Written by Moumina
Recently I was sitting at Osho Risk, having lunch with Yoko, a Japanese friend. As we sat together talking, I asked her about the Sagarpriya book club that Mati had started in Japan, which is described in this newsletter.
Listening to her, I found myself thinking how much I would enjoy being part of such a book club.I have always loved Sagarpriya’s writing. It is clear as a bell, just like her, and carries the grace of the inner world. Then I thought that at least I could pick out excerpts from her work and include them here regularly. My favourite of her books is the second one, The Master’s Touch, written during the years when we were
living with Osho in Pune. It is now out of print but it has so many treasures that I would like to share with you.
Here is the first; From “The Master’s Touch” by Sagarpriya…..
Imagine me sitting in an apartment in Poona, India, in June of 1977. I had become a sannyasin four months before, receiving my new name by mail in the United States. Then I had travelled halfway around the world, alone, to stay in the same town where Osho was living. On this particular day I was sitting in a not-too-lovely Indian living room, doing nothing at all, staring out of the window, when I realized that a
remarkable thing was happening. I felt I was on the inside of life looking out.
Now perhaps that seems not such a remarkable thing to you, but in that moment I was struck by a contrast with my previous experience: throughout my whole life I had been on the outside looking in. As if I had been looking at the world, at people, with a longing in my eye — always the desire to get “in” — and had found that the world was essentially unreachable, unobtainable.
Suddenly this remarkable difference of being “in,” almost as if surrounded by an invisible glass bubble that belonged to me. And beyond its edges, the outside — the room, the trees, the city. Completely gone was the feeling that I had to go “out” to get “in.” Completely gone was the feeling that the city, or the trees, held within themselves something I did not have. It was just a small moment. It only elicited a “Hmm, interesting” in my mind.
Next, picture me (still 1977) sitting in the Chuang Tzu Auditorium, where Osho at that time spoke to his disciples. Out of the many unusual things which happened sitting in Osho’s presence, I want to report just one.
Normally when someone is speaking and I listen, there is a kind of energy that connects me to the speaker, like a link or a bond passing between us two. But with Osho it did not happen that way. Rather, as he spoke, I felt myself filling up with energy from the inside, as if the source of this vitality were myself. There was no
sense of two, only of one — me. I became a presence, a unified circle which expanded wider and wider the longer I sat with him. It seemed to have nothing to do with what he was saying. The words were irrelevant; I could stop listening to them and still the same expanding inner glow would be there.
If you had asked me at the time why it happened like this, I would probably have said, “This man has interiority, this man lives on the inside of things, he has a presence. And this essential ‘inside of things’ is the same in all. It ignites itself.” Even then, I understood that the quality of beingness is the same in every living thing. But I had never been in the presence of someone who was nothing but a presence. I had never felt fire lighting fire. Intellectually I was not surprised, but experientially, well, words will not tell of it.
The closest I can come is to say that the heart sings. It sings with the joy of meeting love in its deepest form. I could hardly believe that communion of this sort was possible in my own lifetime. Perhaps with Jesus or Buddha 2000, 3000 years ago.