fortress set in a seemingly-endless desert.
It was said that a Master lived in that imposing building – someone who, through unusual meditation techniques, could show anyone their own personal path toward a fulfilling spiritual life.
S. was hopeless at interpreting dreams, but he was sensitive to their value as signs pointing the way to spiritual growth.
He took the dream-sign very seriously, wrote the dream down on a small piece of paper and put it in his pocket, so that it might transmit its power to him.
After all, S. had always been an animist, and expected much even from inanimate things.
In the end, ça va sans dire, you could expect that from a painter – S. was a Painter!
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Featured image: ‘Don’t think too much’ by Sudas (Sandro Beltramo)
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