5:00, while meditating Dadaji has, according to the family, a suspected heart attack. He speaking is garbled, but the family is able to decipher that he is also asking them to call Osho.
Osho enters and makes to touch his father’s feet, but Dadaji says, “Enough! Now no more. I will touch your feet.” He asks Osho to stand on the bed—a bit of a balancing act as Osho’s long white gown is quite narrow but he manages. Dadaji then bows down and touches Osho’s feet. Meanwhile Osho tells Laxmi to bring a mala because “Sannyas is happening to Dadaji.” Laxmi, having no extra mala with her, takes hers off and hands it to Osho. Dadaji lowers his head, Osho gently placing the mala around his neck and pronouncing, “He is now Swami Devateerth Bharti.” His father responds, “From now onward you are my master; I am your disciple. From now onward I will touch your feet.”
Pratiksha, one of Osho’s nieces, comments later, “I witnessed this grand event at the age of eleven. It is something phenomenal—a father taking sannyas from his own son.”
*
Hepatitis lays me low for six weeks. It is a novel experience to be playing the patient for the first time in my life! Normally constantly on the go, and that too, always in an accelerated mode, I enjoy being entirely without energy. Even the short trip from bed to the bathroom makes me almost faint with the exertion. An unaccustomed silence and serenity descend on me. Inevitably I lose weight and enjoy the rather ethereal air with which it imbues me. And to top it all off, nobody expects me to do anything other than be an obedient and docile patient. Sometimes I fantasize about my newly found serenity, imagining in some healthier future the admiring whispers of passers-by as they exclaim at my Madonna-like peace and evident purity.
In due course the sickness subsides, taking with it my Madonna fantasies. Energy restored, in September I return to darshan. Those of us who attend regularly include Vivek, Mukta, and Laxmi, Osho’s secretary. Before my absence a fourth person, Shiva (he whom I first met in London and who lent me an Osho book), is also attending: Laxmi had been attacked by an Indian recently and Osho had suggested that Shiva be present as protection for her.
While I have been away, he has moved his place closer to Osho. Has he been upgraded to be Osho’s bodyguard as well as or instead of Laxmi’s? Whatever his real role is, it is something of a standing joke—and I tease Shiva about it—that he uses his position to note all the attractive women on their arrival and makes a beeline for them after darshan!
On this, my first evening back, Osho calls me forward and asks how I am feeling: “Quite well now?” Yes, completely, I reply.
“So now you start recording the meetings here and create books,” Osho says. “You bring a tape recorder and make notes if you need to. And you tell Shiva what photographs you would like for the book; he will take them. ”Osho pauses, then: “You would like this work?”
As it dawns on me what Osho is offering—the opportunity to continue to be at darshan every night, and not only that, but to work with his words—I am speechless. I manage a nod and then burst into tears.
“Good, Maneesha!” he chuckles.
After a whispered, “Thank you, Osho,” I scoop up what remains of me from the floor, and float back to my place.
*
Only later do I realize that apart from handing me the most amazing job I could have imagined, in regard to Shiva Osho has demonstrated how a master works. It turns out that Shiva’s role of bodyguard to Osho has been a self-appointment; yet Osho does not make any comment on what he has done. Instead, he includes Shiva in a new project—that of taking photos for what become known as the “darshan diaries.” He knows Shiva enjoys photography and obviously enjoys being at darshan, too. Shiva can’t help but feel pleased with his involvement in this entirely new venture, though his new position diminishes the one he has chosen. In the least hurtful way possible, Osho has indicated that Shiva’s energy is better directed into photography than being his guardian.
Over the years, Osho talks occasionally about the difficulties a master encounters in trying to work on his disciples. It is an “unenviable task,” he says once. I begin to see how very fragile are our egos and how tricky the games we play to protect them.
Chapter 3: Alchemy in Action
As far back as one can remember people have gathered around masters just to sit silently. In the East we call it darshan. The West has never understood that seeing—that is the actual meaning of the word ‘darshan’—means being in the energy field of a man who has come to know himself, to drink out of his well, to look into his eyes, to feel his hands, to listen to his silences, to his words. ~ Osho
The following evening is the start of the most creative and exciting period of my life so far. In preparation for recording darshan, we set up a tape recorder and a small mike; Shiva has his camera and I equip myself with book and pen. The substance will of course be Osho’s words. In addition I’d like to include some descriptions of those to whom Osho talks, and of course observations of Osho himself, along with any necessary commentary.
With this slightly new perspective of darshan I feel as if I am attending a play, some existential drama (and sometimes comedy) in which actors are continually changing and the dialogue is spontaneous. The compilation of the diaries becomes my love, almost the sole preoccupation of my every waking hour. Incredibly, the darshan diaries will continue, at the rate of one a month, for over five years, totaling sixty-three books. (This in addition to Osho speaking a book a month in the morning discourses!)
I work fast: by the end of each day, the previous night’s darshan needs to have been transcribed (thanks to “Big Prem”), edited, had descriptions and commentary added, and be ready for its final read-through; otherwise I will never be able to stay abreast of things. Sometimes Osho’s words seem like a gigantic avalanche that constantly pursues me: to pause and glance over my shoulder at it is to waste precious time and risk being obliterated. (Then again: isn’t that exactly why Osho is speaking to us?)
Sometime later a third member joins our tiny team. Savita has been a psychotherapist in London and, like me, adores playing with words. Invariably Big Prem, plugged into her typewriter and earphones all day, bursts into uproarious laughter as she reaches a particularly hilarious exchange in darshan, or stops to exclaim over something that touches her. Savita and I enjoy tossing ideas back and forth; we also begin to interview people who’ve come to darshan and who have interesting stories to tell. All the while I keep playing with new ways of giving expression to these enchanted evenings.
And enchanted they are. I am witness, over these five years, to so many changes—in the ever-increasing number of people arriving to take sannyas; in the faces of people as they take the plunge into meditation and participate in groups; in our daily communal life, my own evolving inner life, and in the format of darshan itself.
I enjoy watching what I privately term Osho’s “wooing” of potential sannyasins. He says he knows “his people,” and if we don’t initially recognize that we are one of them we are, finally, won over by him. It touches and thrills me to see how much of himself he gives to us…to watch unconditional love at work—or “play” as he puts it.
Whenever she is present in darshan, Radha, an Italian sannyasin, is sometimes asked to help with the “energy” aspect—touching third eyes and so on. Later, we two become known as “the sniffers.” Osho is especially sensitive to smells, especially strong perfumes. Stationed either side of the gate that leads into darshan we are responsible for checking that people are clean and completely fragrance-free: no cigarette, onion, or garlic odors, no soap, no shampoo, and absolutely no French perfume. Even many
