“Do not build a house on the bridge”

Man it is hot in Mumbai in May. As much as I wanted to stay close to Osho in his physical body, I wanted out of India.

In 1973 shortly after I’d first met Osho in his Woodlands apartment in Mumbai, I had a meeting with him before leaving for the cool of the U.S. I was escorted to his room by his secretary, Laxmi, but once I got through the door, I was left alone with him and his caretaker Vivek. As good looking as Vivek was, I only had eyes for Osho as this was my first time seeing him privately since taking sannyas about three months before. He knew I’d come to say goodbye but when he asked me if I had anything to say, I became speechless. I was overwhelmed by my love for him and by his intelligence and felt if I said anything I would look stupid… yes I had memorized what I would like to have said… that I had a satori while doing the dynamic meditation… that the past was simply a memory, the future does not exist and his present to me is that I now live only in the present, but it is difficult to lie sitting in front of the truth.

I say all this because many new friends today ask me about my moments alone with Osho and how great it must have been but really all I knew about meditation up until that moment is that the Beatles’ music had changed for the better by going East and that was good enough for me to transcend myself as I couldn’t stand my present carnation. Conversely, sitting in my shit in front of Osho taught me more about life than 16 years of public education because it taught me to say and feel “I don’t know” with the energy I needed to move on with my life… which for me remains even today the definition of a miracle.

So when Osho asked me how my meditation was going, I can’t believe I quoted Groucho Marks and said, “Close but no Cigar” … I nearly passed out over my ridiculous, spontaneous statement… but to my amazement Osho loved it and turned to Vivek to smile his approval. While he glowed in my Groucho gaffe, I reached over and kissed his big toe… being so new to the East, I never knew of this tradition between a master and a disciple… I was more caught in my uptight Western male conditioning that I kissed another man’s foot… Osho quickly turned his gaze back to me and smiled… but from that moment on it was part of the instructions before seeing Osho alone not to touch his body….

And Osho returned his attention to me, “Just continue to be total… and do the dynamic meditation every day.” Remember in ’73, the dynamic meditation was king, Osho developed kundalini and other active mediations soon after, but his guidance seemed to me always to stay the same… to pick a meditation and do it daily until it fell away naturally.

And suddenly he asked, “How do you feel?”

While my mind was racing for an appropriate enlightened response, what came out of me was, “I feel lucky.”

Again he simply loved it.

He said something like that I should remain with him as long as this is how I feel.

Even today I ask myself, “How do you feel?” And invariably, I ‘here’ back from myself, “I feel lucky as hell.”

So now, Osho and I simply sat with each other in silence… with nothing to say. He didn’t say a word and I simply had nothing to say.

I couldn’t say anything for a good three minutes, and finally he did what my father used to do when he was bored with me, he looked at his watch – which in my father’s case was a signal for me to either get his interest or leave his presence. I had no concept of spirituality at the time, but I had some worldly sense… thanks to daddy. So I looked up at Osho and I said only one word: “California!”

And when I said that single word, he got truly excited. He began talking, and he talked to me for what seemed like an eternity about how many of his people who don’t yet know that they’re his people are now in California, and how his work would flourish there. And he began to plant a seed in me that one day I would open up a meditation center for him somewhere in that western U.S. state.

And all the while, he went on and on about ‘Californication’, I did tratak on his beard… and the seed was planted in my subconscious that I wanted to look just like him… and my beard starting growing just like that… spring comes and the beard grows by itself… well my beard grew and grew but I looked more like a ‘hairy krishna’ than an Osho.

I remember years later when I was in an encounter group in OSHO International Meditation Resort the rapist, I mean my therapist, said to me that my beard was growing straight out of me and was a wall between me and everyone I met. For me, a feeling of separation is a flu-like symptom. During lunch break, I shaved for about an hour and I haven’t seen my beard, or my need to look like Osho, since… it took a while to look and taste and feel and love myself… it felt like it took an eternity to be here now… and it’s worth the wait if you have the time.

And by now, Osho had said what he wanted to say about the west coast, and my ass was hurting from sitting on the floor, so we’d both finished for the moment when Osho dismissed me with a request, “Tonight I would like you to sit close to me at the evening discourse.” which was going to take place in an outside park in the Juhu Beach area of Mumbai.

