by Tim Guest
By 1981, when my mother and I were at the Ashram, Bhagwan was telling more jokes—most cribbed from Playboy and Penthouse. He said: ‘My whole approach is that of humour. And the greatest religious quality is a sense of humour. Not truth’—a roll of laughter in the background—‘not God. Not virtue. A sense of humour. If we can build a whole Earth with laughter, of dancing and singing people; singing and swinging’—more laughter—‘a carnival of joy. A festival of lights. We will have brought for the first time a true sense of religiousness to the Earth.’
Bhagwan claimed never to plan his talks, and he was proud of proclaiming he had never read the books his disciples compiled from his discourses. (By 1981 there were already hundreds. ‘Thank God I don’t have to read them all!’ he joked once.) His discourses came not from a set of beliefs, he said, but from the moment. He was a voice for existence in its manifold forms. Like Walt Whitman (whom Bhagwan would later claim was the only American saint he could find) Bhagwan delighted in self-contradiction. ‘The truth,’ he liked to say, echoing Gautama Buddha: ‘is that which works.’ ‘I want Gautama the Buddha and Zorba the Greek to come closer and closer; my disciple has to be Zorba-the-Buddha. Man is body-soul together. Both have to be satisfied.’
For people like my mother, brought up in a strict Catholic family, Bhagwan’s permissive mysticality was a revelation. She’d swapped negation for indulgence; restraint for surrender; poverty, chastity, and obedience for life, love, and laughter. She’d found Bhagwan. She could have her path to enlightenment, with sex, drugs, and rock and roll along the way.
In a series of talks given in 1968, two years after he took up public speaking—in the same month my mother and father met—Bhagwan gave a series of talks called ‘From Sex to Superconsciousness’. ‘If you want to know the elemental truth about love,’ he said, ‘the first requisite is to accept the sacredness of sex in the same way as you accept God’s existence: with an open heart.’ By the time Bhagwan moved into his Ashram in 1974, sex was a big part of his message. ‘Sex transformed becomes divine,’ he said, often. He called the contraceptive pill ‘the greatest revolution since fire was discovered’. ‘It has made man enjoy sex for the first time as a man,’ he said, ‘not like other animals who are in a biological bondage.’ There were other gurus who preached restraint—painful yoga positions, diets, hard wooden floors. Bhagwan’s disciples were free to indulge. Next to the skinny and anaemic disciples of more ascetic and renunciative gurus, Bhagwan’s sannyasins looked like Californian skiers: bronzed, fit, energetic, lively, and attractive. Bhagwan preached being sexual without being possessive; the aim, he said, was to enter into sexuality as an indulgence with the aim of learning about attachments in order to move on. To his disciples he seemed like a sexual connoisseur, who knew all the ecstasies and the agonies of sexual exploration. He was not a celibate master. Throughout his time at the Ashram women disciples were called into ‘special Darshans’ with Bhagwan, a ritual which seemed natural to his disciples, and which was considered a great honour by the women he chose (although they were asked by Laxmi to keep these Darshans a secret). Laxmi’s then assistant, Sheela, would occasionally boast to other members of the inner circle about how Bhagwan liked her to sit at his feet while he played with her breasts. His disciples loved it. As children most of them had been told sex was ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’; now they swung the other way. Sleeping around—‘moving with your energy’—was the norm. The sexual licentiousness didn’t conform to Western boundaries; it was common at the Ashram to see girls in their early teens paired off with bearded Swamis older than their fathers.
Bhagwan became famous for suggesting his disciples start relationships—‘You will sleep with Divya, move in together’—and for breaking them—‘Satyamurti is not ready for a relationship right now. You will move to Kailash to work there: she will stay here.’ The sannyasins would usually do as he said. Sometimes they would fall in love; sometimes they would just live together, bemused. If it didn’t work out they would eventually go back to Bhagwan and he would say: ‘OK, never mind, drop it.’ ‘This is my effort,’ he said in Darshan in 1978, ‘to make you aware. That’s why I give you so many situations. Sometimes I force you to be alone and sometimes I force you to be with someone. Sometimes if you are not moving into a love affair I will almost push you into one. Sometimes I will pull you out. It is just to give you many situations in which you can see how the mind functions, how the mechanism functions.’ He often told his Darshan audiences that their relationship with him was the primary relationship; all others were secondary.
