Arriving at the ashram I seek out someone called Teertha, for whom I’ve carted a large wheel of Gouda cheese all the way from England with love from Shiva. A tall, sad-looking man, Teertha has long, thin, graying hair. He is bare-chested, wearing only an orange lunghi tied at the waist. He introduces me to his blond-haired girlfriend, who glances at me unsmilingly: I’m just another newcomer.
If the pair don’t give me the warmest of welcomes, the ashram itself looks attractive enough with its spacious grounds, three buildings and the main pathway lined with shrubs and trees. I find my way to the main office to discover when I can see Osho.
Sitting on the marble steps of the office is a grey-haired, handsome-faced woman whom I later discover is the wife of a shipping magnate. She is known as “Greek Mukta” (there’s an “Irish Mukta” and a “Nairobi Mukta” too). These national prefixes are important, I will learn. Similarly, you need to get your “Arups” right. For example, it is “Dutch Arup”—a well-built, no-nonsense sort of woman who’d once set up and ran a growth center in Holland, not “Australian Arup” with his bristly crew cut and tattooed arms—who is part of the ashram administration.
Greek Mukta is in charge of who sees Osho and when. She seems reluctant to admit that there is a place still vacant in the small group that will meet Osho tonight but finally she does put my name on the list.
Some people are friendlier. A tall, blond-haired and very upright sannyasin with a plummy British accent, hears that I am a new arrival and offers temporary accommodation—at least until his girlfriend returns from Goa. I’ll learn that Sagar is known as “Proper Sagar”—“proper” because of his accent and stiff-upper-lip sort of bearing. In fact it turns out he is German—which just goes to show. I’m very grateful to have a bed that I can briefly call my own, then to shower and don clean clothes, bearing in mind the curious instruction not to wear any perfume.
*
The evening meeting with Osho is called darshan. Darshan means seeing. To be in the presence of a master is not to learn about a certain philosophy, not to think about reality in a new way but to see reality for oneself.
We are probably twelve in number, those of us who scrunch our way down the gravel driveway to the back of Osho’s house, led by Mukta, who has warmed toward me sufficiently to ask me my name and where I have come from. Following the curve of the driveway, we arrive at the steps of a marble-floored porch overlooking well-kept lawns and gardens, with sprawling bougainvillea that falls like a luxuriant floral waterfall down the surrounding fences. Shuffling off our sandals, we find ourselves a position on the floor, forming a semi-circle around Osho, who is sitting in a large easy chair. I watch him greet his disciples—murmuring greetings to one, pausing, mid-smile, to place his hand on the head of another at his feet. Dressed in a long, simple, white robe, he sits with one leg over the other. (He is never to shift or change his position once during the entire meeting of an hour or so.) He is quite beautiful to look at: large brown eyes that crinkle frequently in smiling or chuckling, a light olive complexion and a long black beard interspersed with grey. Again, I feel a sense of familiarity. Perhaps it is simply that he looks not unlike my favorite uncle in some respects.
I also pick up a certain “leveling out” of those of us around him. Usually, as a newcomer to any situation, you instinctively take your place at the end of the line in the hierarchy, established according to how long you have been there. But though it is apparent that most of those around Osho tonight have been with him for some time, it feels that, like me, they are meeting him for the first time. Earlier, outside at the gate, from the quiet conversations I overheard, I didn’t feel a sense that a visit to see Osho is routine, predictable, that he is a known quantity to them. And yet it is not that he is formal or aloof. It is all rather curious.
On one side of him is Mukta (I’ve planted myself next to her), on the other a diminutive, red-scarfed Indian woman called Laxmi, the main administrator of the ashram. Beside her sits a slim, pale-faced English girl whom I guess to be about my age. Her delicate features and blue eyes are framed by long, straight brown hair. For the most part she is seemingly absorbed in her own thoughts—or maybe she is meditating?—sometimes looking sideways from under her fringe at the various members of the group as they come forward to ask questions. This is Vivek, Osho’s caretaker.
After speaking with several of his disciples Osho turns his head toward me as Mukta indicates that I should move to the space in front of him.
“Her name is Juliet—she’s from England,” stage-whispers Mukta.
“Mm, and what about you?” Osho asks me, smiling.
I tell him I am passing through India on the way to Australia and just calling in briefly to meet him. After several more exchanges, he asks, “And what about your sannyas? Think about it!”
Since reading his book, I do feel interested enough in Osho to be here at his feet but I resist the notion of being anyone’s follower. I don’t need someone to tell me what to do. And I hate the idea of joining some kind of sect; I’m an individual! And what does he mean by “my sannyas”? As though everyone has one and it’s just a matter of when it’s activated. It’s not for me. No way am I wearing orange clothes and a string of beads with someone’s photograph on my neck. On the other hand, right now I feel a bit put out by his suggesting I think about sannyas, when he has just told the previous girl that she is “ready” and simply given her sannyas straightaway! I don’t want sannyas—still, I bridle at the implication that I am not ready. And besides, I’m not staying long; Pune is just a stopover. A couple more days here, and then I’m heading up to the Himalayas for a few weeks.
Caught up in this internal toing and froing, I’m taken aback when I hear myself respond, “Oh, I’m fed up with thinking!”
“That’s the kind of people I want around me,” Osho chuckles, surprising me (I thought I was being a little rude in responding as I did)—“those who are fed up with thinking”! And next minute he is slowly writing down what will be my new name, and then lassoing me with a mala. This is a string of 108 wooden beads with his photo dangling from it.
“This will be your new name” (Osho leans forward, a slender finger with an exquisitely manicured nail indicating the piece of paper) “Ma Prem Maneesha.” (I mentally try to get my tongue around it; how on earth am I going to remember that?)—“Prem means love, Maneesha means wisdom…so ‘love’s wisdom,’ or ‘to love wisely’ will be the meaning of your name. And to love wisely” (he looks into my eyes) “means to drop jealousy and possessiveness.”
Osho asks me how long I will be staying, to which I hear myself reply, “Six weeks,” as I silently say farewell to the Himalayas. As I return to my place to watch others take the hot seat, a great calmness settles on me like a favorite blanket. At one point Osho instructs a sannyasin to lie on the ground (I can’t recall what her particular problem is) and adds, looking at me, “Maneesha, you sit at her feet.” Another sannyasin sits at her head, and we close our eyes for a moment or so while whatever is to happen, happens. Then it is over and shortly afterward the darshan draws to a close. Osho stands and, turning slowly in a half circle to acknowledge us all, places the palms of his hands together in the traditional gesture of namaste and slowly makes his exit. I slip into the sandals that had been Juliet’s and walk slowly back along the drive with the others into the now dark, October night.
Any of the resistance I’d had about Osho, his “orange people,” the idea of wearing orange clothes and someone’s picture, of being part of a “guru’s” group—the concept of surrender and what seemed to me to be hero worship and a father-fixation—fell away entirely last night. What happened in darshan was something like standing shivering by a pool, wondering if you are really going to jump in or not. Then, without having consciously decided, you find yourself surfacing from the water and only now realize it has happened. If you look back—and once you’re in, who bothers?—all your umming and aahing seems irrelevant and nothing to do with the fact that you’re now lazing languidly in the water as if it were where you were always meant to be.
The new name