OSHO: The Buddha for the Future. Maneesha James

with no Jewish, Christian, Hindu ideologies hanging around you. Drop all that dust and let your mirror be clear, and you will be in continuous celebration, because then the whole existence is yours.

      At the conclusion of many of these discourses my heart is so full that it cannot be contained. I am happier than I can ever have imagined possible.

      *

      Seductive though his talking is, as Osho constantly reminds us the words are in themselves are not the message. In not just hearing his words but listening to him, we can receive that which can’t be conveyed by words. Hearing is something anyone with functioning ears could do; it is a passive, mechanical job of the brain. Listening is active, in that you have to consciously participate, to be in a position to receive not only what is being said but what is between the words. He tells us that the art of being a disciple is the art of imbibing, of being like an absolutely porous sponge, and often I feel exactly like that.

      It’s an interesting play to watch my thoughts and feelings become engaged in the words, and then to choose to disengage from both and consciously sink into the space of silence, the gap between words… that place that, being other than mind with its thoughts and feelings, cannot be described. If it could, I would choose expanded, weightless, timeless, only awareness, no separation, and complete fulfillment.

      Osho is more present than anyone I have ever met and yet also absent in a curious way. When I’m with someone, most of me may be engaged, but occasionally my eyes might dart off to notice someone walking by, or I am scratching myself or shifting from foot to foot. Sometimes perhaps I appear to be present but internally I’m thinking of how to respond to the person or wondering if I should be doing something else, and so on.

      I don’t see or sense any of that happening with Osho: he is always one hundred percent here and now. He is present inasmuch as he is completely open and present to each moment, for example, to a person sitting on front of him, explaining what his concern is. And yet inside that so-utterly-present person there isn’t a sense of a “personality”—the usual collection of traits, characteristics and mannerisms, the manifestations of a particular ego that we regard as being intrinsic to each other. Instead, he is filled with space and it’s that which gives me the feeling of his being absent. Even more curiously, both states—the complete presence and the absence—are there at the same time.

      Maybe it’s that combination that creates his charisma. I will sit just a few feet from him for many, many years, and—in his sitting with eyes closed, or listening, talking, gently touching someone’s head or laughing with us—witness how this remains a constant.

      Speaking of what those around Jesus experienced, Osho explains that the real thing was just to be in the presence of this man:

      Have you observed?—very few people have what you call “presence.” Rarely do you come across a person who has a presence—something indefinable about him, something that you suddenly feel but cannot indicate, something that fills you but is ineffable, something very mysterious and unknown. You cannot deny it; you cannot prove it. It is not the body, because anybody can have a body. It is not the mind, because anybody can have a mind. Sometimes a very beautiful body may be there, tremendously beautiful, but the presence is not there; sometimes a genius mind is there, but the presence is not there; and sometimes you pass a beggar and you are filled, touched, stirred—the presence.

      Those who were in the presence of Jesus, those who were in his satsang; those who lived close, those who lived in his milieu, breathed him. If you allow me to say it: those who drank him and ate him, who allowed him to enter into their innermost shrine…. That transformed, not the prayer; prayer was just an excuse to be with him. Even without prayer it would have happened, but without prayer they might not have found an excuse to be with him…

      Being with a master is so new to most of us that, ironically, it needs a master to explain to us who he is and to provide words to articulate how his presence is affecting us.

      “Does being in the presence of the master really change a man?” someone asks in discourse.

      “You are changed by everything!” Osho replies:

      … the sun rises in the morning, your sleep disappears…. When the sun sets in the evening, you start falling asleep….When you listen to great music, is some chord in your heart touched and moved or not? Listening to great music, do you become music or not? Seeing a dancer, does not a great desire arise in you to dance? Listening to a poet, listening to great poetry, for a few moments you attain to a poetic vision. Some doors open, some mysteries surround you.

      Exactly the same happens on a more total level in the presence of a master—because the master is a musician, and the master is a poet, and the master is a painter, and the master is a potter, and the master is a weaver…and the master is all things together….

      To be in the presence of the master…to be open, vulnerable, available—available to his touch—then his magic starts flowing into you. And this happens every day to you! Still the mind goes on suspecting. Still the doubt goes on raising its head.

      Have you been transported into other worlds being with me? Has it not happened to many of you? Is it not happening right now? Are you the same person when you are far away from me? Have you not felt that something changes, something starts happening to you—strange, unknown. Some energy starts moving; some light starts descending; some silence blooms inside you; some unknown song starts flowing in your being as the wind passes through the pines. Have you not heard the sound of running water through my words? Through my silences? Just looking at me, sometimes with open eyes and sometimes with closed eyes, has it not happened again and again to you?

      But I know, the question arises. The more it happens, the more mind creates doubts: Maybe it is just hypnosis? That’s what people all around the world say about me, that “This man is a hypnotist!” Many people are afraid to come, because if they come and if they are hypnotized, then what? The mind says, “Maybe this is just hypnosis.” The mind says, “Maybe you have fallen into an illusion. Maybe this is just a delusion, some magic—otherwise why does it disappear?”

      When you go away from me, when I am not with you and you are not with me, when you forget about me, why does it disappear? The mind, naturally, asks these questions. It disappears because you have not yet learned how to remain on those high planes of being, how to remain in those plenitudes…. When you are with me, there is trust—and trust transforms. When you are alone, the trust is lost; you are not yet capable of trusting yourself. The function of the true master is to prepare the disciple in such a way that sooner or later the master is no more needed, and the disciple can remain on his own in those higher planes of being—where joy is and grace is.

      *

      One day, at one of the discourses in Chuang Tzu Auditorium, right in the middle of his talking—literally in mid-sentence—Osho stops. His head has been tilted slightly upward and his eyes are not directed at any of us but are gazing out beyond the periphery of the auditorium, beyond the garden. Is one of his hands raised in a gesture at that particular moment?—I can’t remember, but I do recall how electrifying these few moments are when he is suddenly silent, sitting absolutely still, as if suspended in time and motion.

      Sitting only feet away from him, I catch my breath, watch and wait. After what seems an eternity but must be just a few moments, Osho slowly returns to himself, as it were. He looks at us, the sea of expectant faces in front of him, as if he wonders who we are and what we are doing here. It is an oddly awesome sensation to witness. He looks up at the large clock on the wall, then down at the clipboard that holds the sutra or questions—looks at it as though for the first time—and resumes speaking, but with words that don’t seem related to those he’s last uttered.

      Of course the episode is the pivot of collective gossip after discourse, but I don’t imagine anyone will be bold enough to ask Osho about it. However, Anurag, one of the editors of the discourse books, is:

      “What happened to you yesterday when you stopped speaking for a few moments during discourse?” or something to that effect, she asks. There is a collective holding of breath. I feel a bit embarrassed. It seems audacious to ask such a