Bhagwan was a long-time admirer of Gurdjieff—the crazed Armenian mystic who was a fervent believer in the revelatory properties of apple brandy. (Gurdjieff, too, loved to take risks; he eventually drove his car into a wall at 100 mph ‘to experience death’, only to survive and retire to the quiet life.) Gurdjieff was best known for his belief in work without reward. He would have his followers build a house and then, as soon as it was finished, knock it down. Following the model of Gurdjieff’s beliefs, Bhagwan’s sannyasins were encouraged to see work as an opportunity for meditation; to focus on the task itself, so that no one grew too attached to the end result. At any moment every sannyasin could expect to receive the instruction to move ‘at once’ to the kitchens or to gardening or to construction. In the ‘Unofficial News from Poona’ gossip column in the April 1980 issue of the Rajneesh Buddhafield European Newsletter, one Swami recounted his first exposure to the ‘mystery school’ of the Ashram’s work ethic.
On Enlightenment Day I worked in the kitchen. I spent hours sorting a whole tub of strawberries into piles of good and bad ones only to have someone mix them all together again—three times. Then I made an urn of tea, and having made it was told to pour it down the sink. I enjoy it all tremendously!
As part of my mother’s training she was sent each week to work in a different part of the Ashram administration. She spent her first week in the filing department, where, in a row of tall filing cabinets against the back wall, index cards were filed, along with summaries of letters written asking for sannyas, and any other information on each disciple. As letters were received, my mother saw some of the women in the main office writing comments on these cards; she couldn’t resist looking up her own. On the back, scribbled in the wide margin, there was just a single-phrase summary of her first heartfelt letter to Bhagwan: ‘Flowery blurb’. She spent the day in fury, but she got over it. For the rest of that week she amused herself by looking up the cards of everyone she knew. The second week she spent in the books and tapes department, where she helped organize the stream of new recordings and publications. Bhagwan’s every word was transcribed and published; by 1981 there were over three hundred books already in circulation. There were just as many tapes of his discourses. (Even though he believed history was an illusion, he clearly believed in posterity; if the recording equipment stopped, Bhagwan would pause the lecture until power could be restored.) The books and tapes department arranged mail-order sales of these discourses—a major source of income for the Ashram.
Each morning my mother would remind me where she would be working that day. In the evening I would go looking for her among the Ashram administrative huts.
In those days Bhagwan gave each visitor a welcome Darshan. He would smile and ask you a few questions. (‘How are you? Hmm. Good, good,’ or sometimes, ‘I have been waiting for you.’) He would lower a mala round the necks of those taking sannyas for the first time (‘This is the mechanism of contact—from now on I will be with you . . . hold the locket, and I will be there . . .’). Then he placed his thumb on your forehead. At that moment it was usual to have a photo taken. On 19 January 1980, two months after my mother came home to Leeds from her first visit to the Ashram in Pune, my father went to India, too. That’s my father in the photo, receiving his mala and his new name. Like me, John chose to keep a handle on his former self; from then on he would be known as Swami Deva John.
At the Darshans, sannyasins returning
to the West would be urged to come back soon, or, if they could not return, to start Rajneesh centres back home—small orange oases in the West. On special occasions—Bhagwan’s birthday; the day of his enlightenment; Guru Purnima Day (‘Guru’s full moon’)—a lucky few disciples would receive gifts from Bhagwan: a straw hat; a pen; a plastic toy that laughed when you pressed it; a polished wooden Bhagwan Box, never to be opened, inside which was one of Bhagwan’s hairs or a toenail. The luckiest sannyasins would receive one of Bhagwan’s trademark monogrammed Yves St Laurent hand-towels, which he draped over his arm for every lecture. Many sannyasins loved the towels; they made him look like a spiritual prizefighter. (One morning in Buddha Hall he announced, to everyone’s disappointment, that he would be ‘dropping’ the towels—a further step in his letting go of physical attachments. Through gossip from the inner circle, however, another reason emerged. Vivek, Bhagwan’s girlfriend, had grown tired of searching his apartment for the towels, which he stuffed down the backs of radiators. She issued Bhagwan an ultimatum: either he stopped using so many, or he could wash them himself.)
