:: BOOK OF THE MONTH ::

AND THE FLOWERS SHOWERED

I’M INTRIGUED AND DELIGHTED TO be writing this introduction, no doubt about it. All the same, I ask myself, what for? For whom is it intended? Why insert, between Osho and you his reader, the reflections of a third party called Douglas Harding? Or of any other go-between, for that matter?

I’m not at all sure about the answer to these questions. What I can say with full assurance, however is that I have found this book fascinating. There’s so much in it that I want to underscore heavily. Mind you, I am not saying that Osho’s way is exactly my way. Or that it s or should be exactly yours. But I would like to think that my responses to it will help you to clarify and deepen yours. After all, the essential thing is that we should discover what’s true and precious in our very own experience. Here, each of us must, as the Buddha taught, be a lamp unto himself, and his own authority on what its like to be and not to be. Nowhere in all the world is there any substitute for direct, first hand experience of the experiencer. Namely, oneself.

This true self reliance is what Osho urges upon us all. Let us no longer be cowards, he says, and supinely take on the reach-me-down answers of a Buddha or a Jesus or of any other master. In the last resort we can only find the saving truth within, at our own deepest level. Though this ever- luminous truth, once uncovered, is seen to be one and the same in all beings, there are countless routes to it, one per traveler. The only way from you to you – to the spot you never really left-is your way. So stop thrashing around, and dare to become the specialist on what’s given right where you are, in the place where only you are present and correct- and extremely special- an no one else can get a look in. “The difference between you and a Buddha is not a difference of character – remember this: it is not a difference of morality, it is not a difference in virtue and non virtue. It is a difference in where you are grounded…. A Buddha is grounded in the center.” So to be a Buddha, try being in to lunch with yourself, instead of out to lunch (as they say), with all and sundry. Bon Appetit!

And what, in brief, does this home ground amount to, this ultimate goal and Meaning and Resource, the Beneficence, this True Nature of yours at center? It has two contrasting aspects. First, it’s the Aware Emptiness which is more intimately you than anything you can name. Unlike Osho I call this the Immanent God. Second, it’s the Aware Fullness that rushes in (if only you will let it) to fill the vacuum: the ultimate wonder- self originating, limitless, timeless- the power and the glory that’s absolutely other than you. Unlike Osho again, I call this the Transcendent God. But we are agreed that to pick on one side of this coin of infinite value, and never turn it over, is to remain a pauper.

How precisely, to find and cash in on this two-sided treasure of treasures- call it what you like? The answer is simplicity itself: By attending to what’s given right now, right where you are. Not to what’s known or believed in or remembered, not to what’s anticipated or hoped for, but to what’s on show here at this time. What’s clearly presented. “Being true to the moment is Buddhahood,” says Osho. The reason we are not our authentic self, which is only now, is that we keep dragging into its irrelevancies that don’t belong here. And using the to cover up God’s marvelous birthday present to us. Birthday present.

What sort of life is it, consciously to live from our center which is this marvelous gift of God? It is to see what we see instead of what we are told to see. It is to be wide awake, no longer in a coma. It is to live a life of childlike spontaneity, letting each unique occasion elicit that unique and unpredictable response which is tailor made for that occasion. Above all, its to live a life of trust. Who we really, really are can be counted on to come up with what we really need. Not (I stress) with what we want, but with what’s necessary. Which amounts to saying that this ultimate resource isn’t for exploiting. “The greatest cannot be used”. On the contrary we are used by it. I wish I could sound this warning in fluorescent trumpet-tones.

So much for the general shape of the true spiritual life, as set out in detail with humor and charm, in Osho’s distinctive style.

One big question remains. The practical question of how, exactly, to come to and live from one’s Emptiness-Fullness, one’s Selfness-Otherness, one’s centrality? I am not thinking of the occasional flash of lightning at night, but rather of the steady shining of the midday sun. Of Awareness aware of itself without interruption.

There are, as we have already noticed, countless ways back to the Spot where its always high noon. For us here they converge to become just three:

1. The first is spontaneous Home Coming. Ramana Maharishi and Ananda Mayi Ma – eminent sages who never had a guru or master – spring to mind. Needless to say, such spiritual geniuses are very rare indeed.

2. The second is initiation by a master or guru. This is the normal Hindu procedure, with parallels in other religions. It’s the one described and prescribed by Osho. Here we have a combination of disciplines (physical, mental, spiritual), of darshan (which is the effect on the disciple of staying in the presence of the master), and the thrust (subtle, energetic or violent) administered by the master when he judges the disciple to be ready for pushing over the brink. Nisargadatta Maharaj, for instance, was a master who had himself been initiated by a master, whom he never tired of gratefully acknowledging.
It must be said, however that the number of disciples who are thus pushed or pulled from outer darkness into the full light of home- who not only “get” it but do so with enough conviction to announce to the world that they have indeed “got” it- is small. For example, not more than a handful of Ramana’s very numerous disciples claimed to have arrived at anything like spiritual independence.

3. I call the third route The Rediscovery of the Obvious. This way was opened out in China during the T’ang and Sung dynasties by Hui-meng and his successors. For them, the essential breakthrough was (in effect) to turn one’s attention round 180’ and look in at what one’s looking out of. This amounted to observing the total contrast between one’s acquired and very human face over there in the mirror, and one’s original and non-human No-face right here at no distance at all. Ch’an masters Huang-po and Hui-hai insisted ( as millennium later, Ramana insisted) that this seeing through to one’s central and featureless Immensity is the most natural, available, obvious thing imaginable. And, alas, just about the most feared and resisted.

The past thousand years of spiritual adventure have seen sporadic revivals of this most direct of realizations. The great Sufi Jelaluddin Rumi, for example, frequently urges us to behead ourselves: we are to become seeing, seeing, seeing. And Osho himself, in his Orange book, speaks highly of “headlessness”, recommending with detailed instructions what he calls “The Guillotine meditation”.

Also in the west there has been developing, over the past half century, a movement known as “the headless way”, which deploys a variety of techniques for drawing our ( normally unwilling) attention to what’s given at the center of our world. To wit, not two tiny, shuttered spy holes in an eight inch meatball, but one immense, frameless, glassless “window” with nobody peeking out of it.

Let me hasten to add, that, of the large numbers who lose their heads briefly, few go on losing them till they stay lost forever. Nevertheless decapitation is never fruitless. Given rain after years of total drought, encysted seeds in the Australian outback shoot up almost overnight into gorgeous flowers. Even so, given grace, encysted God-seeds may be counted on to blossom into God – in his own good time. All of them. There are no dud God seeds.

Such, in barest outline, are our three ways home – the spontaneous way, the initiation by guru way, and the obvious or Headless way. Osho’s roadmap, as I read it, has room for all three.

The joke to end all jokes is that in fact you never for a moment strayed an inch from the peace and safety of home. The way in is seeing you never left.

Look now at what’s given your side of these printed words, at the place they are being viewed from. Though you search the cosmos for an age of ages, you will never find a ROOM as roomy as this, as deep, as high and wide and handsome.

Hush! It’s the Throne Room of His Majesty, the king of all kings.

D.H. Harding

Back to top