Memoirs of Osho Sadhana: Osho's beautiful gift to me.

It was exactly seven years ago, during the full moon night of Guru purnima, I had my first meeting with Swami Anand Arun. I was taking a jump into Sannyas after a seven-day meditation retreat in Osho tapoban ashram. Although i had seen him for a week already, a white-bearded man who cracked jokes, was light hearted, and always talked about Osho, about Poona 1 days, on the day of Sannyas exactly 7 yrs ago today, he was there, I was there sitting in front, crying and laughing at the same time and suddenly Osho started echoing from everywhere, the big buddha hall full of his sound, my heart was overwhelmed with an urge to explode like a river before a dam, and i lost control of myself.....since then I have a heart to heart connection with Sw. Arun. And after this meeting during Sannyas, we met many times, mostly when he became ill with a flu or with a gout attack. Again the circumstances would be very mysterious, for days i would miss him at home and work and then a call would come, either from Swami Tanmaya or from Radhika Ma his caretaker at Tapoban or from Arhat Swami that he is sick and wants to see me urgently. I would be amazed, I would pack my bags with joy, say goodbye to my mom at home, and head to Tapoban. On those initial days after my first seven-days Osho retreat, my practice of meditation at home was intense, and I had a lot of questions but as soon as I would see him, all questions would disappear, a feeling of joy and silence would pervade within, and i would feel I am inside a large cocoon within the pulsating energy-field of Tapoban where everything is here and now and full of stillness.

When we met, swamiji (Swami Arun) would sometimes ask what my plans were for future, after

finishing my medical school. And I would always ask him back what is the best thing to do. In fact, there were three different occasions when I had three different answers. Once he asked me not to go abroad, particularly United States as he said I would have a lot of pain in life doing so, in a different occasion he told me I needed to help spread Bhagwan (Osho) in America and again in a different day he said I would be the happiest staying in Nepal and pursuing M.D. in medicine there.

After completing my two-step exam in Nepal to get into MD training in internal medicine in U.S. in March of 2010, I arrived in New York.

Before going I had extensively googled Osho centers in New York and was happy to find Osho Sadhana center. It was early spring and Bridgeport was beautiful, especially along the University lane by the seaside park of the university where my brother was studying engineering. But still my heart was longing for the buddhafield, I was feeling like a fish out of the ocean, missing meditation and Satsang with my fellow meditators. I hung a big poster of Osho and swamiji  that I brought from Tapoban and started Dynamic in my brother's little rented apartment room in Bridgeport. I constantly communicated with Swami Parimal and Narinder whose contacts were in Osho Sadhana website. My request was to let me stay in the center and meditate, and i would pay money for food or generate money from spreading meditation. But I was not getting any luck, and this was making me sad.

In the Summer of 2010,  Swamiji came to New York for his meditation retreat. We didn’t have a huge group of Osho lovers to pick him up from the airport as we have in Nepal, there were just the two of us - Sw. Narinder and me. But seeing Swamiji, my heart overflooded with joy. While we were returning from airport to the Sadhana center where Swamiji was to stay for the retreat, something mysterious happened which I will never forget in my life. Swamiji ordered Narinder that from now on I was to stay at the center, help the center conduct meditations, and I was not to be asked any money, I would pay back after starting to earn. I was amazed, my heartfelt gratitude to Swamiji, he didn’t even ask - he ordered....and when I look back now was a happening which would change the face of Osho Sadhana center in New york forever. In days to come, I put all my energy in promoting and spreading Osho meditations through daily meditations, and website.

Mysteriously people started calling, coming for meditations, and my days started to pass as the most wonderful days of my life. Staying in the basement meditation hall and with daily dynamic meditations and evening whiterobe satsang celebrations I had many mystical experiences and connection with my Master, many times he would be there sitting silently inside the hall and at times would join my dance. In days to come, the meditation hall became part of me, i would at times go to the city, usually to teach dynamic meditation to Yoga group or to meet friends, and I would feel the energy of the meditation hall calling me constantly to come back a.s.a.p.

