Love, Edward

Inner Journeys

by Edward Butterworth

Oct 14. I am back in the deck chair by the pool at Osho's Ashram. It's dark green and three men with bald heads are swimming: billiard balls. I have been to three events in the auditorium. Now I have a sense of the internal form. The roof of the auditorium is in the form of a square pyramid supported at each corner by a massive pillar. Outside, it is smooth black marble. Inside, the floor of polished green marble tiles is the size of half a football field.

For the evening meeting, the main event, everyone must wear a white robe (I bought a used one the night before and washed it by hand). A certain atmosphere is created when there are about 300 people, all in white robes under a pyramid ceiling shimmering with coloured lights. “Celestial” is the best descriptor I can think of: God and His angels meeting in Heaven, except that here, God is not embodied.

When I arrive there is music and everyone is dancing – some wildly, some sedately. This is the first of the “meditations” this evening. In this and the other sessions (one is 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.!) there is shaking, yelling, speaking gibberish, rapid breathing, jumping, silent sitting and watching a video of Osho speaking. These things I generally appreciate, recognizing that their intent is to relax tensions, build energy and facilitate self-awareness. In the video Osho mentions the eclectic sources of his methodology, says he does not believe in withdrawing from the world to seek enlightenment, tells the tragic story of Wilhelm Reich and acknowledges his indebtedness to him. “Zorba the Buddha” characterizes his attitude, simultaneously seeking the serenity of the Buddha and the passion for life of Zorba.

I relate to Osho as a self-directed spiritual eclectic. I have to acknowledge that he knew a lot, but he had the temerity to set himself above Jesus and the Buddha. As Reich before him, however, he also came to a tragic end for the same transgression: flaunting taboos and powerful, vested interests in promoting healthy sexuality as the source of life-energy. (Reich was one of the inner circle of psychotherapists around Freud. He described himself as a sexologist. He wrote that repression of human sexuality was life-denying and existed because it served the interests of church and state control. He developed and practiced methods of “healing” which led to his imprisonment in the US for practicing medicine without a license. He died in prison, alone and ostracized.)

I keep seeing old guys with long white beards and caps walking by: Osho clones?

11:00 a.m. A beige marble plaza, 200 feet long, surrounded by trees and stands of huge bamboo, leaves continually fluttering down. Recorded dance music. Fifty people, ages 17 to 70, dancing across the whole, each one separately, no eye contact. In participation my spirits rise. This is experiential learning, direct to the body, which makes sense to me. It will do me no harm and may even do me some good. The only thing is that, even if it does me good, how will I ever know? I still do not agree with Osho's vision of Utopia as a gated community, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate some of his other offerings.

I have made friends with a woman from Brazil (not really close) who danced with me on our introductory morning. Otherwise, typically, I don't find it easy to connect with the other participants. Is it because I'm so introverted? I guess I would meet people if I took one of the various meditation workshops, but they are way over my budget and I'm not that committed.

Soap in your ear!

October 16. Back by the pool in Club Med. This morning I was feeling lonely and full of aches and pains – the remainder of my cold probably. Then I went to the laughter “meditation.” One half-hour of laughter, one quarter-hour of dance celebration, one quarter-hour of silence, lying face down on the marble. We were told no tickling, no clowning. Only laughter from the inside. OK to look at one-another. I began by faking it, then started getting into it. But the thing was that I started to feel connected just from the glancing eye contact. With one guy in particular who held eye contact, I had the feeling of seeing through the mask to the soul, to some sort of unity. It reminded me that I have been starved of eye contact in this ashram – everybody is busy looking inward. It's far from the open, sexy place of my anticipation.

In the laughter I remembered an event from the previous evening. Imagine this: I'm walking along this busy street when a scruffy young guy I'm passing says, “Soap in your ear!”  “What?”  “Soap in your ear.”  Without thinking I reach for my ear, but in a flash he's right there sticking his finger in my ear!  I recoil, backing away. He quickly shows me a little metal rod with earwax on the end of it. He stuck that in my ear!?  No, it's bullshit; I had the doctor clean my ears just before I left. I start moving away faster but he is following saying, “Wait, wait, not finished,” and showing me a pair of tweezers with a bit of cotton wool in them. “Get away, go, go!!”  It didn't seem funny at the time but the next morning. Ha!  Add that to the list of scams to watch out for – he was teaching me to stay alert.

