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What India meant by satsang corrupted by the interface
with the West : Shantam offers his view

Living in a small Indian town off the beaten track. Living modestly in a stable family, beautifully changing weather, starry nights and a cool breeze; therein comes the wow for all that it is.

In such places life is not isolated as in the big cities, people greet, meet and visit each other.
Once a week after the afternoon Siesta, by dint of ancient good habits, millions of moms and grand moms in thousands of small towns and villages gather around sensitive beings to listen to the deeper things of life, and share their daily life experience. Within a month or so, someone starts singing Bhajans to celebrate the atmosphere, and Satsang begins to happen.

These souls slowly gain recognition, they offer themselves to be present at times of grief in the neighbourhood and console people. Life feels meaningful in their presence, and such souls became known as signposts for existence itself.

For thousands of years this pattern has been going on, and preserving sanity in hard times. In psychological jargon, Satsangs were healing the wounds of collective pain, failure and depression.
No psychologists, no organised priesthood was there - and these sensitive souls served the people without hankering for any recognition.

But with the advent of traveling ease developed by the “restless west”, many western people started to find out these humble souls, and felt wonder, and also wondered about the source of their bliss.

It is like Horse goes to see Cows and feels wonder how peacefully they go on chewing grass day after day and no desire to run and jump and play Polo. Just happy to watch the shadow in the small pond and feeling like Basho. So beautiful and mesmerising! Such is the human nature, horse goes to the cow and want to learn the tricks of being here and now. And in this way, horse race shower the title of Enlightened beings to this saintly cows.

So “recognition” followed from those who came from outside India, and sadly from this flowed the first seeds of ego in these sensitive souls. They began to speak from the origins of Indian wisdom and life to people who have basically a different set of life problems, social environment and family norms, and to whom it was and is inappropriate and occasionally dangerous.

I have much admiration for those thousands and thousands of lay persons who chair small Satsang gatherings throughout India and serve their communities through their talks, gossips and simple presence.

But to see inflated Satsang givers, speaking about bloody ego and oneness and enlightenment, I have only one question, - do you know what it feels like to come from a broken family. Mom going for date with someone else other than dad. Then you have the children, and your own wife asks for divorce and the house, and than you get the news, your son is on drugs and your daughter is earning as a Page 3 girl.

That is the west, and also the India of 2030, and the modalities will have to change.

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Relationship is a Verb

I met Marcia on the hippie trail in the early 70’s, beginning in Venice, California. We traveled together to India on two one-way tickets as we didn’t have enough money between us to buy two round trip tickets… it was simply two one-way tickets to ride, or no way out… in any case, we were living on love. Our first home together in Mother India was under a cashew tree in Arambol, a then virgin beach in Goa, (remember I am talking the 70’s here), before heading north to the Himalayas. Right smack in the middle of the trail, we met Osho and our lives changed forever. Meeting Osho was a happy beginning for me, and equally an unhappy ending of my relationship with Marcia, now Krishna Priya. My gut told me that my relationship was in trouble. I went to Osho to get to the heart of the matter…

I booked a leaving darshan with Osho to say goodbye to him as my plan was to make a complete circle by returning to California to open a commune based on his meditations… Krishna Priya choosing to stay behind until my dream came true - then she would join me. Osho agreed with Krishna Priya, while I simply wasn’t sure which way was up… In front of a burning candle I rehearsed my questions to Osho on what I was going to ask about my relationship until all that was left of me was a wax wave on my wooden floor.

I hadn’t been apart from my beloved for two years and I was nervous about being without her. I wanted to ask Osho whether I could trust that she’d come and follow me to California… could I be sure that she wouldn’t fall in love with someone else? I was simply beside myself… by now I was even jealous of Osho as I was no longer the most important man in my woman’s life…

Darshan in 1975 was in Lao Tzu House on the front car porch. Ten of us were scheduled to sit with him one to one and I was going to be number ten.

It felt like an eternity before it was my turn. Finally he looked at the boy in the ninth position and his eyes were so big, they overflowed onto me and I thought he was gesturing me to come forward. So eagerly I got up. Of course it wasn’t my turn and he told me to have patience and I promptly sat down again.

I was so embarrassed I nearly died.

The ninth boy came to sit in front of Osho and as soon as he sat down, he began to cry. And he wouldn’t stop crying and Osho waited, and finally Osho broke the silence and said to him,

“What seems to be the problem?”

And the boy related this story: “I bought a brand new pair of sandals today and when I got out of Kundalini Meditation at five-fifteen, my sandals were gone!”

And then he burst into tears again.

Osho closed his eyes and when the boy stopped crying, Osho opened his eyes again and he said to the young boy, “I can’t help you with your loss, but what I can suggest is that tomorrow you go MG Road and you buy another new pair of sandals, and when you go to Kundalini Meditation, you take one new sandal off and you put it on the top middle shelf and you take the other new sandal and you put it on the bottom shelf on the far left.” And then he added: “No one ever steals one sandal!”