As Swamiji had predicted in Nepal, apart from the happy days in Sadhana, I had to go through a major

painful emotional experience of heartbreak in my life. The happy and loving moments of the relationship, the mediations we did together, our sharing and silences all were part of the space within the meditation hall and were thus connected very deeply inside me. I had to go to Nepal after completing all my medical residency application exams. In Nepal I received the good news that I have been accepted for MD training in Danbury Hospital in Connecticut - a little more than an hour from Sadhana center. Out of so many hospitals I had interviewed I could have been anywhere from Tennessee to Boston, and I felt that Master was playing his game to help me be near the center.

When I returned to New York from Nepal, i was surprised to see that the room partition had been removed and the hall renovated - we had a big hall now. The next three years I continued to help with Osho Sadhana center meeting with friends on Saturdays to conduct meditations. It has been a great learning experience.

Throughout the course of the last 4 years I met many friends, Osho lovers, some of them remained and became part of an everlasting bond of friendship, and some vanished into the busy ambitious life of NY city. After finishing MD residency training in 2014 I accepted a temporary job in Santa Rosa, California. This would mean I would be finally leaving the happy Sadhana center memories behind, the wild energetic kirtan dancing, my extremely weird camps with Mandala, dynamic, chakra breathing in a row, our evening satsang celebrations, and most of all our post-lunch visits to the river side park next to the center...nothing gives me the sense of joy and satisfaction within than explaining Osho meditations to new participants and lead a whole day camp; sharing my master, his words and his message for me was the most beautiful experience which i will miss the most after I leave Sadhana center. I will also miss love of Ma Poonam and Sw. Narinder, who were not only my friends but took care of me like my parents, their love and compassion has nurtured Osho Sadhana, and I have always felt their absence when I had to travel away from the center. But I have to travel, and keep walking, keep spreading my master Osho’s message. I am reminded of Zen Master Basho's haiku, a very beautiful song, it says

“Come, butterfly

It's late-
We've miles to go together.” So I fly with my butterfly, visiting beautiful Osho flowers, and spreading Osho's fragrance...

The moon and the sun are travelers....A Primordial Voice experience

“The moon and the sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

― Matsuo Bashō

This story starts with a Heart Circle. It was the end of our weekend retreat and we had all gathered in a circle, to share our experiences of the wonderful weekend retreat we enjoyed during the last three days. It was Irina's turn. Irina, a lifelong clairvoyant as she introduced herself, who had as colorful a personality as her garments and always had interesting stories to share, from past life incarnations to mysteries of Tibetan bowls to auras & body chakras said that this circle wasn’t meeting for the first time, the meeting was not incidental, and she was in a way right. Every time I go to meditation retreats I see my fellow travellers travelling through time, and this time it was, again, a unique experience. After dwelling on the idea to host a primordial voice retreat camp with our dear friend Lada for almost a year, we finally decided to gather friends on the 20th of June and go amidst the serene Catskills mountains of New York for a weekend retreat.

 
Upon arrival at the Xenia Resort in Hunter, NY the beauty of the place amazed us. But it wasn’t just the serenity and the calm energy of the mountains: the resort had a beautiful river by their back door, and the whole atmosphere was enchanted by bird songs, and a big lawn hugged by huge green trees for us to meditate under. It was the first Primordial Voice retreat ever upstate NY, and I was happy that Lada was kind enough to give me a chance to share my master Osho’s dynamic meditation technique every morning during the camp. 

Our retreat had around 20 participants and many have already been practicing Yoga or some form of meditation for a couple of years. It was very tough to introduce Osho meditations into their knowledge system that seemed pretty much saturated with preconceived notion of what meditation is. The first day was hard. It’s very easy to recite 5 stages of dynamic meditation and play an hour long music but it’s also painful when you see people not following steps or not opening up because their mind would constantly question why the need for the chaotic meditation. So I had to take a difficult way and to talk for almost an hour - first on meditation, then on dynamic meditation stages. Certainly I would have been heavily judged and condemned by a regular Osho disciple for talking so long, but the reality was that the talk was needed, for them to trust the technique, to give their totality to it, to console the questioning mind and set it aside for an entire hour.

The first day of dynamic was a success: many had unexpected emotional releases, some found new silent space within themselves and some were amazed that the same Osho dynamic meditation they were explained and had practiced some time in the past was different: this time it gave them the experience of an inner change that never happened before. 