Me being my lazy self, of course I showed up late and I would have estimated that 2000 Indian friends had shown up before me who also wanted to sit up close – something I’d never seen before. In ’73 there were only a handful of Westerners around Osho and I had no idea up until now that he had disturbed millions of traditional Indians and also attracted a hundred thousand new Indian friends to his fold at the very same time. So, sadly, I sat down in the back of the audience and Osho proceeded to speak for one and a half hours in Hindi, which I didn’t speak and didn’t understand and didn’t enjoy hearing. Plus I was sitting on the ground under a mosquito sky… and as any great man of silence knows, mosquitoes are the enemy of meditation. I challenge you right now to sit in India without Indian Odomos mosquito repellent and crack the Zen koan, ‘I am not the body’!!!

Towards the end of the discourse, at the moment I was about to leap out of my skin from bites and boredom, Osho said one line in English. And this line changed my life. He said: “Do not build your house on the bridge.”

It was like a Zen koan for me, which I meditated on for years until I had lived the meaning of that one sentence. At the time, I didn’t know what he meant by saying this but I distinctly felt that it was a message directly for me. Sometimes when Osho spoke to me years later in darshan, I often knew he was actually speaking to someone else who was also present. And conversely, when it entered me directly while he was speaking to someone else, I knew he was speaking to me – it would be something relevant to me in that moment and it always had a special kind of ring to it.

I don’t want to say what this one sentence meant to me, because it may have a hidden meaning for you and you may feel to meditate on this yourself. But I’ll give you a hint: I now understand that the journey is the goal and I always keep moving. When I am sad, I look into the sadness, eventually it passes…. I don’t build a home called sadness and live in it, decorate it with happy furniture and then put it on the real estate market and sell it to another fool on the hill… like, perhaps, you… when I look into sadness, it disappears… ‘This too will pass’ as the Sufis say… sadness comes, sadness goes, happiness comes, happiness goes… only you, naked before the truth, remain untouched.

I hope we bump into each other on the bridge one day and share a cup of chai and gossip. And when we are satisfied, you go your way and I’ll go mine… it’s easier to walk across a bridge without all your possessions, emotional and physical, in your back pack. A cup of tea between two friends can be quite unburdening.

Go lightly into your life, love is, kp www.geeyouareyou.com

“The day you stop relating with people, you stop relating with existence. People are the closest existence to you. Relate to people, relate to trees, relate to birds and animals and rocks, and only then will you be able to relate to God. Love is the way.” Osho www.osho.com

Ps… High Friends, I just had fun this month doing a radio interview with Laurie Handlers, a tantra teacher living in America... you
may want to listen in to us making love over the airways... It's called, "Looking for Yourself on the Spiritual Path & Finding You Were There
All Along". After all, I am not just a pretty face...
http://webtalkradio.net/2010/07/05/tantra-cafe-%E2%80%93-looking-for-yourself-on-the-spiritual-path-finding-you-were-there-all-along/
but if you prefer a quickie with me over Tantra, please join me for 1 minute only on
http://positivetv.tv/channels/celebrity-shorts/krishna-prem- short-5/

In closing, I want to leave you with a happy feeling…

“Relationship is a Verb” By Krishna Prem

I met Marcia on the hippie trail in the early 70's, beginning in Venice, California. We traveled together to India on two one-way tickets as we didn't have enough money between us to buy two round trip tickets... it was simply two one-way tickets to ride or no way out... in any case, we were living on love. Our first home together in Mother India was under a cashew tree in Arambol, a virgin beach in Goa, (remember I am talking the 70's here), before heading north to the Himalayas. Right smack in the middle of the trail, we met Osho and our lives changed forever. Meeting Osho was a happy beginning for me and equally an unhappy ending of my relationship with Marcia, now Krishna Priya. My gut told me that my relationship was in trouble and I went to Osho to get to the heart of the matter... and I was sure Osho's advice would not only heal my relationship, but also help my friends like you as we finally hear the truth about relating.

