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Reality is stronger than Poetry, a rendezvous with Ma Anand Madhu. (first initiated disciple of Osho)

On the last day of our 3 days retreat in Rishikesh, my doctor friend Swami Dhyan Saurav and I found a good looking papaya from our recently discovered leisure stroll on the bank of Ganges. We decided to buy it for Arun Swami and took it to the Ashram where we were staying. When we arrived at the Ashram with the fruit, an unknown man above Swamijee’s room told us that he had left in a car with a sannyasin.

A car on the Ashram side of the Ram jhula (the bridge) was already a rare sight and Swamijee leaving in it made us curious. We inquired of the other sannyasins, and came to know that he had left to see Ma Anand Madhu, the first initiated disciple of Osho. After waiting for hours, two Swamis arrived at the Ashram to tell us that Arun Swamijee had called us to see Madhu Ma. A 30 minutes tempo ride to the main city of Rishikesh brought us to the city chowk, where our maroon clad convoy scattered to buy their presents for this long waited meeting.

I decided to go empty hand, firstly, because I had no money and secondly, because I was too overwhelmed to think of a present. When we finally arrived at the Ashram where she resided, my pre-imaginations were satisfied with the settings of the location, very close to the Ganges and on the brink of the town. The cemented stairs took us to her room and we entered a scene where a beautiful old lady in orange Saree and shawl was waiting.

Madhu Ma portrayed divinity as a personal bearing, the innocent smile, the simple gesture and the comfortable ambience around her was plainly clear even to a bystander like me who was having his first experience with her. The way she greeted us with the word Osho, only spoke of her undying gratitude and love for the Master. The interest and joy she showed even in the minutest of things reflected her love of life. We could not help being influenced by her strong presence that embraced each of us that were present there. Looking around at the face of the sannyasins, I realized that all of us were having the same experience, overpowered by the grace of utmost simplicity.

Madhu Ma was innocence in flowering which only demands innocence in return. Her presence allowed each of us the comfort of being ourselves. She joked about everything and her laughter seemed to honour life as never before. With a childlike adoration she praised Arun Swami for his lifetime devotion in bringing Osho into the lives of many and called him her beloved son.

Like an old grandmother she told us the story about how Osho had chosen Arun to color Nepal red and repeated the words used by the Master to instruct him. And as she spoke, it seemed that Arun Swami and Madhu Ma were again living those poignant moments, giving tears and smiles to most of us watching these beautiful beings.

When the stories had been told, Madhu Ma called her caretaker and asked her to bring some sweets and snacks. She stubbornly wanted us to finish each bit and then sing a song for her. Like a child playing with her dolls, she divided us into four groups and gave us the sweets to eat and to take home, which each of us eagerly devoured and pocketed. She demanded that if we didn’t sing she would go back to sleep. We joyfully obeyed for none of us wanted to miss this beautiful opportunity of being with her. As we started singing old Osho kirtans, Madhu Ma closed her eyes as she merged into the purity of love for our beloved Master.

Mystcism lives in Madhu Ma in the most human form. So human like and yet so divine. Although grounded into the depths of life, her being lives in the open sky of boundless freedom. Ma Anand Madhu is a presence that can only be understood when one understands the absence that surrounds her. This visit has helped me understand at least a fragment of what Swami Arun frequently repeats, “reality is stronger than poetry” I also realized that it is much more beautiful!

As Madhu Ma unexpectedly ordered us to leave, she gifted each of us a memory of the most beautiful things, the simplicity in her eyes, the gratitude in her smile, and the love of her being.

Swami Aatmo Neerav

Tags: News by sannyasnews
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Review of Ma Anand Devika’s book Love Song for Osho,
by Alok John

This is a lovely book by a committed sannyasin. It is a memoir of Devika’s sannyas life, from 1976 when she first met Osho, to His death celebration in 1990.

Angela was only twenty-two in 1976 when, through a stroke of “luck,” she walked through the gateless gate in Pune to fall head over heels in love with her Master. Within a few days she took sannyas directly from Osho, in spite of her fears she would never be able to wear a white wedding dress.

Devika was from a modest background in Kent, South-East England. At the age of eleven she knew her destiny would take her to India. She had to work hard both as a teacher and in a factory to pay for her trips to her Master. She was a real worker and in the Communes she was often to be found working hard in the kitchen.

Devika never became a member of the Inner Circle. She was never a star or a big boss or a therapist, just an ordinary or perhaps extraordinary sannyasin. This makes the memoir interesting and unusual. Devika was in love with Osho when she took sannyas in 1976, was still in love with him when the book was completed in 1995, and I presume her love continues with the publication of her book in 2008. She says that one look from her Master meant more to her than all the jewels in the world.