During our free time we hiked around the beautiful mountain and the Hudson river. It was amazing to see an old Ukrainian church. Nestled amidst the mountains, the church was different from usual churches; I felt an urge to go in and chant ‘aum’, remembering how Osho was explaining the hidden mysteries of temples and churches in his book “Hidden Mysteries” and how they reverberate the sound and were built for the purpose of meditation. 

We also hiked up the trails to have a view of the rolling Catskills Mountains. Some friends decided to sit by the Hudson river, sunbathing in total relaxation, and some decided to pamper their bodies in the sauna of Xenia Resort where we stayed. 

Many of us who never met Osho in his physical body always feel the absence of his physical presence. There is a sense of completeness and feeling of gratefulness whenever we get to see and meet people who have imbibed his energy and meditated
in his presence. I have met many Osho disciples who have been meditating for many years, listened to and read Osho their whole life and have decided to spread Osho’s message to the whole world. Each disciple has a different taste, different flavor and we get to see a different aspect of Osho’s teachings through them. Rarely we come across someone who has never known Osho or his teachings and would be teaching what he taught his whole life. It was amazing to find those teachings in Lada's Primordial Voice practice.

It was indeed a beautiful evening, the sun was still up slowly on his way to hide behind the mountains, and the birds were enjoying their singing flying from one tree to another, those tall huge trees that surrounded us. 

We sat in a big circle and Lada started her Primordial Voice practice with the words, “All our emotions are energy”, and soon along the hour long practice I found myself using sound to hit the energy centers, have spontaneous body shaking, and finally releasing the emotions through cathartic shaking and sound...it was beautiful to find a friend who through her own journey of meditation found what my Master Osho was teaching his whole life.

Lada’s technique used the primordial sound to release the tensions in the body and mind to help the energy descend to the heart. It was a blessing for me as it prepared everyone in the camp for the jump into dynamic meditation the next morning. The evening culminated with a beautiful night meditation in silence with the deeply penetrating sound of the tremendous gong.

When we were coming back to the city on Sunday afternoon, I was driving, looking constantly into the back mirror at the mountains going further and further away, and the memories of who I was started coming back.

Suddenly I remembered I just graduated, the
graduation ceremony was a day prior to our journey to the Mountains, and for many of my friends it was ‘the moment’ of their lives, and then I remembered there was a soccer whim in my entire Facebook friends feed, and I wondered: it was so different up there, with no internet, with trees, with birds, with the river and with people and their hearts, some open, some closed but all gathered together to meditate and share their energies. The weekend was an experiment, and we all knew that soon we would all go back to our everyday lives, usual stressors of life and constant friction of energy to deal and solve them, but we were ready to experiment and see if we can open up to new space within us, silent and loving space which we can carry back home.

As I look back at the beautiful retreat, I feel like expressing my heartfelt thanks to Alex who had dedicated his life to learning the quantum healing & understanding the energy channels and gave us a taste of Su-jok therapy, our hosts at Xenia Resort who catered to all our needs, gave us healthy vegetarian meals and a space for our meditation practices.......

              

....to Lada who shared her beautiful technique of Primordial Voice and to all the beautiful fellow pilgrims of love and peace who dedicated their time and made commitment to come to the camp to open their hearts to a new dimension, new journey in their life, and to the yoga teachers Yogi Anna and Laxmi who dedicated their time to help us learn new yoga postures and balance the energy flow.

I have heard, it is the disciple who is desperately seeking and running around but it is finally the Master who finds the disciple, and not the other way around. The amazing experiences that were happening to the friends in that field where we practiced Dynamic meditation and Primordial Voice had nothing to do with us, the energy was coming from beyond, and when I was running around jumping with the drum beat, running, chanting the mantra ”hoo” pushing everyone to take the leap beyond their limits, I felt my master around, his presence was blissful, satisfying and soothing, always in my heart. And I am very happy that he touched many people's hearts in this camp, many tasted his meditations and are ready to take a leap into a new journey in their life!!

A short video from the Osho Dynamic session on day 2 of the retreat!!

Escape into Life : Memoirs of Saint Lucia

It often surprises me when i remember my childhood days, every once in a while a relative would visit our parents and ask me what i would like to become when i grow up, their expected answers clearly visible in their faces and my dilemma of having to at least answer them in front of my parents. And the funny thing is after 30 yrs i realize the most important discovery that to do nothing in life is the greatest doing.

