On My Way Home

by Ma Anand Disha

from Jan 1998, published in the Viha Connection.

Disha sent us this note along with her story:

I always thought we should write a book about growing up in Pune and on the Ranch. Just reading the articles the other "kids" have written brings back so many memories I didn't know I had forgotten, and they are too precious to get lost. I hope this series is the beginning of all of us putting our stories together so they can be kept alive.

Do you guys think we could find a way to tell everything - the crazy stuff, the miraculous, the wild parties, the orgies we were supposed to be too young for, the spiritual experiences, and the outrageous lies the commune told to fool the world - in such a way that everyone can feel the magnitude of how blessed we were? Can we blow their minds without making a scandalous exposé of "the Rajneesh cult" out of it?

My love affair with Osho started in first grade. My best friend in school was called Puja and she wore a mala and that bright orange that was the shade of '75. I knew from the first moment I saw her locket that I wanted one. To this day, I still wonder if there was some ancient recognition in me that if I was to find enlightenment in this life, this was my man and I had no time to waste. Or maybe I simply thought it was cool to be different; I looked up to Puja and wanted to be like her.

My mom was into living communally and reading Marx and Engels. She was smoking dope and demonstrating, so after meeting Puja's mom they became friends and she eagerly started reading Osho. We went together to the Munich center to try out Kundalini and Dynamic. I was seven then. I harrassed my mom to hurry up and get us tickets to India, and finally in the summer holidays of '77 we went.

At that time I spoke only German. After my first morning discourse, I asked my mom how it was possible for Him to have so much to say about butter. She had to explain that Buddha was in fact another Master, not the German pronunciation of "butter"!

I wanted to take sannyas right away. My mom wanted to listen to Osho speak for a while to find out what she felt about Him, maybe do some meditations and groups, and then decide. That sounded like it would take too long, so I went to see Arup in the main office. She spoke German and said yes, I could see Bhagwan to take sannyas the following evening. Fortunately, those were the days before forms and parental consent.  

My mom found me in the shower, rubbing lemon all over my hair. To her utter disbelief, I explained that that was part of the instructions I was given to be perfume-free for darshan with Bhagwan that evening. She ran to the ashram and hassled Arup until Arup agreed to allow her to come in to darshan without an appointment.

When I was called in front of Osho (German translator at my side), He asked, "Where is your mother?" When I told Him she was sitting in the back, He called her forward too, and after looking at her for a long time, told us both to close our eyes. I can remember a mixture of excitement in my belly and a natural calm, knowing that I was always meant to be here. I didn't think about it a whole lot, but I can remember feeling a great love for Osho from the first moment I looked in His eyes. He then asked my mom, "Are you ready to take sannyas too?" Without hesitation, she was. I was given the name Anand Disha - The Direction to Bliss - and she was Deva Nandan - Divine Joy. He didn't say much more other than to ask me to say my name to make sure I could pronounce it.

When I think about the time I spent with Osho at that age, it is a strange thing because I know that I didn't have a mind yet. I lived in the here and now. I could sit and look at Him if that's what I felt like doing, and not a thought crossed my mind. In fact, for quite a few more years I was really quiet up there (unlike now!). I had no idea what Osho said, I didn't know what meditation was, and the concept that people were searching for something was hard for me to understand. I was there simply because I loved being around Osho and the ashram was paradise for kids. We were treated with so much respect, and I had many friends, young and old. We were given full permission to be ourselves.

When I was a few years older, around ten, I began to understand Osho more and actually stayed awake to listen to discourse once in a while. I can remember asking myself why people longed so much for enlightenment, especially if it meant this would be their last life. I would feel inside myself such pleasure and awe at the simple sensation of being alive that I couldn't imagine wanting more or not wanting to live again and again.

Sometimes I am overwhelmed with gratefulness that I had the opportunity to be present when He was there, in what was probably the closest to living the divine - my true self - without all the filters of personality I have learned to layer on top since then. At other times, I envy those who were around Osho to ask personal questions about their search, their confusion, the restlessness of their minds, the hopelessness that comes at times when you know you are searching for something and you don't know if you are on the right track... That has come up for me sometimes these last years; I have felt sad that Osho is no longer alive, now that I am actually aware of my spiritual discontentment.

I have watched so many of the kids go through phases of hating sannyas, dropping their name, rebelling against their parents by turning as straight as can be, blaming Osho and the lack of discipline in their childhood for their unhappiness and drug addictions. Strangely enough, I never went through a phase like that. I'm one of those few die-hard sannyasin kids that's hung in there with the different communes right up to Osho's death, and I'm still in Pune a lot to this day. I wonder if that's because I chose to come here myself instead of ending up a sannyasin because that's what my parents did, like it or not. That's not to say I didn't go through some rough times...

