This is the story of how Veena met Osho, in Bombay, way back in 1971 before the world had heard of him.
Osho with Veena (and Shyam) in his room in Woodlands, Bombay
Meeting the Master – Part 1
"An ancient saying says: When the disciple is ready, the master appears. The appearance of the master may look to the disciple as if he has found him, but it is just the opposite " it is always the master who finds the disciple. His ways of finding are very subtle, indirect; his ways are exactly the same as the ways of god."
Osho, The Sacred Yes, chapter 7
The sun slips below the horizon, outlines clean and sharp. The sky is reflected multi-coloured in the still clear water. Pollution hasn’t hit this place at this time.
It is Calengute Beach, Goa, India, 1971.
I am sitting cross-legged on the sand trying to meditate on the uncomprehended mystery of everything, when to my left I notice three Western men gesticulating energetically in my direction. Ho-hum, allow me to try and comprehend in peace, please. Soon they are close. Would I be in their movie tomorrow? They are an Italian film crew making a documentary on hippies in India and they are shooting the opening shots tomorrow. Fantasies of a good meal supersede fantasies of universal meanings and, having agreed on a suitable remuneration, I arrange to meet them at sunrise tomorrow. And have I got a boyfriend? Yes. What is the colour of his hair? Blonde, like mine. They are overjoyed and request his presence too.
At sunrise I find myself seated on a motorbike behind Toby on the back of a truck. Makes filming the ride easier. Much as we try to explain that hippies don’t journey around India on motor bikes (things will change, many years later), we find that the movie-makers aren’t interested in the slightest in what hippies actually do in India; they are interested only in their own imaginings. The wedding scene later in the day bears no resemblance to anything I have seen on my travels.
Sitting around bored as lights are positioned and shots discussed, I notice two very beautiful women – one really strikingly beautiful – observing the scene in general and me in particular. The striking one comes over to me and questions me about things. She is much more intelligent than the film-makers and a quite interesting communication ensues. Her name is Leena and she has come to India to visit a guru – as has just about everybody – but wanted also to visit the already famous Goa. The film-makers had been filming the guru in Bombay and she had decided to join their entourage.
Having grilled me and Toby about our present lifestyles, Leena starts to talk about her guru. I’ve heard the story a million times over. The guru craze is the number one focus at this time – everyone has his or her favourite. In addition, there are the born-again Christians preaching under every palm tree, the junkies shooting up in every bamboo hut, and the health addicts downing the latest ayurvedic formula – all extolling the great virtues of their particular path. I’m pretty sick of it all. I’ve been in India for nearly a year now and have seen and heard too much. It’s time I left!
Leena tells me to come and visit her guru.
"He’s different," she says.
'Yeah, yeah," I reply, "everyone says that."
Then she makes a surprising offer. She tells me she will buy me a first class ticket to fly to Bombay to visit this guy. Wow, this is major coercion – I refuse indignantly. Toby, perhaps swayed by the beauty of the women, is a little more co-operative and takes the name and address of the guru’s place in Bombay. The day ends. Leena departs.
A few weeks later, a strange reality impinges on our meditative spheres, as India and Pakistan decide to go to war. Hard to get one’s head around this one as ‘peace and love’ are the order of the day in our Goan paradise. I had arranged to return to England via the same overland route as I had travelled to get here – this time in a land rover with some English guys, rather than the much slower, less comfortable method of thumb and dilapidated bus previously used. With the border closed this now becomes impossible, and I decide to buy Toby’s air ticket back to London as he wants to go on to Bali. His passport is in Delhi and I have left stuff there, so we decide to go to Delhi together then return to Bombay from which airport we will fly off in opposite directions.
On the primitive but peaceful Goa/Bombay boat (19 rupees, third class, deck only, three days and two nights) we journey to an eerie, blacked-out Bombay. After a night in the infamous Rex Hotel we book a train ride to Delhi leaving that evening, Toby buys a ticket to Bangkok and then confirms his seat on a flight to London on December 24th which I will use. That brings us to nearly lunchtime and there is nothing left to do until the train leaves in the evening.
"Let’s go and see this guru," is Toby’s bright contribution to the situation. Many objections on my part are over-ruled as he flags a taxi and directs the driver to somewhere called Woodlands.
Suddenly I shout, "Stop! This is it."
Both the driver and Toby are surprised.
"How do you know?" Toby asks.
I don’t know but I am staring at a huge high-rise apartment block. Yes, this is the place. (Much later I wonder what made me say that). Walking up the stairs, I’m still grumbling. ’Gurus don"t live in high-rises," I mutter.
The door is open and a tiny little Indian lady dressed in orange greets us but says we can’t see the guru for a while as he is sleeping. I grab my chance and make a quick attempt to exit. "Good," I say, "I’m hungry. Let’s go and find some food."
