will see that.
Josephine: “I don’t think so. I know Prem has been very happy and I’m grateful for that. She’s very happy. She says she never gets bored; she loves her work. She works typing, ten hours a day, seven days a week. (This elicits smiles from the group behind her.) That’s a lot be grateful for, isn’t it?”
Osho: “Good. Back home you will see that you have changed. Because I can see—I have been watching you since you came.”
Josephine (eyes opening wide, incredulous): “Have you really?”
Osho: “Yes!”
Josephine: “Really? I didn’t see you. Where were you?”
Osho chuckles. Then the conversation moves to the Josephine’s belief, as a Catholic.
Josephine: “Isn’t that something good to believe in though?”
Osho: “Nothing compared to knowing…. Nothing compared to knowing. What I am saying is this: that you are not interested in God at all; otherwise you cannot miss what I am saying, and what I am trying to make clear.”
Josephine: “That’s all I have.”
Osho: “You don’t have anything! If it were anything I would not have taken it away. I have to help you become more and more trusting. How can I take away your faith?”
Josephine: “But I’m just saying that’s all I have, and I don’t feel like I want to give it up.”
Osho switches from cajolery to humor. “Don’t give it up! You don’t have anything to give up, but back home you will realize it—I will go on haunting you!”
“Thank you!” replies Josephine and, assisted by Big Prem, removes herself from the hot seat.
What I see and hear in that exchange and in myriad others over the years is not a “tolerance” of us but a constant, unremitting expression of love. Sometimes watching Osho in conversation is like being witness to an existential chess game, one in which neither he nor we can lose or win because it’s not about that at all. It is all just a play.
Chapter 4: The Essential Education
Except life itself, what other examination can there be of life? So those who think that by passing examinations they have become educated are mistaken. Actually, where the examinations are completed the real education begins, because from then on life begins. ~ Osho
Literally by his side every evening, I observe Osho with many different people, of diverse cultures and varying age. His connection with children is especially touching.
Prem Prabhu, a nine-year-old German boy, has come for darshan on several occasions, and always alone. I love the earnest and unself-conscious way in which he talks to Osho. At former darshans he has asked Osho what enlightenment is, what work Osho is doing, and so on, yet there is never any sense of his being precocious or affected.
On one particular occasion Osho asks him if he has anything to say. Seating himself cross-legged in front of Osho and folding his hands in his lap, Prabhu nods and begins, “Some years ago we lived in Germany, and my mother left us. She said she was going…and never coming back!”
The last words are muffled by his tears. With a somehow unchildlike and curiously dignified gesture, he slowly puts his head in his hands and sobs. My eyes rapidly fill with tears and a lump comes to my throat. But Osho chuckles very gently, as is his way whenever one of us is lost in any of the many dramas that unfold in darshan. “What exactly is the matter?” Osho asks the bent head. There is no response and, knowing Prabhu’s story a little, I volunteer, “A few years ago his mother left the family—the two boys and the father.”
“Mm. And where is your mother now?”
Prabhu (pausing between sobs): “She’s in Germany!”
“Germany? And she never comes?”
“Sometimes we see her.”
“Mm. So what do you want? You want her back?”
(Wailing): “Yes!”
But she’s found another husband, Osho elicits, and Prabhu has not found a new mother. Does he want the old mother or a new one?
“Old!”
“Old you want? We will try! Nothing to be worried about. I am your mother! Come here. Mm? No need to worry.” Prabhu stands and walks over to Osho’s chair. Osho takes his outstretched hand, drawing Prabhu nearer to him. With his other hand he touches Prabhu’s head. “Whenever you need your mother, just remember me, and I will take care of you. And you are coming finally to stay with me here in India! You want to stay in Germany or come here?”
(Prabhu’s face lights up): “Here!”
“So why bother about the mother! Soon you will be coming here, mm? And next time your mother comes to see you, tell her about me and tell her to come here and meditate and become a sannyasin! Give her some books and give her one of my pictures—then I will start haunting her!”
Prabhu grins broadly and, more collected now, says “I have a question: I want to do groups. Can you tell me what I can do?”
“Groups you want to do? Mm! Next time we will be starting a small group for children. I will make you the leader—you wait!”
Mollified, Prabhu smiles and then kneels down on the floor, his bowed head at Osho’s feet. He stands up again, flashes me a broad grin and returns to his place among the group.
After darshan I ask Prabhu if I might interview him for the darshan diary. Two days later we meet in Radha’s room and, over chai and cakes, I ask Prabhu about Osho. He likes Osho when he smiles, and his beard is so long! he exclaims. “If I ask him a question he gives good answers. I like the way he acts with people and how he does all the darshans and how he talks.”
“Well, what does he do with people?” I ask.
“He sees what they have inside them that makes them cry. Sometimes in the lecture he looks into the eyes of people and they look into his eyes and he can see what is inside their heads.”
He then tells me how his orange clothes and mala are received back in Germany at school among his mates. Beads are for girls usually, Prabhu explains, so when his friends see a boy coming along with a necklace…! But he never lets them touch his mala because that “hurts Osho.”
“Three years ago my father told me many things about God; but that God is not really there. He said God is a man who can fly like an eagle. But I think God is everywhere, and sometimes God is going in the people and they can see all around them.”
I comment that Osho has said God is in everyone—not just in him but also in Prabhu and myself and….
“Yeah, but we don’t feel him!” exclaims Prabhu. “And he [Osho] feels God.”
What does Prabhu think Osho is doing here with us all? I want to know.
“I asked him last year what he was doing