 This winter there were 3 snow storms in the last 3 weeks. The last one had just visited us a day ago leaving Danbury all white and dark. It was one of those not so busy ICU days. We had a mortality this morning and witnessing the family members cry out at the loss of their loved one had infiltrated all of us there but as the day passed everyone got used to it, as an usual ICU day. Here in ICU, every day people pass away and every time it happens there are cries and sobs from the heart, often touching me, making me visualize my own day, as death is the only reality after life, everything else is ever changing, from one 'now' to another 'now' with millions of possibilities in each 'now'. I was talking with a Surgery resident Rachel who asked about my weekend plans and as we were discussing how post-ICU days pass by sleeping and waking up to eat and then sleeping again, we touched topics about doing nothing. Rachel was used to doing something, going to the city the whole day and sleeping the minimum hours, and she told me it was a skill she learned as surgeon. And i had to tell her about my one month i spent not so long ago, a month doing nothing, a month in a little village in the middle of no-where, a month in saint lucia.

The month in Saint Lucia became more and more beautiful as days passed by, in contrast to the busy ICU days. It was early January, after the first week of 2014, we had seen a couple of snow-falls already in Danbury, we had made plans to escape to this tropical island almost a year ago and despite not being able to take our little Ava with us, we were already imagining ourselves on white sands beneath palm trees.We had rented a studio with kitchenette, thanks to our friend Manoj who actually had inspired us with his facebook pictures of the place where he stayed teaching medical students for a year.It was minus 8 celsius in NY city the day we took our flight. Getting off the plane in st. lucia with all our layers and down jackets and being welcomed with warm air was quite a surprise. We were soon surrounded by 10-12 local people all asking if we need taxi. We decided to walk to our hotel, not knowing how far it was, we were told five minutes walk, but it turned out it was five minutes by taxi. Nonetheless we walked and soon we came across the ocean alongside the road, the water hit the rocks ashore and splashed us with cool mist, out first welcome and our first touch of love from the ocean. As days passed by this love grew deeper, the bond became stronger.

 It was a small village in the island. The only place with an international airport in the island.The very first day we went out to the nearby ocean by the reef which was five minutes walk from where we stayed. Finally my little bird was happy, she blooms in the ocean, she merges with the ocean and her happiness reminds me of my happiness when i trek to mountains. In the days that followed, we took public bus and went around the island( which was 200-400% cheaper than the taxi), visited a big city, Castries, where we bought fruits, vegetables, groceries and were surprised to find a subway restaurant. We visited a Nepali friend who lived in a tourist-rich place called Rodney Bay, had some Nepali lunch with his family and returned back to Vieux Fort. We then went to nearby beach where we swam, relaxed under palm trees. We found a beautiful village about 10 mins drive north, Laborie, where we spent some of our most beautiful days. And there were days when we just stayed indoors, watching movies and sleeping. It used to rain for 5 minutes and then the sky was clear for a few hours and then shower for 5-10 minutes, the tropical weather was hard to predict but the rain was always welcomed in the hot sunny days.


One of the beautiful experiences was visiting a Rastafarian in La Tille waterfalls. He had lived in the nature reserve for many years now. He was vegan as he was a Rastafarian and spending time with him, talking about his views about religion, about corporate culture which he called ' babylon' and about the ultimate heaven 'zion' was all very very interesting. He was blended with the trees around, he loved his trees and wanted to touch their branches as he walked around, the touch he said was healing, was connecting him with the nature. He was the man Osho talked about in his discourse on Bauls, the 'adhar manus' the original man, the natural man. I remember OSHO talking on nature and he reminded me of it.

Osho says “If you live with nature — with trees and rocks and the sea and the stars and the clouds and the sun — you cannot be unreal, you cannot be phony. You have to be real because when you are encountering nature, nature creates something in you which is natural. Responding to nature continuously, you become natural.” He has a waterfall by his hut, has coconut trees, banana trees, sour-sop tree, mango trees and almond trees around.He was telling that his friends who studied with him have become lawyers, doctors, politicians and sometimes visit him for a few hours to dip in the waterfall and tell him that they want to live in peace like him but don't have time.He was living in the nature, he rises with the rising sun and sleeps with the rising moon, he had an air of peace around him, he was perfectly at peace and happy with himself. 