And then the boy’s tears turned into laughter, and it looked to me like Osho was very proud of himself. He was just beaming with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen in your life. Everyone else was laughing.

And then Osho reached out and held the boy’s hands, they stood up at the same time and, as if music began playing, Osho did a tiny dance with the boy, and then, still beaming, gave a Namaste salutation to his beloveds and walked out, and that was the end of darshan.

I felt like a sannyasin left out in the cold.

And to this day, I don’t know anything about relationship! So you my friend are on your own… I still don’t know anything about relationships except I have learned the hard way that relationship is a verb called relating.

I did, however, found the Geetam Sannyas Ashram in Lucerne Valley, California, for Osho in ‘75, which turned out to become the biggest meditation centre in the States, and my now ex-girlfriend never stepped onto the property once. It goes to show you never can tell… meditation, like love, is not what you think.

And just to point out that ‘not knowing is the most intimate’, Positive TV out of England has invited me to share my knowledge of relationship with its viewers… please feel free me check out on http://positivetv.tv/category/channels/celebrity-shorts/

“Attachment and love never go together; commitment and attachment never go together. Love goes with unattachment. Then love has a purity of the other world. Then love is absolute essence, absolute pureness, innocence. And then there is a commitment. That commitment is eternal.” Osho

Krishna Prem

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When the “Good” man fights, it then becomes a holy war. : Alok John takes a View

Most sannyasins and most Osho discourses veer towards pacifism rather than militarism. However in this striking (edited) extract from chapter 1 of “Krishna : The Man and his Philosophy” Osho appears to say that a major war will need to be fought against the forces of materialism. The discourse was given in 1970. Note the twenty year gap given in the discourse which takes us to 1990, the year, it could be argued, when the US defeated communism and became the sole superpower. You could argue that the US represents the forces of materialism. As for “out-and-out materialism” I would have thought popular writers like Hitchens and Dawkins endorse this view.

Anyway here it is…make of it what you will…

“In a way, the world is facing nearly the same situation India faced during the Mahabharat war. There were two camps, or two classes, at the time of the Mahabharat. One of them was out-and-out materialist; they did not accept anything beyond the body or matter. They did not know anything except the indulgence of their senses; they did not have any idea of yoga or of spiritual discipline. For them the existence of the soul did not matter in the least; for them life was just a playground of stark indulgence, of exploitation and predatory wars (the West?, Alok John’s interpretation). Life beyond the senses and their indulgence held no importance for them.

This was the class against which the war of Mahabharat was waged. And Krishna had to opt for this war and lead it, because it had become imperative. It had become imperative so that the forces of good and virtue could stand squarely against the forces of materialism and evil, so that they were not rendered weak and impotent.

Approximately the same situation has arisen on a worldwide scale, and in twenty years’ time a full replica, a scenario of the Mahabharat will be upon us. On one side will be all the forces of materialism and on the other will be the weaker forces of good and righteousness.

Goodness suffers from a basic weakness: it wants to keep away from conflicts and wars. Arjuna of the Mahabharat is a good man. The word ”arjuna” in Sanskrit means the simple, the straightforward, clean. Arjuna means that which is not crooked. Arjuna is a simple and good man, a man with a clean mind and a kind heart. He does not want to get involved in any conflict and strife; he wants to withdraw. Krishna is still more simple and good; his simplicity, his goodness knows no limits. But his simplicity, his goodness does not admit to any weakness and escape from reality. His feet are set firmly on the ground; he is a realist, and he is not going to allow Arjuna to run away from the battlefield.

Perhaps the world is once again being divided into two classes, into two camps. It happens often enough when a decisive moment comes and war becomes inevitable. Men like Gandhi and Russell will be of no use in this eventuality. In a sense they are all Arjunas. They will again say that war should be shunned at all costs, that it is better to be killed than to kill others. A Krishna will again be needed, one who can clearly say that the forces of good must fight, that they must have the courage to handle a gun and fight a war. And when goodness fights only goodness flows from it. It is incapable of harming anyone. Even when it fights a war it becomes, in its hands, a holy war. Goodness does not fight for the sake of fighting, it fights simply to prevent evil from winning.

By and by the world will soon be divided into two camps. One camp will stand for materialism and all that it means, and the other camp will stand for freedom and democracy, for the sovereignty of the individual and other higher values of life. But is it possible that this camp representing good will find a Krishna to again lead it?

It is quite possible. When man’s state of affairs, when his destiny comes to a point where a decisive event becomes imminent, the same destiny summons and sends forth the intelligence, the genius that is supremely needed to lead the event. And a right person, a Krishna appears on the scene. The decisive event brings with it the decisive man too.

It is for this also that I say Krishna has great significance for the future.

There are times when the voices of those who are good, simple and gentle cease to be effective, because people inclined to evil don’t hear them, don’t fear them, blindly go their own way. In fact, as good people shrink back just out of goodness, in the same measure the mischief makers become bold, feel like having a field day….”

(Osho, Krishna, The Man and his Philosophy, chapter 1)

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