What makes that incident particularly memorable for me is the realization that Osho is making an effort to stay in his body, and doing so because of us. I see now that I have starting taking him for granted. I have never thought, as he leaves discourse each morning, that it might be the last time I will see him. Now it is evident that in spite of his efforts, any moment he might just suddenly pull up anchor and depart into the cosmos. A sobering thought…. How staggering, yet again, is the realization of who he is and why he is still with us.
“What,” Osho was once asked, “did we do to deserve you as our master?”
Chuckling, he replies, “I don’t know anything about you, but I must have done terrible karma to deserve you!”
Chapter 8: Celebration
Man is from heaven and music is from heaven, and whenever you know the keys to open the doors of music you have opened the doors of heaven also. The secret lies in the music.
If you ask me, if there were a choice between philosophy, religion, science, music, if there is a choice for me to choose one and all the remaining ones will disappear from the earth, I will choose music, because if music is there, religion will follow—it cannot disappear. ~ Osho
Impressions of these Pune days will be so many and remain so vividly alive for me many, many years later. The years and adventures to follow are beyond amazing. Each phase of my life as a sannyasin has its own beauty, yet there is something particularly magical about what comes to be known as “Pune One.”
Music is the thread throughout this time. I hear it in the Tibetan cuckoo at darshan time, his plaintive “Coo-oo…coo-oo” ringing through the stilling dusk; in the birds’ exuberant awakening at dawn. One morning earlier than usual, I clamber out of bed and set up a tape recorder on the balcony of my room, which is directly over Osho’s. From the nearby minaret the Muslims’ unearthly call-to-prayer rings through the still-dark silence. I pause and close my eyes to savor it, a sound so much part of the East. It’s a constant reminder of the value given here to the inner dimension and of how spirituality is part of everyday life—so different from the Christianity that, growing up in the West, I was surrounded by. A sense of the ineffable is meant to be confined to Sundays; anything else is excessive and suspect. Now, in the 1970s, those of us Westerners who are making spirituality the center of our lives are seen to have gone overboard. Friends, relatives and the media worldwide view us as eccentric; we’re “drop-outs.”
The day is gently ushered in with, at first, just an occasional twitter here and there. Then the avian overture gradually builds up in volume and density as other birds join in. Half an hour later, the crow of a distant rooster is interspersed with the heave-and-puff of the local trains and, at 6:00 a.m., the throbbing of the drums from the meditation hall as the first stage of Dynamic Meditation begins. By now the birds are really letting rip, their conversations frenzied. So much energy in their hallelujah chorus! And this is not for some special occasion—or, it is for the special occasion of being alive for this new morning.
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After discourse, while some of us set to work cleaning, accounting, doctoring, building, cooking, gardening or writing, others go to our therapy groups or join “Sufi Dancing.” Held in Buddha Hall, where we also meet for the daily discourses and meditations, it is a loving and often hilarious exercise in dance and song. Aneeta, blond hair flying, is in the center with musicians Anubhava on his guitar and Anugama on percussion as participants create various combinations of couples or foursomes, or join together as one big group.
I think of the typical man on the street in the West commuting his way to his office, a newspaper between him and those pressed tightly around him. By contrast how delightfully and outrageously pagan we are; how delicious not to be doing “the done thing,” the “right thing”! Instead of tethering ourselves to typewriters in airless offices, fifty orange, red, pink and russet-colored figures are joining arms, stepping this way and then that, our voices interwoven in rounds and harmonies. The pauses between songs are invariably filled with laughter and hugging, or with a heartfelt silence, before Aneeta announces the next one and demonstrates the steps to go with it, then off we go again.
Individuals compose some of the songs—“Thank You, Osho/ for bringing me here/ and taking me by the hand./ Nowhere to go/ but I know/ I’m a Buddha as I am. /Oh yeah!/ I’m a Buddha as I am!”—and an occasional song from the past, revised and vitalized, is given an airing. For example, “Amazing Grace”—that somber, evangelical hymn—is transformed into an ecstatic, “Praise life! Praise here! Praise now! Praise Osho!” The singing rides over rooftops and trees so that, sitting up on the balcony where I work in Lao Tzu House, I pause to listen or sing along.
The Music Group, led by Anubhava on his guitar, meets in the evenings during darshan, the songs blending in and providing a lovely backdrop as Osho leans forward to explain someone’s new name to them or to touch a forehead in blessing. And later, darshan concluded, those who spill out from the gates of Lao Tzu House fall into the arms of those who have been singing and dancing the hour away in Buddha Hall.
Occasionally instrumentalists, singers, and dancers from the Music Group or Sufi Dance come to darshan to play and sing for Osho. Chuang Tzu Auditorium, housed within Lao Tzu House, is surrounded by the dense jungle of Osho’s garden. Imagine then, a group of two hundred flame-dressed men and women arranged in a circle within a circle, walking slowly, arms and faces uplifted, singing our version of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’—a several-layered harmony in which male and female parts meet and then diverge and intermingle in easy accord. This is the real temple—the life energy of several hundred people throbbing with love and joy and gratitude. Here is the Song of Songs, the testimony that life lived passionately is the essence of prayer.
Each “Celebration Day” is another chance to express our many “hearts full of love, beating in the rhythm of your song.” Whether it is to celebrate Osho’s birthday, his enlightenment, Guru Purnima or Mahaparinirvana (or Mahaparibanana, as some of us irreverently call it), hundreds of guests from all over India and from the West throng through the gates of the ashram. We residents man the many stalls offering a variety of books, discourse audiotapes, large, glossy, colored prints of Osho, handmade gifts from the mala shop—little “snuff” boxes, jewelry boxes, hairpins of ebony or teak—clothes from the boutique, toiletries from the “Bodydharma” department, cookies, cakes, and sweets.
The late afternoon is for individual preparation for the evening festivities—everyone engaged in hair washing, body scrubbing, and dressing in their most beautiful robes. Once seated in the brightly lit Buddha Hall, several thousand of us sing to the band’s accompaniment, or perhaps just sit quietly with eyes closed, until the car carrying Osho purrs up to the back of the podium.
The music segues into the beautiful Rumi-inspired song…
Draw near, draw near
Draw near, draw near
And I will whisper in your ear
the name whose radiance
makes the spheres to dance:
Osho!
The faces around me are radiant. I am full to bursting as we fold our hands in namaste to greet Osho’s entrance, which coincides perfectly with this particular song. He has paused, his hands raised in namaste, a soft smile playing on his face.
Just one glimpse of the real man
standing there
and we are in love love love love
love love love love love!
And miraculously, here he is, the “real man,” in our midst. Rumi has written,