We spend some days hiking up the hill, Moule-a-chique which would then give us a view of the whole island, the horizon and the blue ocean meeting each other. Our hike was playful, birdie would take pictures of chickens, of trees, collect leaves, her childlike innocence and playfulness and my insistence to reach the top of the mountain always made the trip wonderful despite an hour long uphill hike. And the view from the top was the reward, the vastness of the ocean, views of both the Atlantic ocean and the Caribbean sea were amazingly beautiful. Our days were unplanned, we would just go out take a bus and spend the day either on a village beach swimming or go out exploring new places, one of which led us to the great Pitons. And riding back in a truck from the Pitons along a windy mountain road, an adventure to remember for long.

When i was telling Rachel about our days in St. Lucia she told me places like these are great if you want to do nothing for a week or two. And thats exactly we were planning to do. To do nothing for as long as we could before we had to return back to normal life, which as i look again and again isnt so normal. We are born, we grow, we study, we acquire skills to make ourselves happy. Humanity isnt so regressed that we live just to survive, to eat, make love, sleep and indulge in thoughts of future plans. We live to be happy and blissful. And all of us are pursuing this happiness, we look for it in our relationships, in our job, in our possessions, in our career, in our goals and we plan and then chase all our life to realize we had it all along, had we not chased for it we would live with it. Our days in Saint Lucia not only reminded us of how beautiful life can be, just living, waking up, cooking, walking to the ocean, swimming, sleeping, being one with the nature, with the trees, the ocean the sun...our friend Manoj had warned us that it will be boring after a week, and i realized after a month that i finally was accepted by the ocean, its waves, i began to feel safe, an unknown trust surrounded me when i met her..
i began to feel the oneness with the ocean, it was suddenly a joy, a constant invitation to merge in, and it was already time to leave..the oneness will invite me again and again, the same ocean in different banks, we are lovers now, we will meet and depart to meet again, at some shore, in some life...

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...

"I leave you my Dream" - Osho movement in America

“America needs a buddhafield, strong buddhafield. Buddhafield is an energy field, where when you enter, your energy gets transformed, where you can feel some transcendental energy, where God can be provoked, where meditation is natural, you just close your eyes and sit down in a corner of the buddhafield and you are in meditation.”
Swami Anand Arun, , June 2010

I am reminded of those days in my childhood, growing up in a small village in East Nepal - I used to spend hours alone in green fields with my cow Gothu. She was very kind and was my friend for the time until we left the village and went to the capital city Kathmandu. My parents took good care of her, milked her every evening and during the day I used to take her out into the fields to graze. I used to sit down on the grass for hours gazing at the white clouds changing their shapes in the vast blue sky, and sometimes vanishing into the sky. Sometimes I used to stare directly at the sun for long to see if I could find out if the sun is on fire. The more I watched the sun, the more it became darker until I would see a dark sun; then I would look around, everything would be dark: the trees, the field, Gothu,- all seemed dark, as if suddenly it was a pitch black night.

When our Master Osho left his body, similar thing must have happened. The sannyasins that were being showered with divine light in Osho’s physical presence went into a sudden darkness after his death. And in this panic many sannyasins rushed to find every little source of light they could find. Many sannyasins joined different living gurus of different traditions and there were many who decided to hibernate in their own solitude seeing His death as the end of everything. However, there were some who were connected with him before his death, despite being thousands of miles away from his physical presence. These few Osho lovers continued the Caravan. Even after leaving his physical body, Osho continued to shower flowers onto them, and their fragrance attracted many new bees who were searching Osho in Osho’s books, his meditation techniques and his discourses.

 

I had read a few books of Osho and had been meditating for several years but the experience of feeling his presence changed everything. My life was divided at that very moment into past, which became meaningless, and present & future, which were to be blissful and adventurous. It happened in Osho Tapoban- a buddhafield where every tree, every flower, every rock was in meditation, and during evening celebration it felt like they were all celebrating with us. The pull of energy was intoxicating and hypnotic.

It is 6 years now since that timeless experience. The experience has remained as an undercurrent inspiring me each day to create a similar space in America. I have been in this country for nearly 4 years, trying to understand people, their choices, their desires, their inspirations and their frustrations of everyday life. Being a physician trained in Western Medicine, I am constantly in contact with people here, their depression and their hopes, their beliefs and their misery.

