OSHO: The Buddha for the Future. Maneesha James
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By now, Dynamic and Kundalini have been happening regularly morning and evening; in August a new meditation comes into being, the very vigorous Mandala meditation. It lasts one hour and has four stages of 15 minutes each. The first stage is incredibly demanding even for me, a 27-year-old. With your eyes open you simply run on the spot, slowly at first and then increasing your speed. But you are not just running; you have to make sure you bring your knees up as high as you can, all the while breathing deeply and evenly.
You get to sit for the next stage and be “like a reed blowing in the wind—from side to side, back and forth, around and around as it happens.” This brings all the energy you just activated to the navel center. Then you lie on your back—bliss!—and rotate your eyes, like a clock, and in the last stage you are just still and silent.
September sees the introduction of yet another meditation method: Shiva-Netra. Focusing on the third eye, it is in complete contrast to Mandala, being very passive. There are three stages of ten minutes each, and each is repeated twice. In the first you sit very still and listen to the beautiful music especially created for it. The second stage features a blue light, at which you gaze gently; then in the final stage you close your eyes and sway from aide to side.
In the early months of 1975 we see yet another new meditation. Gourishankar (it means the peak of the Himalayas, Mt Everest, in Hindi) is said to stimulate the third eye. That’s not an actual eye, of course, but an energy center or “chakra” in the middle of the forehead, between the two physical eyes. If the frenzied activity Dynamic has been taxing, sitting still for this hour is even more so for me, still a chronic, impatient doer at this point. Yet by and by I come to love this time: the darkness of the night, blankets over the hundreds of us, cross-legged figures, sitting gazing at the pulsating blue light set up at the front of the hall.
All the meditation music is created by Chaitanya Hari, a German sannyasin who, under the name of Deuter, will later be acclaimed as the founder of New Age music. Shortly after Osho arrived in Pune, Chaitanya was invited to move into the ashram to compose music for Osho’s meditations. Osho explains his idea about the music for the first one, Kundalini—what the effect should be, what the music should help with, what the goal of the meditation is, and what the music should do for it. So with that outline, Chaitanya Hari then “tries and puts some music together.”
His second project is Dynamic, followed over time with the others: Mandala, Nadabrahma, Whirling, Mandala, Devavani, Nataraj, Gourishankar—in fact, all the meditations Osho introduces before 1981. The music is, without exception, fabulous. Hearing it again and again it becomes embedded in me, along with the feeling of each particular method.
*
In March 1975, we have a large “Enlightenment Day” celebration. Attended by many Indian sannyasins and other visitors, it is held in Chuang Tzu Auditorium. This is a beautiful structure that protrudes from the side of Lao Tzu House right into the garden—more like a jungle, really—that surrounds Osho’s residence.
One evening in this same month, Vivek taps on my bedroom door: I am to come to darshan. (I am now living in Lao Tzu House.) As I enter the darshan porch, Osho is talking with a sannyasin, and I sit down quietly. After a few minutes Osho tums and beckons me closer.
“Maneesha, when you were a child, you prayed?”
(Me, not knowing if he thinks it a good or a bad thing), “Yes, Osho.”
“So now you pray like you did when you were a child—exactly, you do what you used to do, mm?”
I sit in a kneeling position, back straight and hands folded. Then, to set the scene, I turn to Osho: “I am by my bed and I’ve got my pajamas on,” I explain, and he nods gently. I turn back to my position, close my eyes and inwardly am whisked straight back to my eight-year old self.
“Dear God, um… thank you for a lovely day. It was good not having to go to school. But would you tell Diana and Tony to let me play with them, and could Mum not get so cross with me? My dolls are being good, and Cuddly is not sick anymore, Amen.”
“Good, Maneesha,” says Osho, and turns to tell the sannyasin and the rest of the group that now we will learn the Prayer Meditation. He then instructs me to kneel, with my body upright, facing the sannyasin to whom Osho has been talking, my arms raised to the sky. I am to feel that I am receiving energy, being rained on, from above; and when I feel filled, I should slowly lower my arms and body to the ground and pour the energy into the earth. When I feel emptied I am to raise my arms and start again. This is to be done seven times, Osho explains; otherwise the process will be incomplete.
When I raise my arms, eyes closed, I prepare to imagine being rained on with energy. Curiously, I am filled with energy—in fact, by and by filled so full that my arms start trembling as I am drenched with this unknown force. I start sobbing with the pure and unexpected joy of it. Then, feeling almost burdened, I lower my body to the floor, my head resting there and my arms out flat, while the trembling flushes through me and is released through my outstretched arms. Emptied, I again raise my arms; again the beautiful feeling of receiving and of allowing my body to be trembled. As Osho has instructed, I repeat this six more times.
Osho turns to the sannyasin and suggests he do this meditation each morning or evening, whatever feels best.
“And Maneesha, you continue to do it too, just before you go to sleep. Arrange it so that you can go to bed immediately afterward. Do everything else that you need to do before, so you can simply fall into sleep with that energy around you, surrounding you.”
A few minutes later I quietly rise and return to my room, clutching the small hand towel Osho has just given me. Such a towel always sits over his left arm during discourse, and occasionally he presents one as a gift to a sannyasin who is leaving or to someone who is experiencing some stuck energy. In the latter case he instructs the person to place the towel on the area of tension when they are meditating or just lying down relaxing. He has told me to place my towel in front of me whenever I do the Prayer Meditation; on another occasion, he says to bring it with me whenever I come to darshan.
Some evenings later, again the tap on the door from Vivek: “Come to darshan!” Flushed with excitement I enter the porch, equipped now with my Osho towel. This time I am to stand behind the sannyasin in front of Osho and to put my hands gently on his shoulders. Osho leans forward, the small pencil flashlight he occasionally uses in darshan softly focused on the sannyasin’s forehead. I close my eyes until I hear Osho’s gentle voice saying—“Good, Asang … come back. Very good! Good, Maneesha.”
Once or twice more during the evening, I am asked to rub someone’s third eye, or place my hands on their body where they feel their energy is blocked. I have no idea what I am meant to be thinking or if I am to think at all! Osho has given no instruction other than what I am to do physically. Though I don’t know what my purpose is in being there, I enjoy these evenings tremendously. A few days pass and then Vivek tells me that I can come to darshan every evening. I can’t believe how lucky I am.
*
There are a seemingly never-ending variety of situations that are created in darshan. Most often I am instructed just to gently rub the center of someone’s forehead, above the nose, between the eyes, “the third”; and invariably Osho’s little flashlight is in action. What its function is I have no idea. Perhaps that’s to my advantage and all that is needed: a head that isn’t too busy analyzing things.
One evening Osho talks to us about yet another new method. Devavani starts off with one speaking in a “gentle, unfamiliar language,” and it is to Vivek, his caretaker,