how you use it, how you transform it.”
He talks of how death is the only phenomenon left uncorrupted by man; it remains too elusive, unknowable. Hence it provides an opportunity to see that our lives feel meaningless, to see that in death we are all equal, that this life is not our home but an overnight’s stay. Vipassana has died beautifully, accepting death, unafraid, he comments. She has attained to something of which we should be jealous! Then he adds, “Remember, not only you are here, she is also here. I would like to tell a joke for her. It is not for you!”—at which we all burst out laughing.
The gist of the joke is about a séance at which a little boy is present. He asks to speak to his grandfather and, after the medium makes the appropriate passes and says that his grandfather is now present, the little boy pipes up, “What are you doing here, grandpa? You ain’t dead yet!”
“That’s I would like to say to Vipassana,” Osho says, chuckling. “What are you doing here, Vipassana? You aren’t dead yet!”
The entire discourse is devoted to Vipassana, with instructions on how we can give her a farewell befitting her and us:
When you go to give her the send-off, give the send-off as one gives to somebody who is departing on a long journey—not to a dead person, to an alive person. Let this be a send-off of dancing, celebration, festivity. She was a musician and a dancer, and she would love it.
When fire starts consuming her body, dance as much as you can around her funeral pyre. Let your whole energy become a dance. Dance to orgasm. Forget yourself completely. And give this send-off for her as if she were alive. She is alive—and if you really dance, many of you will feel her alive presence. A few of you—if you really celebrate the moment—will be able to see, actually be able to see her …. And for this moment, deep clarity is needed so that you can see the body burning on the funeral pyre, and you can also see the spirit moving away… further away… to the other shore.
If you dance, and happily, gracefully sing… it will be difficult I know, but not as difficult as you think. But once you start, the energy starts melting and soon you will see you are dancing and the sadness has disappeared and your eyes are glistening with a new light—and you will be able to realize something. I am giving you a particular meditation for this night….
If you are happy you help the other person to move easily into the unknown. If you are sad it becomes difficult for the other to move away. Your sadness becomes heavy on the other person…. Be happy! And let the other person also feel that she is remembered, that she is loved, that she is accepted, and that she is leaving happiness behind her, gladness behind her. In that moment it is easier for the other to move…very easy to move. Then there is no repentance and one doesn’t want to cling.
All have to go—man, woman, all. In India, women are not allowed but I would like everybody to go. Death is for all. Even small sannyasins, kids—if they want to go, take them with you. Let them also face the truth, let them also experience. Let them also start thinking along the lines that even death is not bad, that even death is beautiful, so that they can accept it.
… I would not only like to teach you how to live—I would also like to teach you how to die. If you can give a beautiful farewell to Vipassana something about death will settle deep within you. You will start accepting it and you will know deep down in your heart that death is also beautiful….
Go happily, with deep prayer. If you cry, cry, but with deep happiness. If tears come, let them, but let them be tears of prayer, love, gratitude. Let them be tears of celebration….
Vipassana is going to be there. It is good for her that she can see her body being burned and turned dust into dust. It is good for her. It is good for you, because the same is going to happen to your body also. Let it be a great meditation.
Osho concludes, “Now I will not delay you anymore. She has to go a long way—beyond the stars. For ten minutes sit in silence with me, and then you go.”
Our silence is complete—a silence that is not somber or funereal. I can hear no tears, no sobs of anguish. Instead there’s a very deep calmness and a feeling of our having become one with Osho, with each other, and with Vipassana. Then singly or in twos or threes we file out of Chuang Tzu Auditorium and back to Radha Hall, where Vipassana’s body lies.
Magically a flute, a tambourine, a guitar, and castanets materialize, and spontaneously the music and our dance begin. The musicians are mingled with the procession, some sannyasins bearing Vipassana’s garlanded body as it makes its way down to the ghats by the river where we will celebrate the burning. A car draws alongside the procession at one point to ask whose wedding we are celebrating!
Vipassana’s body is gently lowered into the specially designated area, and wood lovingly placed over it. The pyre, set alight by her brother Viyogi, burns vigorously, and our dancing becomes even more animated so that we become, as one sannyasin puts it, “just a mass of orange flames and figures.”
Orange-robed, as is everyone else, dancing wildly over the flames while my voice joins in to the singing, I feel like a pagan. The thought arises: “If only my mother could see me now!” and I chuckle inwardly at how aghast she would be and, at the same time, there’s the feeling of how beautiful and how right our celebration is.
Watching, I recall Osho explaining just before we left to bring Vipassana here:
The Hindu way of burning the body is very significant. It is significant for the soul that had departed because the soul can see the body being burned, reduced to ashes. It helps detachment; it gives a last shattering, a last hammering shock, because when a person dies it takes a few hours for him to recognize that he is dead. And if the body is buried underground—as for Christians and Mohammedans—then it takes many days for the person to recognize that he is dead.
That evening I feel so much affection for us as a group. It is as if we have taken a giant quantum leap forward in understanding and in trust. We’ve passed together through a new experience, energy that might have fed sadness and loss becoming instead a tumultuous expression of love and gratitude.
As Osho says, “Life is beautiful … has its own blessings. Death has its own blessings too. Much flowers in life, but much flowers in death also, and something has flowered in Vipassana. Remember, all that God gives us has to be taken in deep gratefulness—even death—only then you become religious.”
*
In October of 1979 Devateerth Bharti (Osho’s father “Dadaji”) is admitted to a local hospital with heart failure, and on three occasions Osho visits him there. On the last visit Osho realizes his father is going to die, because—as often happens to one approaching death—Devateerth appears to be miraculously much better and talks of coming home that night. Osho tells us later that, realizing that his father is close to death, he will be going home that night but to his real home, “beyond the stars.” Those of us who are in the grounds of the ashram at the time see Osho’s car leave for the hospital at 3:30 in the afternoon, to return perhaps half an hour later. On the evening of October 18th, just as darshan draws to a close, the news reaches us that, having attained enlightenment that morning, Devateerth has left his body.
Interviewed just two months earlier for Sannyas Magazine, he and Osho’s mother, Saraswati, are asked how they feel to be the parents of Osho. Devateerth replies, “It feels very blissful… It feels like there is nothing to say about it: just whatever is, is beautiful.” Saraswati is a little more verbose in response to the interviewer’s questions about when they first realized that their son was enlightened and how they had regarded Osho when he was younger. Devateerth simply adds, “I am here, so much now and here,