Many Osho lovers here in the US have asked me and argued with me in the last few years about sannyas. They argue what change it would bring in their lives if they took sannyas- since they meditate regularly and love Osho immensely and keep him in their heart, what difference would changing name to some fancy Sanskrit name and getting a mala with Osho’s picture in it make. I met an Osho lover who was sharing her experience after attending a camp facilitated by Swami Arun here in the US. She was telling me how Osho is against rules, and why we should stop wearing robes and malas. I also met another Osho lover who had been meditating and following Osho for 12 years, but recently felt like being a sannyasin and ordered a mala online from Osho Viha. It was very depressing for me to see such a powerful esoteric phenomenon, sannyas, being reduced to an online shopping experience. It felt like buying a lover from eBay, anyone who is in love would understand, it would be like making love to a prostitute. And Osho has spoken many times on various occasions how he would not be able to work upon anyone without their permission, without surrender, without sannyas.

Osho’s last words have been said to be, ‘I leave you my dream”, a dream to make the whole earth a buddhafield. To create a milieu for sannyas, to taste the experience of energy field of Osho mala - something more than household daily meditations is needed. A buddhafield is needed - an energy field created by a group of people synced in their hearts , in total love and trust with an enlightened Master, singing, dancing, meditating together . It’s a place where heart takes over mind and mysteries of the beyond start to reveal.

We have to create this buddhafield in America. And more than money and space, a group of people is needed; people who care less about money and space and more about melting with Osho and expressing his message through meditations, through music, through dance and laughter. We need friends who are ready to fly with Osho.

I have been helping our small center - Osho Sadhana Meditation Center in Astoria, New York for the last few years inviting people, sharing meditation techniques, books, cds on Osho meditations. And there have been many beautiful Osho sannyasins - Sw. Arun, Sw. Vedant, Sw. Keerti, Ma Jyoti - who were coming to help us grow here in America, to inspire us to meditate and spread Osho’s message. And after 4 years of inspiration, I finally feel the time is NOW. After our recent visits to Ithaca and meeting beautiful people who were ready to jump into a community of loving, growing, meditating people, after the recent July camp where many people new to Osho expressed their desire to be in a community of Osho lovers, I feel ….

My beloved Swami Arun has been coming every year with a beautiful flower and some seeds from Tapoban, to share the fragrance of a buddhafield with us. Every year he would tell us about the flower, show us the seeds and go back with the flower and the seeds, hoping someday we will prepare the soil for the seeds to be sown. For years, we have been carrying Osho’s torch here in America talking about the flower, talking and spreading stories about the flower, our whole year would be spent on discussing how beautiful the flower was and how we lack such flowers here in America and how we can invite Swamiji again to feel, see, smell the fragrance of the beautiful flower again next year, not caring about the soil at all. But things are changing, and change is happening very fast. The soil in America is now getting ready for those seeds again. Many new Osho lovers are feeling the need of a strong community to meditate, sing, dance and live together. Many Osho lovers are ready to fly with him. Soon we will have flowers in this land arid of meditation; soon we will spread fragrance of the buddhafield all around the world from here.

I am sharing this beautiful video, watch it with an open heart, it’s where we are now, it’s where sannyas is here in America and it’s where it is going. Time is coming when we will be inviting hundreds of people to festivals of Osho meditation and music. Soon artists, musicians and seekers will flock from all around singing...

Osho, with you, we fly , we fly ….Osho, with you we fly, we fly….

Paradise away from paradise : An Osho experience

Ever since coming to America from Nepal two years ago, I have missed my paradise. My paradise where birds sang Osho songs, where trees sat in za-zen and where the rolling mountains around vibrated with pristine energy. My Tapoban, my moments spent there, silences, wild ecstatic free space within and frequent random visits by beloved Osho during meditations, during Samadhi sittings – memories of my blissful days back in Tapoban would overwhelm me from time to time here in America. And to remind me of what I lost, once a year Swami Arun would come to America with lots of Osho energy and love to share and to tease me with the taste of the paradise. His brief visits would ignite in me a desire to create a Tapoban in America, and this hope to have a living, vibrating Osho ashram in America has been floating in my heart for long now.