I booked a leaving darshan with Osho to say goodbye to him as I was making a complete circle by returning to California to open a commune based on his meditations... Krishna Priya chose to stay behind until my dream came true, then she would join me. Osho agreed with Krishna Priya while I simply wasn't sure which way was up... In front of a burning candle I rehearsed my questions on what I was going to ask Osho about my relationship until all that was left of me was a wax wave on my wooden floor.

I hadn’t been apart from my beloved for two years and I was nervous about being without her. I wanted to ask Osho whether I could trust that she’d come and follow me to California... could I be sure that she wouldn’t fall in love with someone else? I was simply beside myself... by now I was even jealous of Osho as I was no longer the most important man in my woman's life... I didn't know whether to "relation-shit or go blind".

Darshan in 1975 was in Lao Tzu House on the front car porch. Ten of us were scheduled to sit with him one to one and I was going to be number ten.

It felt like an eternity before it was my turn. Finally he looked at the boy in the ninth position and his eyes were so big, they overflowed onto me and I thought he was gesturing me to come forward. So eagerly I got up. Of course it wasn’t my turn and he told me to have patience and I promptly sat down again.
I was so embarrassed I nearly died.

The ninth boy came to sit in front of Osho and as soon as he sat down, he began to cry. And he wouldn’t stop crying and Osho waited, and finally Osho broke the silence and said to him,

“What seems to be the problem?”

And the boy related this story: “I bought a brand new pair of sandals today and when I got out of Kundalini Meditation at five-fifteen, my sandals were gone!”

And then he burst into tears again.

Osho closed his eyes and when the boy stopped crying, Osho opened his eyes again and he said to the young boy, “I can’t help you with your loss, but what I can suggest is that tomorrow you go MG Road and you buy another new pair of sandals, and when you go to Kundalini Meditation, you take one new sandal off and you put it on the top middle shelf and you take the other new sandal and you put it on the bottom shelf on the far left.” And then he added: “No one ever steals one sandal!”

And then boy’s tears turned into laughter, and it looked to me like Osho was very proud of himself. He was just beaming with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen in your life. Everyone else was laughing.

And then Osho reached out and held the boy’s hands, they stood up at the same time and, as if music began playing, Osho did a tiny dance with the boy and then, still beaming, gave a Namaste salutation to his beloveds and walked out, and that was the end of darshan.

I felt like a sannyasin left out in the cold.

And to this day, I don’t know anything about relationship! So you my friend are on your own... I still don’t know anything about relationships except I have learned the hard way that relationship is a verb called relating.

I did, however, found the Geetam Sannyas Ashram in Lucerne Valley, California, for Osho in ‘75, which turned out to be the biggest meditation center in the States, and my now ex-girlfriend never stepped onto the property once. It goes to show you never can tell… meditation, like love, is not what you think.

And just to point out that ‘not knowing is the most intimate’, Positive TV out of England has invited me to share my knowledge of relationship with its viewers… please feel free me check out on http://positivetv.tv/category/channels/celebrity-shorts/
After viewing me on Positive TV, my feeling is that you will understand that I am finally beyond my attachment to love.

“Attachment and love never go together; commitment and attachment never go together. Love goes with unattachment. Then love has a purity of the other world. Then love is absolute essence, absolute pureness, innocence. And then there is a commitment. That commitment is eternal.” Osho

Love is, Krishna Prem


All Osho quotes copyright Osho International Foundation www.osho.com

About 15 years ago now, I was participating in the Buddha to Buddha work in the OSHO International Meditation Resort in Pune India. This Buddha to Buddha work is essentially an old friend of Osho sitting down over a cup of tea with a new friend who just walked though the gateless gate for a gossip, to give the new friend a soft landing in our meditation resort… . It was there that I met a young man from Holland who would not only become a Buddha in his own right, but more real for me, he became a Buddy of mine… I like to meet a Buddha along the way as much as the next guy but I also enjoy sharing a glass of wine at the same time… His name is now Batul and he is a fine example of what Osho calls Zorba the Buddha… plus he plays a mean game of tennis! Batul is not only a meditator; he is also a business man. While he was visiting our meditation resort, he designed his signature piece of jewelry and came up with his company name… surprise, surprise… BuddhatoBuddha… check him out at http://www.buddhatobuddha.com/

Here is a small piece I just wrote for Batul's 10 year anniversary catalogue about his life in the world and also his personal journey with Osho and meditation…

 “When your being knows” 

Imagine for a moment that I am your middle finger. Hold me up and shake me all about. Am I crowding your space? Do I push your buttons? Easy… simply tell me to fuck off. But before you do that imagine that you are your index finger. Your first thought may well be that we are two fingers competing for love, for a job… whatever. But I have come to know through meditation that we are simply two fingers of one hand.  

