The old, traditional sannyas here in India involves renouncing the world; Osho’s “neo sannyas” is just the opposite. It’s about a total embracing of life and it’s “the desire to make meditation one’s whole lifestyle.
“The real sannyasin,” he says, “is bringing meditation to the ordinary affairs of life, bringing meditation to the marketplace. Eating, walking, sleeping, one can remain continuously in a state of meditation. It is nothing special that you are doing but doing the same things with a new way, with a new method, with new art. Sannyas changes your outlook.”
Becoming a sannyasin means a person becomes “an insider, part of my family,” as Osho puts it:
The whole energy of other sannyasins will be totally different and things will happen faster. Otherwise you remain an outsider, a visitor, and a subtle barrier continues to exist. Even in the groups it will be there; in meditations it will be there. Nobody wants it to be there, but it is natural. So once you are in orange and a sannyasin, things change, things move faster. The very gesture of taking sannyas breaks something in you. Something melts. It is a gesture of trust. You trust me more and I can work deeper and easily.
I personally am relieved to hear that being a sannyasin is not about being a follower. “Let the difference be absolutely clear,” Osho says:
Sannyas is not following me. Sannyas is just being with me, in my presence. Sannyas is not imitating me. Sannyas is just to be with me to follow your own destiny. I am here to help you to be yourself. Sannyas is just a trust; it is not a belief. I don’t promise you anything.
*
One evening I am able to have a second darshan—sitting with others, sannyasins and visitors, to ask Osho any questions we might have. When my turn comes I tell him that once, during the Kundalini Meditation, images of my childhood rapidly passed through my mind—disconnected scenes, like bits and pieces of a jigsaw. “Allow it; it is good,” he comments; “the past is dropping.”
A couple of weeks later in darshan Osho invites me to “become part of the ashram.” Other sannyasins will later tell me how lucky I am, but “I can’t,” I quickly explain to Osho now. “My father in Australia is looking forward to seeing me and I don’t want to let him down.”
“So you go there,” Osho says, then pauses. “How long will it take? Two weeks?”
“Oh, no, more than that!”
“Six weeks?” he suggests.
“Not as long as that!” I exclaim, and he chuckles.
“Okay, you go and come back. A few blocks are there, but you go and come back. Good, Maneesha”… and he leans forward to touch my bent head.
I go to Mumbai to confirm my onward flight for three weeks hence. Yet curiously, over the next few days—unasked for, uninvited—a sense of absolute at-homeness here begins to fill me. Australia now feels like a home only in name: if home is where the heart is, then I have found it here in the ashram. A letter to Osho telling him about how I feel elicits another darshan. He asks that, if I stay won’t I be thinking of Australia? I assure him no, I want to be here now.
He looks at me silently for a moment, then says, “So good, you stay, mm?”
Having moved into the ashram, I try to compose a letter to my parents explaining why I am not returning after all. It is the most difficult task I have ever undertaken. I can’t explain to myself why I feel as I do; I just know this is where I belong. Knowing my decision will create hurt, still, this is what I want to do and I must write something by way of explanation.
In her reply, my mother chastises me for the pain my letter has caused my father; she tells me I have broken his heart. I adore my father and yet there is such a strong knowing that I have made the only decision I could. His love really is of the kind that only wants what gives me joy, regardless of any other feelings that he might have. In the letters he and I exchange over the following years there is never a hint of reproach, no mention of heartbreak from him. His only questions are only ever around my being well and happy. A lesson in love for me. If I have not yet learned to “love wisely,” my father has.
Chapter 2: Experiments with Meditation
There are going to be three categories of sannyasins. One … will take short-term sannyas … will meditate and go through some kind of spiritual discipline at some secluded place and then return to their old lives. The second category will be of those who will take sannyas, but remain wherever they are. They will continue to be in their occupations as before, but they will now be actors and not doers, and they will also be witnesses to life and living. …The last category of sannyasins will live in meditation and carry the message of meditation to those who are thirsty for it. ~ Osho
Until six years ago or so, Osho has been traveling around India. Then in 1968 he had moved into an apartment block in Mumbai known as Woodlands, with a small group of sannyasins. Then, in March 1974 he had arrived here in Koregaon Park.
By now, Dynamic and Kundalini have been happening regularly morning and evening; in August a new meditation comes into being, the very vigorous Mandala meditation. It lasts one hour and has four stages of 15 minutes each. The first stage is incredibly demanding even for me, a 27-year-old. With your eyes open you simply run on the spot, slowly at first and then increasing your speed. But you are not just running; you have to make sure you bring your knees up as high as you can, all the while breathing deeply and evenly.
You get to sit for the next stage and be “like a reed blowing in the wind—from side to side, back and forth, around and around as it happens.” This brings all the energy you just activated to the navel center. Then you lie on your back—bliss!—and rotate your eyes, like a clock, and in the last stage you are just still and silent.
September sees the introduction of yet another meditation method: Shiva-Netra. Focusing on the third eye, it is in complete contrast to Mandala, being very passive. There are three stages of ten minutes each, and each is repeated twice. In the first you sit very still and listen to the beautiful music especially created for it. The second stage features a blue light, at which you gaze gently; then in the final stage you close your eyes and sway from aide to side.
In the early months of 1975 we see yet another new meditation. Gourishankar (it means the peak of the Himalayas, Mt Everest, in Hindi) is said to stimulate the third eye. That’s not an actual eye, of course, but an energy center or “chakra” in the middle of the forehead, between the two physical eyes. If the frenzied activity Dynamic has been taxing, sitting still for this hour is even more so for me, still a chronic, impatient doer at this point. Yet by and by I come to love this time: the darkness of the night, blankets over the hundreds of us, cross-legged figures, sitting gazing at the pulsating blue light set up at the front of the hall.
All the meditation music is created by Chaitanya Hari, a German sannyasin who, under the name of Deuter, will later be acclaimed as the founder of New Age music. Shortly after Osho arrived in Pune, Chaitanya was invited to move into the ashram to compose music for Osho’s meditations. Osho explains his idea about the music for the first one, Kundalini—what the effect should be, what the music should help with, what the goal of the meditation is, and what the music should do for it. So with that outline, Chaitanya Hari then “tries and puts some music together.”
His second project is Dynamic, followed over time with the others: Mandala, Nadabrahma, Whirling, Mandala, Devavani, Nataraj, Gourishankar—in fact, all the meditations Osho introduces before 1981. The music is, without exception, fabulous. Hearing it again and again it becomes embedded in me, along with the feeling of each particular method.
*