Once one has tasted the bliss of living in a Buddha-field, one is constantly craving for the experience. I was lucky this spring to have such experience again here in the U.S. It was spring again, outside and inside. Flowers were blooming, hills were smiling with lush green trees, and birds were singing their welcoming song as we drove towards Ithaca, NY for a 3-day Osho meditation camp.

The first evening over 30 people gathered in this beautiful meditation hall on premises of the Foundation of Light – a vibrant ashram maintained by Melissa who was welcoming everyone with a deep loving embrace. We started with introduction of Osho and his revolutionary meditation techniques and ended the evening with a prayer. There was a new medicine Buddha prayer, “Teyate Om Bekanze, Bekanze, maha Bekanze… “ sung by Ma Pratiti and repeated in acapella, and I found myself humming  it everywhere  for the entire time . That night the sky was clear and I could see stars that are rare around the city because they are masked by city lights. There was silence and beauty in this place Ithaca, and the excitement of anticipating Osho meditations the next morning overwhelmed me as I went to bed.

The next two days were wild, reminded me of Tapoban where time flew in dancing, rejoicing, singing together which brought a dynamic silence within. There were times when every participant melted into a single vibrant group energy playing together in joy and bliss. I met with sannyasins from the time of Osho: swami Akul who used to open the car's door for Osho as he arrived for morning discourses; Swami Shanti Lou and his beautiful wife who lived and took care of Osho in Kips castle in New Jersey; Ma Usha who was around Osho through all the years in Poona I, Rajneeshpuram and Poona II; and finally Ma Pratiti who brought back the fragrance of those beautiful Poona I days with Osho into the buddha-hall in Ithaca. These are experiences which cannot be explained in words. They can be lived, they can be sung and they can be dreamt. There were friends from Quebec, Canada, Ohio, Montreal, Boston, Washinton D.C., NJ, NY, Connecticut and many from Ithaca itself. Many of us had never met before but eventually bonded as closest friends in just two days: maybe Osho magic floating all around was pulling us together. On Sunday, the last day of the camp, when we all had to part, nobody wanted to leave! We were standing in a circle outside praying that we get to meet again and relive the magic.

The lives each of us had lived back home were in sharp contrast with the bliss we just experienced.  I then felt like everyone’s heart was feeling what I felt, a deep desire to live in a Buddha-field, to walk without legs, to fly without wings, to live in Master’s presence and dance with him every day.

It started as an idea to get together and share joy with Ma Pratiti and few sannyasins who had lived in Osho's presence started as an idea , and ended up with 3 beautiful days of bliss, sharing and bonding with many open-hearted , lovely people. I was happy to sync with my people finally,  I felt hope, I see it happening some day soon.

Osho Sannyas- Initiation into freedom

As I was cleaning my closet yesterday, I stumbled upon an old diary . Going through it I found pages which quote my experiences in my first  seven days Osho meditation camp in Osho Tapoban, an international meditation retreat ashram in Kathmandu, Nepal.This is how it read –

“This is the second day in the Osho Tapoban and it was a very long day….so long that I don’t remember what happened in the morning and afternoon. Its ten in the evening now and I have mixed feelings, or no feelings as if water was poured over me and washed everything over me and now in the evening I am already dry and there are no recollections of either the water or the dirt that was washed…..

Osho has strange techniques of meditation but everything he is suggesting us to do in meditations is theoretically very much linked to what I have read in his books. And celebrations in the evening are so joyous around here. We celebrate as if this were our last moment on earth and this thing is transforming me…..slowly….it feels very good….it has never happened before, as if a heavy weight in me , I was carrying for years, has been lifted off…and for this my love for this man Osho is growing .

And about this small commune here….people are keeping a distence from new-ones like me. Those who are staying here as sannyasins have long hairs and beards J) …some do have compassionate eyes, others seem to be confused about why they are there….and over the day many times I feel like leaving my world and entering into this world of sannyasins forever but when I see these sannyasins living as family , with the same bondage of the social relationships , same jealousy, same gossiping on the breakfast table , same heirarchy and respect to the higher and neglect to the lower , same subtle waves as of the rotten world which I so much yearn to abandon, I don’t see any impulse to do so now…..but I don’t know…its been only two days here….may be someday in these seven days , something suddenly, a satsang and I get transformed into a sannyasin, living in this celebration forever, living with Osho forever…

I am realizing, my very thought of being enlightened is troubling me. During Vipassana , I had made up my mind for some more births before it would happen but as I started reading Osho books, enlightenment as he said is a phenomenon of milliseconds….and this has made me anxious, has agitated me to start running after it …..