The way I now play this game called life is to look ‘in’ at the same time I look ‘out.’ Sure I look at you but at the same time I look deeply into who I am until I recognize that we are not two… that we are one existence appearing as two people. I no longer only look at you; your religion, your nationality, your conditioning and such blah blah without looking for the real you behind your masks.  For sure I am a bit mad from going 'in' so much, but be honest, what has been the result of looking at everyone you meet as separate from yourself… as a sex object for example? Thank heavens love happens while you are busy getting ready for a date.  

When I travel in India, I am often greeted with “Namaste” which means “I surrender to the God in you” and when I visit an Indian in his home, an American Indian, that is, often an elder will greet me with “I see you” which means I see the real you. Amsterdam is right in the middle of these two extremes of east and west… right here, right now, you are the center of the universe... how is that for a responsibility... all I am saying is give love a chance. 

Love is, Krishna Prem

(Michael Mogul)

 www.geeyouareyou.com 

  “When the mind knows, we call it knowledge
When the heart knows, we call it love;
When the being knows, we call it meditation.”   

Osho

www.osho.com

All Osho quotes copyright Osho International Foundation www.osho.com

 

 




 

“Love Yourself And Watch - Today, Tomorrow, Always.” - Osho

I am unpacked and here now in my adopted home town of "Amsterdamned"… after Poona, it’s not easy living in the world...take dinner for example, first the shopping followed by the cooking… eating takes no time at all... now i have to wash my own dishes… all I am saying is that i am such a commune baby… I mean an Osho Meditation Resort baby… plus, I am a nobody here in Amsterdam... sometimes I’m more "in" in the world then at the Osho Meditation Resort.... funny eh?

Way back when in the here and the now of ’73, the first thing I remember Osho saying is "be in the world, but don’t let the world be in you." …this has never been my strong suit. As soon as I hit the West, I am immediately back in it. My witness which has been fattened up in the Osho Auditorium seems to shrivel up and die in the face of the West and CNN’s version of the truth. Right now, fresh in the west, it is not easy for me to move in the crowd and remain alone… to be alone without being lonely.

Basically my witness went south when I hit the west. I got pretty down on myself… at first, I tried to blame it on jet lag, but it went on too long for that. I came across a quote from Osho that is beginning to get me out my funk. It is from The Dhammapada Vol 5 Chapter #5 Love Knows Nothing of Duty:

"Each child is born beautiful, and then we start distorting his beauty, crippling him in many ways, paralyzing him in many ways, distorting his proportion, making him unbalanced. Sooner or later he becomes so disgusted with himself that he is ready to be with anybody. He may go to a prostitute just to avoid himself."

"LOVE YOURSELF..., says Buddha. And this can transform the whole world. It can destroy the whole ugly past. It can herald a new age, it can be the beginning of a new humanity."

"Hence my insistence on love -- but love begins with you yourself, then it can go on spreading. It goes on spreading of its own accord; you need not do anything to spread it."

"LOVE YOURSELF..., says Buddha. And then immediately he adds: AND WATCH.... That is meditation, that is Buddha's name for meditation. But the first requirement is to love yourself, and then watch. If you don't love yourself and start watching, you may feel like committing suicide."

"Socrates says: Know thyself, Buddha says: Love thyself. And Buddha is far more true, because unless you love yourself you will never know yourself -- knowing comes only later on, love prepares the ground. Love is the possibility of knowing oneself, love is the right way to know oneself."