One of the toughest was around the end of the Ranch, from 16 to 18, when I discovered that I was not going to live contentedly in the here and now forever. All my sannyasin years had conditioned me to believe that I was going to be different. I thought that because I was given freedom and unconditional love as a child instead of condemnation and abuse, I was not going to have to face self-hatred and self-doubt as most other people did. That because I had heard Osho talk about love and freedom versus marriage and attachment, I was going to have incredible relationships without jealousy and pain. Because I had tasted inner peace and ecstasy, I would not need to take drugs or have to deal with cravings for cigarettes and alcohol and numbing myself. Because I had an amazing loving mother and so many loving relationships with adults happy to parent me, I believed I would not need
to do any childhood deconditioning or therapy. And finally, that because I came to Osho so young, I was automatically on track for enlightenment, without needing to make any particular effort to meditate or look at myself. I was convinced that
the big bang would happen by the time
I was 21, or if all else failed, by the time Osho died.

The disillusionment of discovering that those beliefs were unrealistic was incredibly painful. I hated Osho and sannyasins for projecting so much expectation on me. I felt mistrustful of everything I had believed in and ashamed of how arrogant I had become for thinking I was so special.

Now that I have accepted that I am just as lost and unenlightened as everyone else, I can also see the beauty and self-love I have gained through what I was given as a child. But I needed to really dig in there and find out what is my experience and what is just another more spiritual and more subtle version of childhood conditioning. When I did the Anti-Fischer-Hoffman process in Pune, many sannyasins said, "Why would you need that?" And it pissed me off no end when they went on and on about how great I was for doing something like that at only 19 - when I was in there trying to tear down that fucking special sannyas kid thing...

Doing the Miracle of Love process four years ago was a huge step in cleaning that up. I started out with so many judgments about the Jehovah's witness, the Somendra or Muktananda disciples, the busdriver from Tennesee, the housewives from everywhere, and the airy-fairy New Age chicks from California. I thought that I was much more advanced on my spiritual journey because I had started so young and because my Master was without doubt a Master of Masters, unlike some of the phonies these other people were into. But after much soul-searching and exposing what goes on inside this heart and mind of mine - and after watching all the others in that Intensive do the same - what I found with great humility was a love and appreciation for the sincerity of the longing that is within every soul, no matter what the outer journey looks like. Yes, I am very lucky and blessed in this life, and yes, I have a huge potential because of the opportunities that the Divine lays before me over and over again. But to take that into my ego and feel arrogant and special about it is one sure way of missing the point in that very moment.

Another big turning point in my life was my father's suicide in 1992. He was not a sannyasin, and although I rarely saw him, we were very close. He had a mid-life crisis when he turned 50: A combination of losing a lot of money, an unhappy relationship, and too much alcohol caused a psychotic break and paranoid schizophrenia. I flew from Pune to Munich twice to spend time with him, to love him, to share with him my understanding of meditation and to help him see that he was not his mind. I did my best to show him my love and gratitude for life, to tell him that life is about growing and suicide is no escape because we will have to face those same challenges again in another life. I also tried to get him to doctors and to take medication. In retrospect, I can say I got so much from that experience and I am grateful I was there and did everything I possibly could to help him. But the heartbreaking lesson in it for me was to see I was powerless to "help" him. I could not give him my life experiences, I could not make him want to live, and couldn't save him from killing himself.

That devastated me. It made me see the parts of me that are not actually rooted spiritual truths but just things I have learned to say because I've listened to Osho. The truth is, I have never had to face the kind of despair, fear, hopelessness, and pain that my father and many other people in this world have lived with. After his death - when I was 23 - I felt I grew out of my innocent but naive outlook on life. I saw I had in lesser quantities the same qualities of self-destructiveness, of hopelessness about my spiritual potential, as well as the same addictive tendencies, irrational fears, and mistrust toward people and the world. And I understood that had the circumstances of my childhood been filled with violence and poverty and abandonment as his were, and had I grown up without ever allowing myself to cry, I could have become very much like him. That realization gave the joyous and positive parts of me a depth I had lacked before.

Since then, my search for truth has become very conscious. My longing is to fulfill this impossible desire in my heart to find freedom, to know that I have done everything I could, so that whenever the moment of my death comes, it will not be one of great bitterness and disappointment but one of fulfillment and gratitude.

After doing the Miracle of Love, I brought to Pune my passion for that process and for my path. I helped Rafia and Turiya and a team of others put together The Path of Love, similar work but based in Osho. It's a pretty challenging job: I work with participants and support them in ways that call on all I have learned in my life with Osho. Not that I have any kind of therapeutic training, but that is exactly what makes it so special for me - I have to trust that I have something to share. And trusting it, exposing it, talking about it, and living it has made me appreciate Osho more than ever.   Just recently I wondered if I could put together a group here for teenagers. Those years are such a precious time, and I wish Pune had more support and inspiration for young seekers the way it did when I was a teenager...not so long ago.