Fever and Freedom
When I was in school, I was generally very active. Holidays were spent all day in harsh Sun on open grounds playing Cricket. Evenings were spent playing Table Tennis for hours together. Probably due to this, I do not remember many instances where I went unwell. And whenever I did, I used to love it. Because I don’t need to attend school. The fever will make me lie down all day, often reading books I like, with all the kindness and attention of the family showered on you. In spite of the pain, the moment you see the Doctor, I used to feel better and then I have the whole day left for me practically with no compulsions of a homework or study and the freedom to do what you want.
When I got ill few weeks ago, I was on my bed for a week. It was boring and I happened to watch the Netflix web series ‘Wild wild country’. It was pretty engaging I would say having read a bit of Osho. But it was all shown from the viewpoint of how the neighborhood in Oregon where Rajnishpuram was established, find the hippies who descend there from all over the world to be threatening their christian beliefs, as they are pretty much free to do what they want. Sex, drugs and a life constructed of their volition without the shackles of the modern society and their pressures.
It appears like if they had left this movement as is, the Osho cult could have engulfed a large part of America. What it shows is that Osho could have created a new order of life, a new way of living which is completely nation-less, border-less, free of religion and the compulsions of society and liberate man from his preconceived notions within the framework of the American constitution. It appears like you can create a country within a country that gives total freedom for the individual respecting all the laws of the land. Of course, the economy of such a country is only possible when there are donations which means the founder has to be immensely attractive.
It is not anything new. Every political party, religious outfit is free to preach and practice their ideologies in a democratic setup and they can almost have their own by-laws that applies to their members, almost akin to running their own nation. Where I feel it goes wrong is that the Osho’s definition of freedom is completely anti-nation (not anti-national), against borders and allowing men and women to freely experiment with their lives. Its a catch-22. While the constitution allows for such freedom, if allowed, it will destroy the nation which upholds the constitution. Since in most democracies the constitution is sacrosanct and the limit, and even otherwise, out of fear that the Osho world is questioning the authority, the American Government finds a way to destroy him and the cult and the story shows this angle mainly.
What was missing in that story, however was, his teachings and lectures themselves. If you have read Osho, you are sure to see his brilliance pouring over you. His carefully constructed arguments and stories that is finally aimed at destroying your hard held beliefs, myths and even questions. He is a master at that. He is widely read and he can talk on any great philosophy or personality the world has witnessed.
One such thing I remember reading was his exposition of Upanishads. In one of the Sutras, he talks about a Master and a disciple. The disciple has lot of questions and asks ‘What is bondage, What is freedom?’. He comes to the Master to seek answers for them. They sit down and recite a sutra which is to prepare themselves. Its a beautiful thing.
Many a time, when we talk to others, we do not know if they are listening. We do not ask them if they can listen to something we want to say. We blurt out something. Our mind keeps switching to different things as we blurt out. And we are also not sure if we said what we wanted to say. We might have over stated, jumped into unwanted talks, or grossly under-communicated. It is the same thing on the listeners end. They also slip in and out of awareness. They start listening, but they do not know when they were not.
So, in this context, the Master and the disciple first resolve themselves to be together in the journey of discovery. The Master is not thinking that he is the one to deliver the answers and the disciple is the one to receive it. He knows they are together in this. Such is the beauty of this. The master then talks about Bondage and Freedom. He is not giving any answers. He is talking about them, around them, related to them I guess. Over a few pages of description, after elaborating the stories and the points, the master stops and asks the disciple ‘What is bondage? What is freedom?’ and the disciple is silent. He does not have anything further to talk.
This is where the brilliance of Osho comes in interpreting this piece. Why did the Master ask the same questions that the disciple came with in the beginning?
It is the mind that brings bondage. But if this is given as an answer, it looks so trivial and cliched. Something what you would have heard a thousand times. The Master is someone who knows that Freedom cannot be explained by the same Mind that has caused the deprivation of it. It is like Devil explaining God. You will always get a version of the truth but never the truth. Instead Freedom comes from silencing the Mind. The one that caused the Bondage. The Master is the one who has reached this point of Silence inside him. He does not have any questions. He realizes that questions are pointless. They do not take you anywhere but keep you entangled. Questions are the nature of the mind.
The Disciple is someone who is full of questions. And its an oxymoron that the disciple has questions for which No-Mind is the answer. If such an answer is given directly, then it becomes a sound, yet another noise in the mind. On the other hand, if the Master is asking the disciple to be Silent also, the disciple will continue to have questions.
The Master is someone who has an enormous love for his disciple. He truly wants to help him. However, if he takes a position of a teacher, trying to tell the answer, then he again lets the mind do the job. The answer is lost. So he goes into a communion with the disciple. They are in that together. They are having a serious job of finding the answer. It is not something that the disciple can ask and then walk away. The Master is going to really expose. He goes about talking various things. The disciple is absorbed in what he is telling. After a while, the Master asks the same set of questions he started with. This means the questions cannot be answered in the normal way. That’s what it shows. It reveals that the questions do not have answers. The Master is the one who has reached that state. The realm above the mind. The zone of silence where questions cease. And that is the total freedom he is hinting at. The disciple is a sharp one. He gets it. Now he does not answer. He is in silence or he becomes silence, the truth.
The above is not verbatim. It is from memory. But you can see the brilliance of a man who wanted to set humanity free and probably the Oregon thing was an experiment in that direction. The socially unacceptable things that happened in the commune he built became a talking point about Osho more than his teachings. Questions as to why such a person in the first place allowed all those Rolls Royce cars and drugs and free sex around him? If someone wants to show there are no limits and only pure joy, he cannot profess dos and don’ts for the gathering. He cannot tell when to get up, what to do or how to talk. Then you are again defining a framework to operate within. As I remember his above interpretation of the Upanishad Sutra, that is what I can see of him. A person who simply wanted to show what it meant to be a total freedom for humanity.
After all falling ill once in a while is not all that bad I feel.