- Osho, The Dhammapada Vol 5 Chapter #5 Love Knows Nothing of Duty

Plus, Jalaluddin Rumi reminds me so well in the poem:

The Guest House

This being human is the guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
a momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes
because each guest has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

                                     - Rumi

I’ll leave you now with an old story about myself before the ever present witness became apparent to me… in the days way back when if you asked me who am I, I would definitely not say I am that, more likely I would say to you that I am a cowboy.

An old cowboy went to a bar and ordered a drink. As he sat there sipping his whiskey, a young lady sat down next to him. She turned to the cowboy and asked him, "Are you a real cowboy?"

He replied, "Well, I’ve spent my whole life on the ranch, herding horses, mending fences, and branding cattle so I guess I am."

She said, "I’m a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women. When I shower, watch TV, everything seems to make me think of women."

A little while later, a couple of tourists sat down next to the old cowboy and asked him, "Are you a real cowboy?"

He replied, "I always thought I was, but I just found out I’m a lesbian."
 

All Osho quotes copyright Osho International Foundation www.osho.com

“I take my hat off to you.”

by Krishna Prem (Mike ‘the bike’ Mogul) 

I have known Axel for more than ten years now. I love being in his company and consider him a best friend… so you can imagine my surprise when he said to me with a light face, “I want to buy you lunch today because I now consider you my friend.” 

In Holland, being a friend is a big deal. For me, as a casual light-weight American, I was once passing a train in the opposite direction in the middle of the night, when a bolt of lightning hit the tracks, lighting up the evening sky. My eyes locked with the whites of a perfect stranger in the passing compartment… he will always be a friend to me. 

Axel drove his car to meet me at the appointed restaurant. I bicycled. If you know Amsterdam, needless to say, I arrived first and on time. I was seated at my table, enjoying my newspaper, when my attention was constantly being torn away by the waiter. I politely asked him to give me space until my friend arrived, at which time, I will need his service. He inferred that it was his job to be my waiter. After constantly annoying me with his attentiveness, I asked him “What are you going to do tonight?” He lit up. He said he was going to see his one-year old son. I asked him if he was going to behave like a waiter or like a father to his son?. He paused dead in his tracks. 

Too often we take our work home with us. In his case, my feeling is that he will wait on his son hand and foot.  I suggested to him that when he gets home tonight, he takes a moment and observe for that instance when he takes his waiter’s hat off and when he puts his father’s hat on. 

He was duly unimpressed. His look suggested that he wanted to act like my daddy and give and old fashioned slap. I picked up his thought in mid mind and said, “There is a moment between when you take off your waiter’s hat and put on your father’s hat when you are wearing no hat at all… when you are naked of all you personalities… naked came not the stranger…  naked came the real you… for once in your life… and from now on.” 

In fact, we are so rushed in today’s world that we simply put one hat on top of another hat, piling one of our personalities on top of another. Take a moment, take a breath, rest in yourself… and then put on the hat of the moment. Anyway, it’s too cold in Amsterdam to be naked all the time. 

My waiter waited for a second, got it and smiled a smile of understanding. Axel arrived on cue. I smiled and ordered two glasses of white wine for us… from my new friend.

Ps… Osho used a more subtle word for hats… what I call hats, Osho calls ‘interludes’… “Meditate more, and in the interludes, in the gaps, in the intervals, when one thought has gone and another has not come in, you will have the first glimpses of satori, samadhi.

This word 'interlude' is very beautiful. It comes from two Latin words: 'inter' and 'ludus'. Ludus means games, play, and inter means between. Interlude means between the games. You are playing the game of a husband or a wife; then you play the game of a father or a mother. Then you go to the office and you play the game of being a banker, a businessman -- a thousand and one games you play, twenty-four hours. Between two games, interludes.

Go into yourself. For a few moments every day, whenever you can get an opportunity, drop all games, just be yourself -- neither a father, nor a mother, nor a son, nor a banker, nor a servant: nobody. These are all games. Find out the interludes. Between two games, relax in, sink in, drown into your own being -- and there is the answer.

I can show you the way to drown in interludes, but I cannot give you the answer. The answer will come to you.” Osho

All Osho quotes copyright Osho International Foundation www.osho.com
 

“The Goose Is Out”

In the introduction to Osho’s book The Goose Is Out, I wrote about my evolving understanding of this famous Zen metaphor.

