Written by: Sudas
My first encounter with Sagarpriya was way back in 1986, at the Osho Risk Center in Denmark where she was leading a three week training in Psychic Massage. The situation was quite novel for many of us, and Osho Risk was barely 6 months old with lots of structural developments still in process. The kitchen was not quite in place, but the group room, called The Mandir, was in good shape as well as the sleeping accomodation and bathrooms for the participants.
I had never met Sagarpriya before, but already at this stage she was a reputed and accompished group leader, who had been part of the staff of Pune 1, under Oshos’s guidance, as well as some years on the staff of the Therapy Multiversity during Osho’s time in Oregon. In other words she was quiet well known, and firmly established in her therapeutic field. Her book ”Psychic Massage”, first published in 1975, was a trailblazer in the world of bodywork.
I had been living at Risk for a couple of months and was helping out wherever needed. During the training I was in the kitchen. We were a group of friends pitching in and doing our best to make everything as comfortable as possible for the group, even if we weren’t all experts in our field of engagement. The kitchen was on the ground floor of the main house, and Sagarpriya had a room upstairs. At that time I enjoyed to play a lot of music while I worked, and I also liked to play the music rather loud. We were around 40 people at Risk for the duration of the training, so we didn’t necessarily all interact with each other or know much about one another. And I happily turned up the volume when I was in the kitchen, and that was when I first became aware of Sagarpiya properly. In no time at all she would come down to the kitchen and request me firmly to turn the music down. I guess I had difficulty in understanding that others might not find the music as charming or as uplifting as myself, and a part of me resented being told what to do.
A kind of small battle ensued for some days, and she became more firm in her demand for me to turn off the music. It became a kind of silly protest from my side, and whenever I would see her leaving the group room I would get the music to run a little higher, not too much as to be a total disturbance, but just enough to claim my territorial right to play music in the ktichen as I worked.
I knew I was being childish but somehow I couldn’t stop myself. At the same time I felt unhappy that I was indulging in such immature behaviour. At bottom I was envious of the participants in the group, and less satisfied with my own role in the kitchen.
Osho Risk is surrounded by beautiful nature; there are many fields and rolling hills with lots of trees and small forests. And it was the month of August with ripening corn and golden sunsets. Everything was in full bloom.I would often go for a walk in the surrounds, and wonder at why I could be so irritated over something like the volume of music and who gets to decide and those kind of things. And why had I become so antagonistic to Sagarpriya, a person I really knew very little about.
One evening, I was sitting outside in the courtyard, and Sagarpriya came out from the main house to make her way for the evening session in the group room. Instead of going directly to the group room, she walked over to me and stood in front of me. But something was different. She put her hand in a pocket and took out some sweets and asked me if I would enjoy to have them. My mind came to a standstill as I accepted the sweets, and thanked her in my state of confusion. And she smiled at me, turned around and moved on to the group room.
From that moment on, something changed in our relating, and I could no longer be mean or irritating with someone who had made such a simple and elegant gesture. She had obviously found the right moment to connect with me, something she chose consciously. I was affected by the consciousness of that gesture, by the way she reached out to me. And at the same time I understood the cycle of my own behaviour. What stayed with me was her way of staying with herself and her giving me the sweets was her invitation to me to stay with myself. That was her gift in that moment.
Needless to stay the music battle came to an end.