I was going towards right direction…..was afraid because I could see nobody walking with me towards there…..and in that fear I have come here in Tapoban…..i feel good though, the very nature of meditation here being celebration, I feel nice to celebrate, dance everyday and every evening…..and it may take many lives for liberation but who is going to ruin that many lives , I would meditate and celebrate this way as many lives it takes….and I would try to be free, like in my childhood, playing and pondering in solitude….i would love to celebrate and be free wherever I am……”

I don’t have further notes written during those seven days camp . It is obvoius why . There simply was not any need…the questions were slowly vanishing and the camp was going more and more crazy as the energy built up , the celebration were more ecstatic and I ended up becoming an Osho sannyasin , Swami Dhyan Saurav, on the last day , it was Guru Purnima evening ,July 29^th, 2007……as I remember back the camp now , 4 years ago, it was one of the most beautiful weeks of my life….

- Swami Saurav

Jennie said she wanted to marry me

 I went close to  her….touched her hands, her hands were happy to get my touch….then I asked her how she was….she was humorous, she said she felt so great that she would have sex with me, I smiled , and was surprised she could make me smile…then she looked into my eyes, I wondered if she could see what I see…those eyes were wise and sharp , like her, beautiful ….and then she said, I had a lovely presence , and that she would marry me , and then almost waited for a while for me to say something, there was silence for a while and then it was broken by laughters from both of us…..

Jennie is 96, she is almost blind in both her eyes, she says she sees me in outlines , in form only…but she has good ears…I meet her every morning , she came to my care, with low blood pressure….she has two small pipes taking oxygen fram a cylinder to her nostrils, she says she is ok with that, used to it now, and every morning when i see her i feel like combing her hair, she doesnt even know that her hair is not combed, she has no wish for a mirror anymore....but she has seen it all, all those 96 years , i see in her eyes and still the eyes are ready for anything new, alive....we shared , she would talk about the war of turkey and iran and how her fathers had to suffer from turks….and sometimes she said how wild she lived her life , she fell in love with a musician in her 90’s and then quit smoking after 60 years of smoking…..once she asked me if I had children , I said I wasn’t even married, first she said good, then she added , learn to swim first before you jump into the river…it was a strong statement….but I have always wondered where the river starts and where it ends in this short life, it is always flowing and we catch it in between….it was a torture but I had to say goodbye to her, and even arrange papers for her discharge to some assisted living homes, she said she hated being alone and I said she is so jolly, she will make new friends there….i felt a strong wind inside me as I was saying her this, I saw myself there , alone, all the people whe were with me either died or went far away, or were in some similar homes themselves….Jennie would leave soon , go back to her assisted living facility, where she would look back at her life and wonder where all the years go , and ask herself, will they come back …..but I met her now, and she is beautiful, I see life in her, I still see hope in her, hope to live and to enjoy senses , when she eats, when she listens to the music in this small disc player by her bed, when she speaks  about her love life, she is full of life as much as I do……

I wished the night would never end

It was one of the most beautiful nights of my life. The more i spent time with her , the more i felt like sinking deeper and deeper into her beautiful energy. Her smile , the look in her eyes when we saw each other still surrounds me from within and without as i close my eyes and remember that evening.
She sat beside me , it was was a park , and people had gathered for the evening, some singing , some playing, all bemused  with the water fountain at the center , and in that crowd, i could still feel in myself an isolation, an stillness that floated within me amidst the movement around.Then i touched her hands, felt her heart beat in her fingers and made my heart beat together with hers in synchronicity..... and we sat there for long , as i started to float in the air mingling with her energy , I felt like bowing down to her , how open she could be to someone she just met ......and then it happened at that moment, it was so beautiful, i thanked her so much inside myself...she is so beautiful....then she turned to look at me, our eyes looked at each other for long with subtle smiles on our faces, i knew that it was the most we could do to melt into each other...we could get more physically close, but that would be even more frustating than the bliss we were having with those eyes melting into each other....nothing like this has happened with me before and nothing of this sort might happen again, and i said to myself, i could give anything in the world for this moment now....