When I was a young man and had never been kissed, I was in love with America’s favorite pastime -- baseball. The score was tied 8-8 when the game was called because of darkness, and I suddenly realized I was in deep trouble on the home front.

By the time I made it home, dinner was well over. My older sister Margie met me at the front screen door and said, “Dad wants to see you in his room right away.” As I struggled to get past her she whispered in my ear: “Your goose is cooked.”

And even though my virgin ears had never heard this expression before, I knew exactly what she meant. Older sisters are wicked Zen Masters.

Years later, long after my dream of playing baseball for the Boston Red Sox had gone up in smoke, I fell in love with another Zen Master, Osho, who gave me the same message with a slightly different twist: “Your goose is out!”

You see, there is a beautiful Zen story about a goose that’s put in a bottle when it is very young. It grows up in the bottle and eventually gets too big to take out. The koan which has been driving Zen monks crazy for the past several hundred years is: How do you get the goose out of the bottle without either killing the goose or breaking the bottle?

Now, since you are probably not a Zen monk, you may very well answer, “Who wants to get the stupid goose out of its bottle anyway?” Or, “Hey, to hell with the bottle, let’s put the goose in the freezer and eat it for Thanksgiving.”

Okay, I can see where you’re coming from, but permit me to suggest that you may not be grasping all the implications of this deeply significant koan.

You see, the goose symbolizes your consciousness, your free spirit, your ultimate reality, while the bottle represents your mind. In other words, this koan is saying that your consciousness is trapped inside the mental structures of your mind, and if you ever want to experience the ultimate freedom of pure consciousness, pure meditation, pure liberation, then you need to find a better answer to the question than serving up roast goose for dinner.

For example, let’s take a look at the story of how Nansen, a very famous Zen Master, dealt with this question. The tale goes like this:

The official Riko, once asked Nansen to explain to him the old problem of the goose in the bottle.

“If a man puts a gosling in the bottle,” said Riko, “and feeds it until it is full-grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?”

Nansen gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, “Riko!”

“Yes, Master,” said the official with a start.

“See,” said Nansen, “The goose is out!”

When I first heard Osho tell this story, I got it -- instant Zen.

My sister was wrong. My goose isn’t cooked, my goose is out!

For the longest time after this major spiritual realization I thought I was enlightened. It took me a while to realize that Osho is the one who is out, while Krishna Prem -- that’s me, Margie’s brother -- is back in the bottle every time I get my buttons pushed or strike “out” with the ladies.

Osho is out. Most of the time, I am in. But I don’t feel bad about it. I am in a love affair with my Master. And when I look into Osho and I see his freedom. I feel my own potential to be free -- and sometimes get a taste of it, too.

On my most recent trip to America, my sister Margie and I drove back to the home we grew up in. We were both “big kids” by that time -- our father had long ago left his body.

As we pushed open the old screen door, I turned to Margie and asked with a smile, “If Dad were alive today, how do you think he’d feel about me meditating in India, so far away from home?”

Margie laughed and said, “Your goose would be cooked.”

This time I had the right answer. I clapped my hands and shouted, “The goose is out.”

She gave me a kiss on my balding head and said, “Go back to India. You’re crazy!”

Soon afterwards, Margie also left her body, struck down by cancer. Her last words to me were true to her never-to-be-surrendered role of big sister: “Grow up.”

Funnily enough, Osho’s last words to me were: “It’s not my responsibility that you get enlightened. It’s your responsibility.”

Which just goes to prove that elder sisters and Zen Masters never give up -- fortunately.

I hope you love this little book enough to use it as a signpost, to look inside yourself, to check out your own goose.

Is it out?

Are you free at last?



Q: OSHO, YOU SAY THE GOOSE IS OUT ALREADY. WHY DOES IT FEEL SO IMPOSSIBLE TO GRASP?


