Bhagat: The Lightning Doesn't Ask You before Striking You
The question of whether to stay with one´s Master after he has left his body or to look for a new Master is one of the central issues or maybe the central issue for a disciple. And looking at the many aspects and experiences my friends have shared with me, it´s beyond right or wrong.
I am still with Osho. I mean, I have not chosen to sit with or work with another Master up to now. I could feel something important happened to many of my friends with other Masters now after Osho, but I didn´t feel struck by anyone, and looking for one seems ridiculous to me.
Maybe I can make this more clear by telling you about my meeting with Osho.
I had just participated in my very first group a breathing group in a nonsannyas place in 1982. It was a good experience, and afterwards I knew that there was something for me in groups. I also knew I had played safe, so I booked a Primal group for just two weeks later, at Sneha Rajneesh Sannyas Ashram in the Bavarian countryside. I went for it in the group, and it rolled over me like a huge wave. I didn´t know what to think and what not to think, but I felt a big relief.
After the group finished, I walked up to the groupleader, innocently unaware of his signals to leave him alone (I realized later that I had noticed something but hadn´t known what to make of it) to hug him and thank him. He opened up immediately; he beamed at me, we hugged, and it was as if lightning had struck me he was gone and Osho was standing there in front of me with His mischievous compassionate smile. I was in a state of no-mind. There was no thinking, no feeling there was nothing. And the only thing I knew in that moment was, I have to take sannyas. It had happened already, in that very moment. It was not me thinking, or deciding, or hoping, or anything like that "something" had done what it wanted to do. It was up to me to either go with it or fight with it. And it was clear for me from that very moment, although I walked around the hot pot for two more weeks before I opened my mouth and asked for sannyas. I took sannyas with blue jeans on it was still red and mala at that time and only later heard how many people were sent back because of not wearing red or other reasons.
What had happened was so much out of my known world, but there was no question of saying no.
Osho had hit me.
How could He do that? How did He know about me? How did He manage it? I have no idea how a Master does his work; I can only see that He did it. It was not me doing anything at any moment. And looking back at how I was, I just wonder how He managed to get through all my layers of protection to reach me at such a depth that I asked to become a sannyasin of some Indian guru without any previous experience in that direction.
Now it´s 18 years later. Osho left His body 10 years ago, and He is still my Master. Not because I chose to stay with Him, but because that´s how it is. No other Master has struck me what to do? It was not me "doing it" 18 years ago and I can´t do it now either, although in certain moments it feels very uncomfortable that Osho is still my Master. Wouldn´t it be easier, more social, more open, to go with friends and sit with this or that newly enlightened one, to have somebody sitting there in front again?
I went to meetings with Sogyal Rinpoche, whose book I love, and enjoyed his presence as I usually always do when I meet Tibetan people. I always feel at home, and an inner peace emanates from their presence. They are friends, precious ones, from many lives I guess, but none of them has touched this layer in me.
But it is an incredibly delicate tightrope walk, after what He Himself has said about being with a Master versus being part of an organized religion. As coordinator of an Osho Meditation Center, I communicate with all the "official" Osho institutions, and many times I don´t know at all what to think about what is happening. I only know one thing: He is in me, and I can only go along my way, alert as much as possible, taking whatever happens as an opportunity to grow.
So that one moment of being struck by the lightning of an enlightened Master has determined the course of my life since then. I have lived in the sannyas world since that time, sharing with others what I got from Him over all those years and no end in sight. My mind sometimes really goes bananas when I look at the world, and at my life, and at what I am doing in this world. It takes trust, again and again, to say yes, and to say yes again. It seems this lightning has given me a lot of energy, although I can´t feel or recognize it directly.
I remember an old Sufi story:
A Sufi Master Jalaluddin Rumi once took his disciples to a field. There were eight holes in the field and no hole had any water; the whole field was wasted. The disciples asked, "Master, why have you brought us here?"
He said, "To teach you something. This farmer wants to dig a well. He digs eight feet, ten feet, then he gets fed up with it and he thinks that this place is not right; he is bored so he starts digging at some other place. He has done this work the whole year round he has destroyed the whole field and not a single hole has become a well. Now if he had dug at the same spot that well would have been one hundred feet deep." Jalaluddin said to his disciples, "Remember this the same applies to the inner world too." (This Is It, Chapter 2)
I remember Osho saying that it is the Master who calls the disciple; the disciple doesn´t choose the Master. This is definitely true for me, and when I look at how much I got from Osho, how He has opened my being, how could I not be grateful and devoted to Him? Whatever I can share with people, it´s a small thank you to Him for what I received.
If something happens for my friends in the presence of other Masters, who am I to judge it? If it happened for me with someone else, I hope I would have the courage once more to go with it. I feel I am standing here with open, empty hands, and I can only walk along the path of my life as it happens. And I feel deeply grateful to Osho.
The name He has given to me, Swami Alok Bhagat, means "a follower on the Path of Love." Indians usually have a shorter translation: "devotee."
What I have understood so far is this: It´s not about the person to whom one feels devoted he is an excuse it´s about the experience itself. But the experience happens when you find your Master.
shangri.la (at) sannyas-on.net
