Adri
Adri – from soldier to meditator
Being born and raised in Israel inevitably means time in the Israeli army – 4 long years of it for Adri. Israel, from the point of view of the man sitting in the army jeep, is a rough and rugged place although there is a strange beauty in the unavoidable connection with the land, the desert sands, the Dead Sea and the winter snow on the barren hills.
But when his compulsory army stint was over, Adri knew he had to leave. As his mother had moved to the USA when he was still a child, she was the natural person to visit. And so life began anew in the good old US of A and Adri ended up at Cornell University – one of the 7 top Ivy League universities in the States – studying hotel and restaurant management, cooking (his main interest) included.
Adri, Milada and Manartha cooking for a celebration in the Croydon Hall kitchen
Then, in his final year, he signed up for an elective course on Indian Culture and Meditation. He read of Ramana and did a yoga retreat. Life changed direction! He describes what happened as a total shift in energy, a total change of vision. And a total certainty that he had to go to India.
In the last semester of his course, the big companies descended on the students offering them prestigious jobs with fat pay checks and Adri landed a good one. But he told his prospective employers that he first wanted 6 months off to travel – and took a plane to India.
He had no idea where he was going to go or what he was going to do but in Mumbai he met some really nice people and decided to travel with them. Poona was the first stop. He had heard only two things about Osho and the Resort: one from an Israeli soldier that Poona was a good place to get girls and the second, from the teacher of the elective yoga course, that Poona was full of Germans and Japanese and there was no real meditation there. Adri spent the first week in Poona outside the Resort gates before going in during the second week... And only coming out again two years later despite his initial impression that the place was ’an international loony bin‘! People seemed happy so why not stay with it, and, anyway, Kundalini was ‘doing it’ for him.
Existence helped out by providing a small inheritance for him to live off and so he stayed, and stayed and stayed. In the beginning he said he couldn‘t really feel Osho but after doing Mystic Rose five months later he knew it was time to take sannyas.
After two years, the money had run out so he returned to Florida. He describes this period as being very tough. He felt he had gone through such a process of transformation that it seemed impossible to integrate into the way of life he was now confronted with. I can really sympathise. With all of Osho‘s help and the support of our fellow sannyasins it was often excruciatingly difficult to integrate into the normal ways of the world. For a deeply sincere new sannyasin without all that support, life must have been pretty traumatic. Adri stuck with it, however, and again existence held out a helping hand in the form of sannyasins and dolphins! Wandering around Florida he met Sandesh and Daya who were running a project called Wild Quest which provided people with an opportunity to meet and meditate with dolphins. They offered him a job.
Adri chatting with Veena over a cup of tea
Working with them gave him enough money for trips to Poona and also led to a meeting with Amlas (now the director of Wild Quest) who suggested that he contact Croydon Hall where he could live with a meditative community and go deeper on his path. After six months in Poona he followed her suggestion and arrived here in Somerset. That was two years ago and Croydon Hall is home for the moment. Living and working – and meditating – here he also has the freedom to travel to India during the winter and in fact leaves this week for a few months in Poona – or wherever!
Adri says that he feels totally taken care of and is aware of a deep gratefulness inside. Through all the many different phases of his eventful life things happened as they should and he is now learning to just let go and trust that everything will happen by itself and that there is nothing he has to do except surrender to it all, relax and enjoy.
Text and photos by Veena - November 2006
