Death Comes Dancing: Celebrating Life with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Osho

196 Pages·1981·22.857 MB·English

by  Ma Satya Bharti

Ma
Satya Bharti
DEATH COMES
DANCING
im
Celebrating Life with
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
L
Death Comes Dancing

Death Comes Dancing
Celebrating Life With Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Ma
Satya Bharti
Routledge & Kegan Paul
London, Boston and Henley
Firstpublished in 1981
by Routledge& Kegan Paul Ltd
39Store Street, London WC1E 7DD,
9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA, and
Broadway House, Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 IEN
Set in 10 on 12Journal by
Hope Services, Abingdon
andprinted in Great Britain by
Billing& Sons Ltd
Guildford, London, Oxfordand Worcester
©
Rajneesh Foundation 1981
Nopart ofthis book may be reproducedin
anyform withoutpermissionfrom the
publisher, exceptfor the quotation ofbrief
passages in criticism
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
SatyaBharti, Ma
Death comes dancing.
1. Rajneesh, Shree Bhagwan
I. Title
291.6'092'4 BP610.R/ 80-41144
ISBNO 7100 0705 1
CONTENTS
Preface vu
PartOne 1
Introduction to Part One 3
1 Laughing our way to God 6
2 Dynamic Meditation 13
3 Taking sannyas 21
4 Remembering past lives 25
5 Growingup: a return to innocence 34
6 My family's response 42
7 The sannyasin way of death 48
8 Bhagwan's ashram: the marketplace and the temple 56
9 Work as a Zen koan 60
10 Knowing and confusion 67
11 Surrendering to the sangha 72
12 Therapy groups 78
13 Celebrating life 87
PartTwo 99
Introduction to PartTwo 101
14 Love at firstsound 102
15 From sex to samadhi 112
16 Chaitanya 119
17 Food, sex and money 126
PartThree 141
Introduction to Part Three 143
18 Satoris 145
19 It'shappening again 155
20 A taste of Buddhahood 169
Epilogue 178
Blessed is the man who is courageous enough to be a disciple. It needs
courage. It needs tremendous will-power to surrender. Cowards can't
surrender; only very strong people can surrender. Surrender is possible
only ifyou are grounded, centred. Then you know that you can surren-
der and you will not disappear. You can surrender, and the surrender
will bring freedom to you. Via the guru, you will come to yourself.
To find a master is the greatest blessing that can happen to a man.
More than that is not possible. God is far away; a master is a midpoint:
he is human and yet divine. That's why Jesus says, 'I am the son of
God, and I am the son ofman.' He is aguru, a master.
The guru is more mysterious than God because he is a paradox: a
meeting place ofman and God.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
PREFACE
For the last five years I've been a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh,
an enlightened master living in Poona, India. What an enlightened
master is, and what it means to be with him, is what this book is about.
I wanted to write the story of how Bhagwan works as a master, but
instead, it seems, I've written my own story as a disciple. It's one ver-
sion of Bhagwan, necessarily biased, necessarily incomplete. It's Bhag-
wan filtered through the prism of my experiences. More than facts, and
less than the truth.
'The only way to come to the truth', Bhagwan says, 'is to pass
through a great myth. Religion can't exist without myth. Because
Christ's followers were so obsessed with history, with facts, they
couldn't create a myth around Christ. That's why Christianity became
so political, so steeped in dogmatism.
'An epic was created around Ram, a story was created around
Krishna. Everyone was at liberty. Valmiki wrote one thing, Tulsidas
wrote something else. No one can say that they are contradictory.
Mark and Luke are contradictory because they are writing history,
but Tulsidas and Valmiki are not contradictory because they are not
concerned with history at all. They say, "Even that which we have
been trying to say is not enough. It is not the whole story." '
Only fragments of what happens around an enlightened master can
ever be recorded. The phenomenon of what happens, the actuality of
it, goes beyond words. We can only try to indicate it. What I've written
is purely subjective. It's Bhagwan as I see him, limited by my own ex-
periences and my own vision, and limited also by my ability to com-
municate that vision.
There's no need for anyone to create a myth around Bhagwan; he's
creating his own myths. 'I'm creating a fiction here,' he says. 'The
fiction of the master and the disciple, the fiction of the god and the
devotee. It's a myth really. You can move through the myth to reach
the truth.
Preface
'An alive master is a myth: something of the untrue and something
of the true, both. While I'm here the myth is alive; its heart is beating.
Use this opportunity. When I'm gone, only the lie will remain.'
To write about a living myth is difficult. Each day is contradicted
by every other day. This book is about some ofthose contradictions.
Poona, India
1977