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At Osho's Ashram. I am sitting on a reclining beach chair beside the swimming pool. It's in the shape of an "s" and Olympic-size. On this side is a restaurant serving only organic vegetarian food. I have a latte and a chocolate croissant!  On the other three sides are huge exotic trees reaching out over the pool. The walkway around the pool is black slate. I can see about a dozen people, all wearing maroon robes or maroon bathing suits (mandatory). I bought a robe yesterday, used, for $3. (A friendly worker advised me that I could obtain such cheaper outside the gate on the street.) It had holes burnt in it when the previous owner smoked ganga (marijuana). There is a big gong across the pool from me. 

Osho is the current name for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian Guru who died in 1990. Highly controversial, critical of establishment values, revered by many and reviled by many, he described himself as the rich man's guru. He once owned ninety Rolls Royces, gifts from admirers. The Ashram he built in Pune, near Mumbai, is a modern Xanadu of 'stately pleasure domes' in exotic gardens. It is now run as a meditation resort by former followers.  

An association that comes up for me as I type this in a little Internet cafe is from less than two weeks ago. I was sitting with Agi on the balcony of the Sandbar Restaurant, Granville Island, Vancouver. We could see False Creek, full of yachts and flanked on the far side by green-glass towers of apartments, each with a fancy penthouse atop. My comment (Was it cynical?) was "This is a fascist vision of paradise." Everything was luxurious, clean and well run. Everybody was clean. The only poor people were in service roles, and they too were clean!  Some of the washrooms here in Osho's Ashram are done out in marble (executive washrooms?). The great unwashed do not enter here. It is a gated community, a little piece of the dream of Western civilization, transposed. In some ways all of Canada is a gated community: the main way of gaining entry is to have large amounts of money. But Canada is separated from the unwashed by oceans. Here there is just a wall. For those who stay in the fine accommodation here ($50 a night) the illusion must be complete. I go back and forth to my $6 room in the real world. I remember Winston Smith venturing into the slums in Nineteen Eighty Four, finding rough and crude people full of vitality.  

Still fresh, the memory of the serenity I felt in the alleyways of the fishing community in Mumbai. (And the words of Scott Peck – "True community is inclusive as opposed to exclusive.")  Yet all this is about my reaction to the form of this place and my perception of the dissonance between the form and the content. I don't think I have a problem with the content or with the people delivering it. I do contrast the form here with the Zen monastery I visited with Paul in Japan years ago. That was also very beautiful but neither grandiose nor exclusive. If we are all one, from whence arises this exclusivity?  

So my challenge in being here: to be in it but not of it, to wear the robe on the outside but not on the inside. I am here because I like to dance, and the notion of dance meditation makes perfect sense to me. I know that I can most easily get out of my head when I dance. Apart from all the words and the beauty of this place, dance meditation seems to have been Osho's main contribution.  

I step outside and walk to the main street of this suburb. I sit on the edge of the raised sidewalk and talk to the woman who sold me the red robe yesterday. She is about my age and has a certain beauty still. She shows me what she is chewing: betel nut. Her teeth are all red-stained from it. She chews tobacco, too, and some other thing – all mildly psychoactive, I'm sure.  

I'm looking for a cheaper Internet cafe and ask the tout who brought me to my hotel. We sit on the edge of the sidewalk and talk about what is real and what is not. He seems to think there are two good things in the ashram: dance and available women. Yes, well there is a fantasy about Western women that I've come across before. We agree that it is best to let them approach us. He says I should get my hair cut!  

I am still asking, every few yards, for Internet when a grey bearded man, sitting on the sidewalk, says he has a message for me. I sit down again and he reads my palm, does some numerology and tells my fortune. I will live to 85, have a lover called Sandra and be happy. A good performance – deadpan – and I give him 30 cents. He asks for $3.00. I tell him that if I had agreed ahead of time I might have paid that. He shakes my hand.

I wait five minutes to cross the lane-less street. It is jam-packed with cars, buses, trucks, auto-rickshaws, scooters and motorcycles. It feels death defying to walk across. This is the intensity of India, like an ant nest, crowds of people moving in every direction, all available to pass the time of day. Yes, they would like to make some money but, if not, it's OK.

British Columbia's Edward Butterworth knows that travel is more than just seeing the sights. His deep interest in people, culture and politics, as well as his keen aestheticism, gives him a deep appreciation and down-to-earth perspective of life everywhere.

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