The little lady is quicker and grabs my hand.
"I’ll give you some food," she says, and draws us both into a large book-lined room. There are two Western guys sitting around looking holy and they talk to us. One spouts a whole lot of spiritual bullshit but the other calmly explains the meditation technique – dynamic meditation – that this guru has developed. I’m interested. It is unlike anything I have come across, and to my psychologically oriented mind it makes a lot of sense.
After awhile I escape to look at the book titles while Toby absorbs more spiritual indoctrination. Perusing the titles I’m impressed. This is good subject matter. I long to open a volume or two but the glass-covered shelves are locked.
Finally the little lady brings us some very nice-tasting food and some time later reappears to usher us down a corridor and into a cool, green-coloured, very simply furnished room. There is a man sitting in a chair.
We sit on a kind of couch to his right – first Toby, then someone else, then me. As I enter the man says, "Ah, the lady with the rings has come." I am surprised. I have rings on all my fingers but he sounds like he was expecting me. I conclude that Leena told him about our meeting in Goa. He then speaks to Toby and immediately I am quite shaken. Toby had been a heroin addict for a few years and had then switched to the purity, as he thought, of living only on fruit and water. Two years of this had given him an incredible beauty, with smooth translucent skin and shining golden hair – but little or no energy. He often slept for fourteen hours a day.
Bhagwan, as the man introduces himself (it means ’the blessed one’ in the Hindu tradition), tells Toby he is on a death trip and is trying to eradicate himself. Having been with him for some time I have already perceived something like this, but this Bhagwan has zeroed into Toby’s innermost subconscious in about two minutes flat. My degree is in psychology so my first label of Bhagwan is: 'this is the greatest psychologist I have come across.’
He discusses religious philosophy with the next guy and my second label forms: ‘this is the greatest intellect I have come across in my lifetime.’
Then he looks at me.
"And what are you looking for?" he asks.
I draw myself up, hands primly in my lap and haughtily reply, "I’m not looking for anything. I am quite happy as I am, thank you."
"Good," he says with a chuckle, "then much can happen."
I am affronted at this wisdom being directed at me and make no response. He then asks me to come to a meditation camp he is holding in January. "Sorry," I say, "my flight home is booked for the 24th December."
"Then cancel your flight," he says.
His assurance in commanding me thus is much more than my rebel female nature will allow and I state that this is quite impossible and not to be considered. He raises his hand in a gesture of OK, and soon we leave - me with much relief.
That night begins a week of hellish indecision such as I have never before experienced – and never have again. Toby and I sleep on the upper berths in the second class carriage on the train to Delhi. A few hours into sleep, I awake to the strangest sensation of being surrounded by softly pulsating light, a sensation of floating in soft clouds and a feeling of unreal, quiet ecstasy the likes of which is hitherto unknown. Despite the beauty, I am alarmed and stretch out my now very ethereal arm to shake Toby awake.
"Hey," I said, "something strange is happening. Can you have an acid flashback after two months?"
The only experience I can relate this sensation to was a few ecstatic moments caused by some hallucinogenic substance I had taken some short time ago.
(The sixties were the age of drug experimentation and, as a child of my time, I had, of course, tried some of the stuff going around. Very quickly I had decided that it was not for me as, although new visions were certainly presented, I figured they could not be given much credence as the stimulus came from something outside of me. And my true reality could only come from within.)
Slowly I drift back into a soft sleep and awake to the harsh reality of the chaos of the main Delhi train station. We find the small hotel I had previously stayed in and set about our business – but, there is an awful change. Something within me sets up a pounding, never-ceasing refrain: you are not going home, you are not going home. My mind counters constantly: you are going home, you are going home. And I can shut neither of them up. Within a few days I am a wreck. Split into two inner warring factions, I understand madness.
By the time we make the return journey to Bombay, sanity has not returned. I am due to fly out of Bombay that night and I go to cash my traveller’s cheques at American Express to pay Toby for the use of his air ticket. Then I will confirm the flight at the travel agency in the same building. Toby goes off to take care of his ticket and returns to find me sitting on the American Express steps, surrounded as usual by an interested crowd of Indian spectators, cheques uncashed, sobbing loudly. "I can’t do it," I splutter. "I can’t catch this bloody plane!"
Toby elbows his way through the crowd, hauls me up and sits me down inside the American Express. He assures me he isn’t concerned about getting the money and can still use the ticket at a later date. Deciding then to allow fate to dictate my future course, we agree that if the ticket remains valid when I ring the airline and asked to cancel the flight, I will stay in India; if the airline says the proposed cancellation is too late and the ticket will no longer be valid, I will use it and leave.
It is 3.00pm. The plane takes off at 9.00pm. I phone the airline and ask the question.
"No problem," says the staff member, "the ticket will still be valid. You can fly whenever you like."
The Master has won.