Because it is already out! Just see the point, don't think about it. A moment's thought, and you have gone far away. Don't brood about it, just see it. It is not a question of thinking about and about, going in circles, it is not a question of great intellectuality, of philosophical acumen, of logical efficiency. It is not a question of a trained mind; it is a question of an innocent heart.
Just see it! Wipe your eyes of all the tears, wipe your eyes of all the dust that has accumulated on them, and just look at existence. A leaf falling from the tree may become your enlightenment.
- Osho

All Osho quotes copyright Osho International Foundation www.osho.com

"Looking for Miss Take" by Krishna Prem, also known as Mister Right

I was not brought up to be alone. My purpose here on Planet Earth, according to my family (meaning Mom), was to meet my soul mate (as long as she was Jewish), get married, and have babies in order to carry on the family name – and then naturally health, wealth, and happiness would follow. I could go on for lifetimes explaining how this scenario has a tragic ending, but I imagine you can fill in the blanks out of your own experience. No matter whether you are Mr. Right or Miss Take, love is chock full of tragic endings. 

Allow me to go deep for a moment… Love that seeks another is destined to fail. Love that finds his or her own self is destined to be love in the here and now, not in the future. In the words of Buddha, enjoyed by Osho, and stolen by me: Love yourself and watch. 

When I met Osho, it was a wake-up call for me. He reminded me in no uncertain words to drop loneliness and to live in my aloneness. My inner voice sang out, "Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!" I walked out of this particular darshan with Osho in '75 complete unto myself. As I staggered out of His room, I bumped into His garden full of delicious women. I got confused all over again. My God, in those days there were three ma's for every swami. Aloneness quickly took a backseat. I was able to give up my mother's concept of marriage, but my manliness was excited to the max, and my loneliness was so covered up with lust that I simply had no idea I was not getting Osho. 

Through the following years of trial and error I have come to the understanding that aloneness is who I am and loneliness is simply aloneness without a center. So allow me one moment here to say “I am sorry” to those ladies whom I loved and lost along the way from here to here. This is it. 

Let me make it perfectly clear… Ladies, hold up your index fingers. And gentlemen, hold up high your middle fingers. Now ladies, is there anything you would like to say to all the middle fingers on this planet? For example, "Go fuck yourself!" I, for one middle finger, can handle anything you want to say because after all is said and done, we are all fingers of one hand. And as fingers of one hand, there is no such thing as separation. We are one hand appearing as two fingers. 

How does a guy like me hit the wall? After I had dated for years and years in the ashram, the commune, and finally in the meditation resort, and had never met Miss Right, it finally dawned on me that I must be Mister Wrong. So instead of running out to the cappuccino bar to make a date I found myself dancing alone at Kundalini Meditation. I could have continued blaming all the Miss Takes in the world but until I cleaned up my own act, love was just an impossible dream. 

The real Miss Take was meeting my friend Jwala. We fell in love, and I absolutely did not change. This was not good enough for her. She insisted that if we actually wanted to give our love a chance, I could either have a frontal lobotomy or enroll in Primal Therapy followed by Co-Dependency and Path of Love. Or she would leave me. I broke up with her immediately. A month later, I came to my senses, begged her to come back to me, and against my better judgment agreed to embark on a  crash course of therapy. In therapy I was confronted with this character " K.P.,'' with his wild mood swings, and I had to look at his life and love affairs. Then I got that these cyclones are on the periphery and the real me is at the center. 

What a Miss Take Jwala turned out to be! We have been together for 13 years now. We’re still not married, still making love without having children, and still growing together. We’re simply being together. For me, this feeling of oneness with a beloved allowed me for the first time to experience my aloneness, not my loneliness. 

For me, Osho pointed out the truth – but who gives a shit until the truth is “who I am”? So scream away, love away, lonely away…whatever it takes to love out of your aloneness. For now, I don't know what it feels like to be a center without a cyclone, but I can say from my very center that Miss Take never felt so good. So allow me one more moment to say to Miss Take, as well as Mr. Right, that I love you until the “I” and the “you” disappear, and only love remains.

Love is, krishna prem


Ps… and here a moment with Osho

"Each child is born beautiful, and then we start distorting his beauty, crippling him in many ways, paralyzing him in many ways, distorting his proportion, making him unbalanced. Sooner or later he becomes so disgusted with himself that he is ready to be with anybody. He may go to a prostitute just to avoid himself."