This is the story of Devika’s adventures on the spiritual path — its peaks and valleys, sunshine and shadows. And there certainly were valleys : almost dying of hepatitis, her tree house falling to the
ground in the monsoon, a mental breakdown, collapsing with dehydration in front of Osho’s Rolls-Royce during her first trip to the Ranch. Once she had her palm read, and was told it was a miracle she was still here.

But existence obviously wanted her here. Devika kept faith with her Master and she experienced great peaks and bliss as well. Indeed in the Preface she says that if there is a heaven, she would like to live her life with Osho over and over again for the rest of eternity. Her Master sent her (or appeared to send her) an Indian husband when she needed one to recover from her breakdown.

The book includes much description of Pune 1, Devika’s sannyas initiation discourse, energy darshans, groups with Sudha and Somendra. For a little while she lived at Prem Pantha in Devon, and Medina, though she was never a Medina groupie. The book includes descriptions of her travels around India and her visit to her husband’s family in Gujarat.

My only tiny reservation is that the book contains little about her family’s reaction to the life she chose. I don’t think they could have been very happy when she returned to India after almost dying of hepatitis there. And Devika says they blamed Osho for her mental breakdown. It would be interesting to know more about all this; I expect Devika omitted it out of love for her family.

Devika was in Buddha Hall (as I was) that January evening when Osho’s death was announced and sat the whole night at the Ghats by the river as her Master’s body was burnt. There were a few hundred of us, wearing our white robes as we had come directly from the Evening Meeting. We sang Peter’s haunting song “The Universe is singing a song, the Universe is dancing along, the Universe is singing on a day like this. It’s high time to dance, it’s high time to dance, it’s high time to dance. So wake up and dance…” And as Devika walked back to the Commune at dawn to prepare breakfast the whole sky is full of Osho’s energy and she knows truly, “He never died.”

If I read this book and wasn’t already a sannyasin I’d think “You’d have to be pretty mad not to take
sannyas.”

A great book, full of love and truth, dedicated to Osho and his caretaker Nirvano (Vivek).

Love Song for Osho by Ma Anand Devika is available from Diamond Books in India, www.dpb.in/ for 200 Rs. including airmail postage, about £2.50. (Card details are only accepted by Internet Explorer or Netscape.)

Tags: Osho by sannyasnews
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Call for an independent and truthful
investigation of September, 11

“To restore the reputation of the United States in the world,
a proposal is suggested in the open letter below that the - hopefully - new Democratic US government instigate a truthful and full investigation concerning the events of September 11, with the purpose of prosecuting the persons responsible for crimes against humanity”.
Swami Dhyan Giten
Therapist, Teacher and Author

September 11, and the so-called “War on terrorism” seems to be a fraudulent way to create the shock and the climate of fear and terror to make the public support wars, accept increased secret mass surveillance and limitations of human rights, which otherwise would not have been possible to make the public accept.

Four of the largest oil companies, BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total, also recently got free hands to draw up their own contracts with the Iraq “government”, which - besides being an extraordinary excellent business opportunity - is a striking commentary to the criticism that the real reason behind the lies about the invasion of Iraq is to get control of the oil. War is not about words like democracy, freedom or liberation. War is about natural resources and money. The deaths of more than 100.000 people, and the incomprehensible suffering of men, woman and children during many years, seems to be acceptable losses. It presents a great challenge for the people of the world to face this situation.

Seven years after the events of September, 11, the American government has still not proven that the persons they have accused are really guilty. According to the Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia - who quotes FBI’s website - FBI is no longer searching for bin Laden.

In the US a popular movement has grown, which questions what really happened 9/11. Several public opinion surveys has been made, which shows a basic mistrust among the American public against the official version of 9/11. The latest survey made by the University of Ohio and published in August, 2006, shows that 36 % of Americans believe that it is probable that persons in the US government either participated in the attacks themselves or neglected to intervene, because they wanted the US to go to war in the Middle East. A popular movement is also beginning to grow in Europe . Read more at: www.911truth.eu (Europe ) and www.911truth.org ( US).

It is doubtful that the real criminals behind the events of September, 11, are identified. To restore the reputation of the USA in the world, a proposal is suggested that the - hopefully - new Democratic government instigate a truthful and complete investigation concerning the events of September, 11, with the purpose of prosecuting the responsible persons for crimes against humanity.

