Osho Day 7 Departure Day

Day 7

There was a knock at the door. The door not disturb sign had been ignored. It was 8.20 am. It was Joel.

Joel knew it was departure day. He had woken up and a thought had made its way into his head. Joel had a purpose - To depart

“WHAT” I bellowed at the door.

“What time we are leaving ?”

“Five thirty this afternoon” I replied.

I was counting the hours. I lay in bed working out ways to avoid having to wear my maroon robe. I could stay in my room until departure time but I decide to get up and meet Joel for lunch. I was no longer a disciple. I looked at the robe wearers with sympathy. These people needed help.

We went for lunch.

Joel was at the counter. He had found the Bombay Aloo. Joel careful positioned his bowl picked up the scooper and careful starting the intricate task of transferring potato to bowl. There were rules about how food was put into bowls at Osho. To avoid biological contamination, the bowl had to remain on your tray at all times. A queue had formed behind Joel. Carefully he scooped, transferred and deposited the turmeric covered potato chunks. But that wasn’t the end of the process. Once deposited the potato had be levelled and compacted in the bowl before the processes started again. Joel was oblivious to the impatient people behind him. Joel went through the process with the second scoop until the bowl was filled to just the right level and so he moved around the canteen.

We were ready to leave.

So what did I think of Osho…..

Well, I am still thinking about it. It was a very interesting experience.

The Nadabrahma meditation was a revelation.

The massage was great. The place and people were very nice

But the rest of it seemed a joke. A week long fancy dress party. It was emotional valium for the internationally depressed. An addictive quick fix which brought addicts back to Pune year after year, for months at a time.

For me Osho was at best a pseudo spiritual Chinese takeaway quickly removing the misery in ones life. A temporary departure from problems at home. But like Chinese food, an hour later and you need something else to feed on.

At worst, it was a McDonalds, a sanitised, westernised money making machine feeding the desire of the affluently depressed with total unadulterated crap.

I could not believe what people would allow themselves to do. Get up for 6.00 am and do dynamic mediation. Wear maroon robes. Wear white robes. Walking round with single eye patches. Wear white socks. If it was a rule to walk on one leg whilst wearing underpants on your head at 4.00pm there would be people doing it.

Maybe this was the cosmic joke- That people would pay for this sort of mild humiliation whilst Osho lay in rest, near one of his many Rolls Royces.

Osho Day 5 New Years Eve

I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t face the thought of facing the dining hall or putting on that stupid maroon robe.

I was missing my juicer.

There was fruit at Osho. Despite being organic and locally grown it wasn’t very appetising and surely every other western lentil eating, Soya drinking Buddhist also wanted juice. I was also missing chocolate.

I got up. It was lunch time. I had a really good sleep. The second time that week I had slept 12 hours. I hadn’t slept 12 hours straight in the last 5 years so something good had happened. Maybe it was the massages, mediation or jet lag. Also the cleaners were very considerate. Unlike other Indian hotels I had stayed they didn’t ignore the “Do not disturb sign” and ask if you wanted your room cleaned at 7.00 am.

I got up strolled off and got an Indian croissant. Indian croissants are not like French Croissants. If you were hit in the head by an Indian croissant you had a serious problem.

I was still excited about my experience in Nadabrahma Meditation. So until then I would participate in the listening to my Ipod mediation whilst doing sudoku puzzle meditation.

It was time, off I went. Unusually I hadn't seen Joel all day. He had told me that he was going on the “A day for the heart course”. But as this involved money, a booking, a timetable, a watch and a map I had dismissed this as wishful thinking.

I knocked on his door. No answer. I was surprised.

I went off to the auditorium. The humming started. I got into it. After a while I separated my mind from my body. I desperately wanted to empty my head. In order to do this I had to “effortlessly stop thinking”. I couldn’t do it. Thoughts kept going through my mind. I just couldn’t do it. The session passed quickly but I was really disappointed. I was no longer enlightened. As I walked out the Auditorium I watched a coca cola dispensing machine being wheeled into one of the buildings on the Osho campus.

At 6.00pm there was a knock the door. It was Joel. He had organised his course and he had found it very interesting. He had had a great psychic connection with a 65 old Indian woman. How his parents would be krelling when they heard this news about there 30 year old single son.

Two rounds of zen rummy and then “Are you going to the evening meeting” said Joel. He was obviously taking the piss. “Yer right”. We then had to end the next round prematurely as he really was going to the evening meeting. I was worried.

Dinner time.

I was suffering curry cramp. Oshos equivalent of Club Med buffet fatigue where you pig out on the first night but as the week goes on you make fewer and fewer trips to the buffet counter and by the end of the trip I would be on bread and cheese. Unfortunately there was no cheese at Osho.

The food at Osho was excellent. Right up my street. Organic Vegetarian Indian cuisine I couldn’t think of anything better. The whole of Osho seemed immaculately clean and smelt odourless. They had very strict hygiene rules and I hadnt heard of anyone suffering stomach problems so I had eaten the food with confidence but now after 5 days of it, the thought of curry was rather off putting.

After dinner people would come up and hug Joel. Perhaps they had realised he was the Guru. There was an Austrian Freelance photographer and her boyfriend, a little Indian man and a small Italian woman. These were people from his class. Hugging was big at Osho.

The New Years Eve celebration took the form of a "rave". In the centre of the campus was a marble platform the size of a football pitch. There was high energy music, lasers, people twirling burning batons, Male Punjabi dancers.

Cigarettes and alcohol were always on display at Osho. Cocktails and champagne were available from the bar.

We joined in with the dancing. I did my best impression of someone that knew how to dance. Whilst trying to avoid eye contact with a group ropey looking Austrian girls, who by coincidence also pretended to know how to dance while trying to avoid eye contact with me.

Midnight came and went.