Osho Mala , Sannyas and Laborie Village

It was a hot day, we were lying on the white sands after a short swim in the blue Caribbean sea. I was learning to stay afloat and was remembering Osho's "floating-dying meditation" . Everything around was alive, the deep blue sea, the coconut trees dancing in the wind, the village was quiet, occasional local passerby would hint at us with smoke asking if we would enjoy marijuana , I would simply say no and would be pushed back to my past memories, those days of zero gravity and the day when it happened in meditation. I come back to herenow, to the vastness of the sea and begin to wonder- what pulls somebody into meditation? is meditation a hobby or a necessity ? is it a philosophy or religion ? or is it an urge, a tremendous curiosity to find the unfoundable, to delve into the mysteries of life and death, a constant itch to solve the unsolvable like for those professors in search of the Higgs boson particle.

I remember when I had my first meditation camp. It was about 10 years back. Right after I returned from the ten days silence retreat I had to keep the experience within myself for many weeks. I was not convinced I would make sense to any of my friends. They would have understood peace of mind, concentration of mind, praying to god for brighter future but how would they take if I said I was in two places at the same moment, I looking at myself from a distance, what would they think If I said I am happy without a cause, the silence floating and sounds would be like ocean waves on the vast sphere of silence and would they have been motivated for meditation if I had told it was a feeling of utter completeness as if I didn't need to study or achieve further, life was happy then and there? 

Things have changed since my first experience of silence. Life has taken me through many twists and turns along its road, and friends have come and gone. I am now surrounded by sannyasins who have

become friends , meditators and followers of Osho who carry the sharpness of mind that one feels while reading any of Osho's books, and friends who carry the love and compassion that one sees when one looks into eyes of Osho..but I still get questions, why we meditate? do we know why sannyas? why Master ? why commune? why red clothes ? why mala ? the questions that were there ten years ago are still there and now being part of world of meditators the questions have become more deep and specific. These are not my questions, these are questions asked of me, over and over again by friends and sannyasins...

I remember listening to Osho in Hindi . The discourse was later translated to English and published as the book-"Hidden Mysteries". Somewhere in the beginning of the book he said,  "Suppose we have a key in our hands. We cannot directly understand the purpose of it from the key itself, nor is it possible to imagine from the key itself that a great treasure is likely to be revealed with its help. There is no hidden indication in the key regarding the treasure; the key itself is closed. Even if we break it or cut it into pieces, we may find the metal of which it is made, but we cannot learn anything about the hidden treasure which the key is capable of revealing. And whenever such a key is preserved for a long time, it only becomes a burden in our life.........It can be understood this way. Radio waves are passing by all around us, but they cannot be picked up without a radio receiver. Tomorrow, if there was a third world war and if all technology was destroyed but somehow a radio receiver was luckily left intact, you wouldn’t want to throw it away. Though you know that you can’t broadcast, or tune in to any program, or even find a technician to repair it, you wouldn’t want to throw the radio away.

After several generations in your family, if anyone were to ask the use of the radio, none of your family members alive then would be able to reply. They might only say that their fathers and their forefathers were insistent on its being preserved, so they continue to keep it. Their forefathers never told them what it was for, they don’t know its use and so it is of no help to them; even if that radio is dismantled nothing could be known. By opening the radio it couldn’t be known that some time in the past music and talks could be heard through it. The radio only used to act as a receiving station for some happening elsewhere, but it could pick up the waves and act as a medium to present them as sounds to listeners".

24 years have passed since Osho left his body. I am not sure how many hundreds of years will pass since this world will see a master so fearless and radical , so compassionate and rational as Osho. His teachings are so multidimensional that often his followers catch only one dimension of his teachings and lose the original sense of the teachings. Rational thinkers and sannyasins with western set of mind often see the scientific dimension of his teachings. I have often caught them saying- " You can wear a

mala and robe, it is your choice, a matter of individual freedom" And there are sannyasins who see mala, robe, pictures of master, rituals, temples as keys to unlock the mysteries , they don't want to discard the key because they still have the lock, rest of the sannyas world are carrying keys or threw the keys away because the locks were lost in time and space. They are condemned as 'devotees' and criticized for trying to make Osho movement of meditation into an organized religion. I can see Osho's efforts from the 1960's, his attempt and his dilemma and later how he reluctantly started "sannyas". It was for him synonymous to restarting 'temples', 'rituals' , the same thing that was happening all around in the name of religion. His challenge was immense. there was every possibility that his sannyas, the mala, his picture in the mala would some day be turned into either part of an organized religious rite of a dutiful devotee or a matter of individual freedom. But it had to be started, it was a key whose lock was around, Osho was the lock and he still is.

Unfortunately very few of his disciples knew it before he left his body and what happened after he did and is still happening is nothing but a big joke. Carrying around an old radio without the knowledge of radio waves or frequency to catch a music station will only be heavy weight around the neck. Many sannyasins rational enough threw the old radio and are happy about it and write daily in media blogs and Facebook about Osho himself reducing the need for wearing mala. They find many discrete
cuttings of his talks to support their ideas and would make a lot of sense. But the radio waves are there, will always be there, and radios will always be made. Masters have come and will come in future, they will have different ways to show how to connect to those waves but the game between master and disciple will continue, the ritual will continue, it has to continue, the mystery & the Master, the urge to merge with the oceanic energy-field, the mala and sannyas , the mad intoxicating experience between Master and disciple...