For the remainder of each Darshan, Bhagwan faced each sannyasin in turn to answer questions submitted in writing to Laxmi or Vivek earlier in the day. People would ask Bhagwan about relationship difficulties, therapeutic issues, or emotional blocks in their quest for spiritual growth. The ‘Darshan Diaries’, regularly issued transcriptions of these intimate evening sessions, were my mother and her friends’ favourite source of gossip and Bhagwan’s advice.
Bhagwan—I felt in the Tao group that something started to open in me, something that has been buried all my life. It was so beautiful, lovely, and I loved crying. I wish I could stay open.
You will. You have come from many doors to that openness. You have to find many ways to that openness, then it will become more and more available. You will be able to remain open, mm? Good.
Bhagwan—In the group Santosh said that I enjoy being a loser. It is true—but I don’t know what to do about it.
Enjoy and be a loser! [Laughter] He is right but there is no need to create any trouble for yourself.
Bhagwan—I am returning to my home in Majorca, and would like to set up a centre there. Can you give me a name?
This will be the name: Pallas. It is an Indian flower, a very beautiful flower. It grows in the forest, a wild flower. It grows as a big forest . . . the whole forest of pallas, and when it flowers you cannot see anything—just red flowers all over the forest . . . almost as if the forest is on fire because all leaves disappear and there are only flowers and flowers. And that’s what I am creating—an orange flame.
In the spring of 1980, as well as his daily discourses, Bhagwan began a new kind of private evening communion: Energy Darshan. In Energy Darshan, Bhagwan did not talk. Instead, in a crescendo of music and flashing coloured lights, Bhagwan sat and stared at each sannyasin in turn. Around them, ten or twelve women—his mediums—would dance and whirl, roll their heads and wave their arms. (Bhagwan soon announced that only big-breasted women could hope to become mediums. ‘I have been tortured by smallbreasted women for many lives,’ he said. ‘I will not do it in this life!’ Two weeks later, as if to make the peace, he chose three of the slimmest women in the Ashram as his ‘special mediums’, to dance at the front of the stage.) In Energy Darshan, as the mediums whirled and the music roared and the lights flashed, Bhagwan pressed his thumb onto his sannyasins’ foreheads two at a time or moved his hand up their backs. People closed their eyes and sat silently, or, as they felt Bhagwan’s energy flow through them, they would twitch and shake. Sometimes, at the peak of this frenzy, Bhagwan shone a pen-sized flashlight in their eyes.
Energy Darshan began each evening at precisely the same time. By then my mother and I, usually accompanied by Viruchana and his mum, had made our way to Buddha Hall. Every evening all the sannyasins in Pune, thousands of them, gathered together in the hot night in the huge marble-floored auditorium just inside the Ashram gates for Music Group. Everyone took off their shoes and sandals, slotted them into the wooden racks under the hand-painted and varnished sign—leave your shoes and minds outside. When the racks were full, as they soon were, a small mountain of shoes would pile up on either side of the wooden steps. We walked barefoot under the eaves of Buddha Hall.
Sannyasins stood and talked, kids ran around. Some brought tambourines, others flutes or guitars, and soon in the centre of the hall a band struck up, playing Bhagwan music, old Sufi songs alongside music of devotion written by sannyasins for Bhagwan, until the hall was packed full of men and women, all dressed in orange and maroon, some singing, some standing and swaying, arms up, heads rolling in the traditional spiritual figure-of-eight; some locked in long, spiritual embrace; others kneeling or lying back on rush mats laid out on the floor. I sat on the floor or lay with my head in my mother’s lap. I loved the cool of the marble against my back. Then, at nine o’clock, at precisely the moment Bhagwan began his Energy Darshan and placed his thumb on the first sannyasin forehead, a switch was flipped inside his Lao Tzu sanctuary, and the whole Ashram blacked out. The Ashram was the main source of electric light in the area, so when the Ashram lights went out, the lights went out.