Prosecution should also include people, who have consciously kept secret and misled people about the truth concerning the events of 9/11. Politicians and the media, for example, has exerted censorship and refrained from publishing any criticism against the official version of the American government.

An alternative would be an independent international commission with the mandate to prosecute.

There are powerful forces that opposes a truthful investigation of 9/11 - forces that own both the Republican and the Democratic party, who do not care about democracy, truth or the people - but it is not acceptable that unconscious and unscrupulous people can commit hideous crimes, without being held accountable.

In Sweden , the new mass surveillance law, which allows the surveillance of phone calls, E-mails and Internet activity of all Swedish citizens, without any need for suspicion of crime or court order, has caused the greatest political crises for the current Swedish conservative government. This law is not in accordance with a modern law-governed society, and is ordered directly from the American government, which has wanted sensitive personal information from Europe .

In closing, there are not many things that the different approaches of modern psychology agree about, but there is one thing that they all agree about: that people in groups and organizations, simply put, become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take more responsibility. But in a group, people do not have to take the same amount of responsibility. People in groups and organizations tend to get caught up in the need of the ego to create hierarchies of power, status, positions, roles, norms and conformity.

All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. The sign of a dysfunctional group is that the members of the group play three roles and positions: aggressor, denier and victim. It is always easier to follow the group without reflection or awareness, than to trust your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, truth, wisdom and creativity. It is not always easy to follow your own heart, but it always leads your right.

It is a very beautiful world, but unfortunately it is in the wrong hands. The future of the world lies in the hands of the intelligent and creative people.
Yours sincerely,
Swami Dhyan Giten,

www.giten.net

Tags: The World by sannyasnews
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Surrrender
Devopama reflects

In Poona one, and on the Ranch surrender seemed to imply submission, obedience to authority, doing what you were told. We heard Osho tell the story of the great Tibetan Master Milarepa being made by his master Marpa to build a house and then pull it down, a process repeated several times over. Gurdjieff did the same with his disciples, and I always feel an affinity reading accounts of his ‘Ranch’ at Fontainbleau. I think we Westerners took a long time to gain any understanding of what Osho meant by surrender. Yet Osho could also often be heard talking about freedom, individuality, rebellion even, and this we Western disciples thought was our language. For us No was only too natural. It was saying Yes that was hard, whereas Indian sannyasins found Yes only too easy. This was a difference between East and West Osho commented on several times.

Once I do remember on the Ranch when I acted out my feeling of revolt, of No - and the Ma’s in charge (Dolma and Vidya as I remember) said Yes, and accepted my decision. It was over going back into a Security job and sitting in those little Guard Box huts watching the cars go by. I just could not face the immobility of it, the isolation. I wanted to go out and play with my Survey Crew gang. Afterwards wondering how I had ‘got away’ with my little rebellion in a milieu where submissiveness posing as surrender seemed to be the rule, I attributed it to the totality of my conviction, its purity. Or maybe they could see I was almost about to have a nervous breakdown over it! Afterwards I did feel a great sense of gratitude, of elation, and of freedom.

The incident has stayed with me and thinking about it again nearly thirty years later I realise I’m back in the same predicament. Only this time there is no clear avenue of escape. My Guard Box is a bit bigger and I can cruise around the corridors and garden paths in my electric buggy. But there is no more roaming over hills and vales, going in a car off my ‘Ranch cum Home’, visiting far-flung friends. My companions here are all twenty to thirty years older than my mere seventy. They were all in the Second World War, and between us there is a chasm culturally. They have never experienced that mixing, or even dissolving, of nationalities sannyasins know and celebrate.

I am unmistakeably English, cannot disguise it. But I don’t feel content being back here in England. The English provinces seem so limited in outlook, narrow in their interests. I have always preferred living ‘abroad’, and loved being in America for that reason, a foreign country that spoke my own language (sort of). Gurdjieff could never bear the thought of living in England because of its barbarous food and climate. There is plenty of both where I live.

I can revolt against it - everything that affronts my ego, my conditioned sense of who I am. I do sometimes go and have a scream away from earshot. But there is not much energy in it, and it does not make me feel any better. Alternatively I can ’surrender’ to my situation. Meaning what? How?

