Osho, Indiaand Me
Author: Jack Allanach (Swami Krishna Prem)
Publisher: Niyogi, Rs 395
The book offers interesting insights not only into ‘dynamic meditation’ or Osho's ability, as claimed by the author, to read minds, but also about Indian people and culture, says PRAMOD PATHAK
The book, Osho, India and Me, by Jack Allanch, who became Swami Krishna Prem while living in India at a commune of Acharya Rajneesh, called Osho by his followers, is about his experiences in Mumbai and Pune. The author came to India in search of spirituality that finally brought him to Osho’s commune and made him take sannyas. The book is largely about the mystic aura surrounding Osho, the experience of dynamic meditation which the author received at the commune, and his take on the controversial views of Osho on sex and consciousness. It is an account of many unknown details of Osho’s life and times as well as the quaint events taking place in the commune. The author must be credited for his acute observations, his unique story-telling ability and his penchant for using humour effectively.
The book offers interesting insights not only into the phenomenon like dynamic meditation or Osho’s ability as claimed by the author to read minds, but also about Indian people and culture. “The Indians love to bargain, I see the disappointment on their face when the tourist pays the first price asked,” says the author. This is based on his personal experience in Mumbai. Perhaps, this is why the author writes: “The average Westerner could easily go berserk in India — three hours to cash a traveller’s cheque, a day of countless forms to make a train reservation or post a parcel, hotel clerks who insist on finishing their tea in peace before acknowledging one’s presence, and queue upon queue upon endless queue. To accept it, to relax into it, is the only way.”
The author’s description of Mumbai is quite accurate. He describes the city as one that “pulls no punches” and where “wealth and poverty, joy and misery, health and sickness, cleanliness and faith, fate and emaciation, life and death — all rub shoulders in her steaming streets”.
The author’s understanding of the Indian society is also interesting and is laden with philosophical moorings. After all, it’s a society where life is accepted as it is — death with birth, famine with feast, pleasure with pain. Perhaps, this is the reason why people throng to India in search of ‘truth’, as acknowledged by the author. A very appropriate comment has been made by the author that India is “a land where human condition is on parade, as it is, no holds barred, where man’s puny judgements — right and wrong, good and bad, ugly and beautiful — pale in the presence of a greater reality”. India, as experienced by the author, is a country where a strange harmony emerges from the apparent dissonance. He finds an unfamiliar beauty surfacing through the chaos and confusion of the street — the beauty of contrast, the beauty of India.
It’s a wonderful narration in which the author links the weird with the spiritual and gives due credit to Osho, whom he calls an enlightened mystic. He describes rather meticulously the attainment of the desired state, the beginning of his inner journey. He claims to become something else with this attainment and owes this to his master’s mystical aura. The greatest advantage of the author has been his long experience in television and public relations. He has the eye for details that catches even minor things and presents them effectively. This has made this book a lucid account of various events which the author has observed and experienced.
In the 10 chapters, the author has described his entire experience — from the first encounter with Osho to the total transformation of his self as a result of the magical influence of the great mystic. It appears as if someone is giving a running commentary, a ball-by-ball description of all that was going on and that is the beauty of the book. And to cap it all, the final account as given in the epilogue scores over all narrations. In a touching account, the author has given the sum and substance of his entire life quite succinctly. A life fully lived, a life realised. Interestingly, it is also the sum and substance of the Indian philosophical thought. Consider his words, “Now as I prepare to vacate this body in which I have resided as a tenant for so many years, there is nothing I did not do that I wanted to do... I am going with no regrets... It feels good, life feels complete.”This feeling at the time of death can only come under the tutelage of a great master that Osho was. Undeterred by death, the author lives on through this book.
The writer is professor, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (Jharkhand)