Sometimes I would already be asleep, curled on the rush matting, or resting my head on my mother’s knee. But blackout was my favourite time of the day. I would always try to keep my eyes open. When I managed to stay awake until the lights went out, what I liked to do was crawl away from my mother and off into the darkness. I felt my way over legs and arms and torsos, out into the pitch black, towards the other kids. We would meet up in ones or twos, then call out until the groups grew and spread; together we would climb through the slats on the side of Buddha Hall and run to play out in the warm Ashram night. For the whole hour of blackout, we would tumble on the grass, run around in the darkness near the gates that led to the rest of the world. Then, just before the lights came back on, we would hide.
When the lights came on people would continue to sway, some still singing, some sprawled on the floor, some face down or resting on one another. Then, slowly, as people made their way home the crowds would dissipate. Time and time again, day in, day out, my mother would pick her way out of Buddha Hall, through the huge crowds of people sifting through great mountains of shoes; moving slowly, weary from a day on her feet filing cards or sorting out tapes, and she would call out my name. ‘Ti-iim?’ she’d yell, hoping this time I wouldn’t force her to look for me all over again in all the usual places. She’d team up with some of the other mothers to track us down. Eventually, when we’d almost had enough of hiding, they would find us. I wasn’t quite quick enough to duck down when she looked in my direction, or one of us would giggle too loudly. My mother would see my face peering up through the wooden slats in the floor of the auditorium, or peeking through the thick bamboo in the bushes opposite the stairs to Buddha Hall. She would pick me up and carry me, already nearly asleep, out through the gates of the Ashram and back to our little shared apartment.
Soon after we arrived at the Ashram, my mother met up with two friends of hers from Leeds—Rajhansa and Attaraj. They had a spare room in their whitewashed apartment a quarter of a mile from the Ashram; we moved in. When my mother had a weekend off we hung out in the apartment. As she and her friends gossiped I played around them: chased geckos out across the balcony walls, because someone had told me if you grabbed them their tails came off. When the geckos got away I traced my fingers along the peeled white paint on the balcony, ripped up in crazy shapes that reminded me of the continents in my father’s atlas. Sometimes my mum took me for walks, between tall palm trees spaced twenty feet apart, along long avenues of whitewashed apartment blocks. They all looked the same; I had trouble remembering which block was ours. Back in our shared flat, as they gossiped and smoked beedies, I lay back and watched the huge ceiling fan whoosh rhythmically above our heads. If you tried hard enough, I discovered, you could hang a toy monkey on the fan blades. After whirling round once or twic
e, though, your monkey would fly off through a surprising gap between the wall and the roof into the showers next door.
Sujan was still living back in Leeds. After a month in Pune, my mother had a regular thing going with another man called Nutan. She began to stay at his hut, while I slept in my mosquito net in Rajhansa and Attaraj’s spare room.
One morning I woke up; Rajhansa and Attaraj were still asleep. Rather than wake them, I picked up my soft toys and a pencil and made my own way to school. I can clearly remember that walk into the Pune morning. The avenues of palm trees were unusually quiet—no birds—the sky bright orange, no mango-pulp sellers by the side of the road. I tried to find a rickshaw to flag down and take me to school (‘Bus, baba! Bus!’). Most mornings their hand-operated bike horns honked everywhere, but today the air was silent. I wandered down the road. Finally a sannyasin passed the other way, and he asked me where I was going. When I said I was going to school he told me it was four in the morning. He asked me where my mother was. I said I didn’t know, I was looking for her, too. He asked where I was staying. I said, with Rajhansa and Attaraj. He took me by the hand and led me back to their apartment.