Acceptance, watching my mind as it writhes and squirms. There is a looking, an acknowledging of what is going on. Ah, there goes Mrs G again, there goes A’s TV blasting my corridor. Ugh, this must be one of John’s packaged soups. Of course I seek to change what can be changed - TV noise, poor food. We have food meetings, but seemingly simple things can be a big struggle. Getting someone to turn their TV down or close their door is never a matter of a simple request, a ‘please’. It involves a whole diplomatic negotiation with Carers and nurses. Surrendering, accepting is far from passive. In fact as far as I can see I am the most rebellious inmate here, and I chafe at the English placidity of my fellow inmates. They have been too long in the army obeying orders. So just having to live in a Nursing Home is a constant challenge. It is a rather different form of Commune than the ones we have been used to, but it still forces me to be aware of my reactions. Yet it has its own rewards - some of my oldies have been very fine, charitable men, a privilege to have known.

And then there is my disease itself (MS), with its insidious increasingly rapid advance through my brain. Again one can rant and scream out ‘Why me?’ But that is to no avail. Nothing can be done. MS is incurable the medical ‘experts’ tell one. And they are largely right. Yet there are a small number of those whose ‘No’ has brought them victory, a cure. There is a very good cheery magazine solely devoted to alternative treatments MS sufferers have found helpful, even curative. But such cures in most cases involve a fairly restrictive non-saturated fat diet,. This is a major frustration for me here where meat and dairy are the mainstay of every meal. I can’t bring myself to eat what only makes me worse and adds to my lethargy. So I have to negotiate my way round the worst excesses and have regular confabs with the cooks. Sadly for me there are limits to what an institution is willing to do for just one member.

I do have a sense still of hope; it would be another huge step to have to live in this body with absolutely no hope whatsoever of any stabilization or improvement. Remember Osho’s phrase in a different context, ‘hoping against hope’. In First Poona Ma Veet Asho was a good friend. Often I have pondered on her name’s meaning: beyond hope. No hope means no future; just the present however ‘miserable’ that might be. I see people here with my same disease almost completely paralysed, bedridden. They can have no hope, yet they go on living. When passing by their rooms I sometimes stop and marvel, go in and say hello to raise a smile. They must be in a state of complete let-go, physically at least.

All this is the outer, the body with its brain, which I am very aware of all the time because it does not function smoothly. There is no likelihood of going on automatic when almost every movement demands an added effort, almost a conscious decision - to get up, to take a step forward, to spoon soup into my mouth without slopping it all over the place. Most mornings (depending on when I am got up, and if the TV next door is not blaring so early) I manage a half-hour sit, and that can be blissful and is always centering. It is then a question of maintaining that inner awareness, that centred calm as I boogie myself to breakfast and the noise and agro of the day. My meditation is who, what, is doing all this; who is witnessing. And in that comes the surrender, not to anyone in particular though that can be part of it - to angry carers, to poor cooking, to noisy neighbours. Surrender I take in the sense of acceptance. It is like in Vipassana, naming the thoughts as they pass through the mind’s eye. It is neither passive, nor fatalistic. Ah here comes fatigue, inability to focus, TV noise, leg cramps, body spasm. And really that is my day, with some interesting (to my mind’s taste) reading or a radio/TV programme, plus a cruise around the big garden here when it’s sunny.

If fear is there note down that fear is there and accept it. What can you do? Nothing can be done; fear is there. See, if you can just note down the fact that fear is there, where is the fear then? You have accepted it; it has dissolved. Acceptance dissolves; only acceptance, nothing else. If you fight you create another disturbance and this can go on ad infinitum, then there is no end to it….Suppressed, you never experience the thing in its totality, you never gain anything out of it. Wisdom comes through suffering and wisdom comes through acceptance. Whatsoever the case, be at ease with it. [A Bird on the Wing Ch.1]

Just accepting a quiet, pretty reclusive life. Is there joy in this? Not much elation; but neither am I depressed. I don’t need Prozac thank you. It’s not a life’s ending I would have chosen. I don’t recommend it as a meditation, I’m sure there are easier ways. And yet… others with MS are much worse - I see them bedridden in my Home, let alone worse chronic diseases. Stephen Hawking paralysed in his computerised wheelchair is a celebrity case. But it is not a question of comparisons.

My situation is a wonderful one for inner work, for awareness. I feel it gives me depth, a lovely Osho word. I don’t have to busy myself looking after shopping, cooking, earning/managing money affairs - a decent enough Home with fine grounds is provided free. It is such an opportunity to go in. And that is so exciting and challenging, an adventure to embark on time and time again. To watch this mind and keep looking for that elusive Self within it, hiding away asking to be revealed. Ah this, and this, and this.

Would I say yes to a cure? Of course, and I do keep hoping - my latest is appropriately called Esperanza! But - meanwhile I practice acceptance. Accepting now and here brings in the Present moment, the only one there is.

(This article first appeared in Viha Connection Magazine)

Tags: Meditation/Spiritual by sannyasnews
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