"LOVE YOURSELF..., says Buddha. And this can transform the whole world. It can destroy the whole ugly past. It can herald a new age, it can be the beginning of a new humanity."

"Hence my insistence on love -- but love begins with you yourself, then it can go on spreading. It goes on spreading of its own accord; you need not do anything to spread it."

"LOVE YOURSELF..., says Buddha. And then immediately he adds: AND WATCH.... That is meditation, that is Buddha's name for meditation. But the first requirement is to love yourself, and then watch. If you don't love yourself and start watching, you may feel like committing suicide."

"Socrates says: Know thyself, Buddha says: Love thyself. And Buddha is far more true, because unless you love yourself you will never know yourself -- knowing comes only later on, love prepares the ground. Love is the possibility of knowing oneself, love is the right way to know oneself."

- Osho, The Dhammapada Vol 5 Chapter #5 Love Knows Nothing of Duty 

All Osho quotes copyright Osho International Foundation www.osho.com

When I grow up, I want to be a kid.

My body just turned sixty-five years old.

Thank heavens I am not my body. Or am I?

In any event, when my body was just shy of thirty I met Osho and I immediately began growing up instead of growing old.

A nice trick, picked up from a master magician.

At that time my brother Brian met his guru, Dr. Milton Erickson, of hypnosis fame.

As brothers, we were always competitive, so why not have a friendly banter on whose guru knows more?

Certainly Osho won, in my humble opinion, hands down.

But one thing Milton Erickson said to my brother always stayed with me. Milton Erickson said to my bro, ''There are only three kinds of people on this earth: little sized kids, middle sized kids and big sized kids.''

For thirty years now, I have looked upon modern man trying to prove my brother's guru wrong, and shit if that guy didn't have something to say.

But after exhausting myself trying to grow up, I stumbled on an original answer.

Me.

Me-plus-nothing.

Me… period.

Not a ‘somebody’ that grows up or down, although I guess you might call me a ‘nobody.’

In a humorous, funny sort of way, I have given this new ‘me,’ or better yet, this new ‘not me,’ the nickname Turiya.

As Osho has explained many times in his discourses, the word ‘Turiya’ refers to the fourth state of consciousness.

The first three we all know: waking sleeping and dreaming. Turiya simply means ‘the fourth,’ a humble kind of name, but with big implications, because it refers to the cosmic consciousness inside us all.

So I am now happy to announce that I have discovered a fourth kind of kid that I have nicknamed “my Turiya-sized kid.”

Yes I am still a kid, but a Turiya-sized kid. A kid who somehow ‘grew in,’ not a kid who grew up or old.

It's nice to be me now.

I am no longer growing.

I am no longer maturing.

It's simply OK.

As my friend Rahasya once said to me before she left my adopted home town of Amsterdam for Mill Valley, ''I don't know and I don't need to know.''

When Rahasya said this to me, almost matter-of-factly, over a beer at sunset in the Vondel Park, the penny dropped for me.

I actually don't know what she meant, but what I heard, in my inner gut, was, "Krishna Prem, when are you going to stop giving up the here-and-now, while you wait for a rosy future?"

And if you don't understand my gibberish, well, the old KP might have been sad about that, seeing how grown-up language just can’t convey what he really means.

But, as my Turiya-sized kid, I only need to throw you a bucket and spade and say, “Hey, there’s plenty of room in the sand box.”

That's how I feel. I am just a kid playing in the unknowable sand box.

I wear many hats of a big-sized kid.

I pay the rent.

I drive a car.

I act mature.

But as soon as I can, I take my hats off and relax.

In a sense, my ego is a hat – a hat that is really useful and practical these days as a bucket to fill with sand to make castles with.

What size kid are you? One that’s busy growing, busy postponing, waiting for the golden future, or the one that knows how to play?

Love, Krishna “The Turiya Sized Kid” Prem

And remember, it's never too late to have a happy childhood. Or as George Bernard Shaw put it, “We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
 

Krishna Prem
krishnaprem@geeyouareyou.com
www.geeyouareyou.com

All Osho quotes copyright Osho International Foundation www.osho.com