Osho Day 3

Today I would go to some of the meditation sessions.

I had my herbal tea and croissant and watched.... The symbols of westerner life that Osho was supposed to relieve you of, seem to be appearing more frequently. Mobile phones and mp3 players were starting to appear. I had seen my first lap top.

My cynicism was growing by the minute. Was I really going to sit in a room chanting with disaffected lentil eaters? I was struggling to gain enough enthusiasm to get out of the chair.

No I would go and try it. You can’t knock it until you’ve tried it so I woke up Joel and off we went.

We entered the auditorium which was a large marbled floored room with frosted windows on both sides. Above was a huge pyramid shaped roof which was supported by 4 wide circle columns.

Nadabrahma Meditation consisted of:

30 minutes of humming.
15 minutes of moving your hands around.
15 minutes of sitting still.

I went through the motions thinking that I was going to be bored shitless for the next 60 minutes but I was wrong. For me the session probably only lasted 45 minutes because I was asleep for 15 minutes, but the rest of the session went pretty quickly.

In between sleeping humming and making my hand actions I did experience something. For the first time I could remember my mind was momentarily empty. That moment might have only lasted for a matter of seconds but those seconds were great. It was like hitting the delete button on a computer and tonnes of junk had been removed from head.

We walked out the auditorium.

“Well?” said Joel.
“I felt something!” Joel turned to look at me waiting for the one liner.
“I did honestly”. Joel’s brow was furrowed and his head had tilted to one side. He was withholding further comment in case I was taking the piss.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied.

I was now into meditation. I now understood what people were talking about. I was addicted. I was enlightened and Guru Joel, had he been sitting down, would have fallen off his chair.

Half an hour later we were in the Kundalini Meditation Session.

This consisted of

15 minutes of shaking.
15 minutes of dancing
15 minutes of sitting still
15 minutes of lying down.

The Kundalini Meditation didn’t work for me. The shaking and dancing with my eyes closed made me feel like I was the only person at a rave. But, I was still ready for another try.

My simplistic views were shifting. Meditation was now good, perhaps Osho wasn’t all bad?.

If Osho was bad, why were there so many intelligent, affluent, middle class people here? Maybe I had it wrong. This was the most cosmopolitan place I had ever been. There were Russians, Romanian, Scandinavians, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesians, Americans, Brazilians, Israelis (lots and lots of Israelis), Italians, Dutch, Spaniards, French, Germans, Mexicans, Indians, New Zealanders, Australians and Turks. But none of these people were poor. The Indians were Armani Exchange wearing mobile phone carrying cappuccino drinkers.

More things were occurring to me. The people in general were very subdued. There were groups of Latin blooded people, but there was no noise, no shouting, no laughing. Why wasn’t this like club med. Then it came to me. These were seriously depressed people. I was at a Club Depressed.

We went to the outdoor cinema which was showing the “Fantastic Four”. The alternative was the outside “sitting in the dark mediation”. If the film didn’t work, we would also be doing the outdoor “sitting in the dark mediation”.