Steve Small, a contemporary of the sannyasnews collective in the early days, (previously known as Swami Prem Sudesh) has recently published his memoirs which are of a high standard. The book is called “Mind the Gap: A Memoir of Enquiry.” Below is a short extract.
(Parmartha will forward enquiries to the author from anyone interested in purchasing the book, (price £10 including P&P). His email is parmartha@yahoo.com)
MIND THE GAP
Chapter 8
The Open Door Of Bewilderment
October 1977, Bombay (later Mumbai) Airport
The sky is so much bigger here. This is my first impression as we disembark from our charter plane at Bombay airport and smell the moist atmosphere of late monsoon season. Before we set foot off the steps from the plane, I sense an intense heat coming off the runway tarmac, even though dawn has not yet broken. Then again, overwhelming all other impressions is that sky. Even at night its Prussian-blue canopy is so vast compared to England. Meanwhile, a thousand scattered yellow stars whisper down to me, Where have you been all this time, what took you so long?
We have left behind a declining, fractured England, strewn with spiky-haired punks, which within two years will see a new Tory Prime Minister quote St. Francis of Assisi on the steps of 10 Downing Street, before proceeding to smash the country apart. Happily oblivious to this future prospect, Gino and I are already forming a bond like Aruldite, stronger than the materials it joins.
*
Overawed by the chaotic sights and sounds of Bombay, we make our way to the huge, imposing interior of Victoria Station and fill in the complex paperwork needed for rail travel to Pune. We’ve been advised to get First Class, as this has upholstered seats and is roughly comparable to England’s economy class.
The Maharastra terrain is flat for about a mile either side of the tracks, until majestic peaks appear in the hazy distance.
“Hey, look at those hills!” Gino keeps exclaiming. “I dreamed of them last night. Look! They’re exactly as I envisioned them.”
But I can’t look where he’s pointing, as tears fill my eyes, flowing from a certainty that I have been here before. It is all so very unfamiliar, yet intuitively familiar from a previous lifetime. All human life plays itself out, both in and between the stations, which for some people provide their only reliable source of water and indeed living quarters. I can even see one person in a chair, a few hundred metres from the track, getting a shave with a white barber’s towel around his neck.
Before the train even comes to a halt in any station, thirteen-year-old vendors press against its windows, proffering metal trays filled with sweets and soft drinks, crying out their Hindi variants of London street-market calls. The words sound primal, so potent when you didn’t know their meaning. Coins and refreshments change hands through open windows and, meanwhile, an elderly blind man with a ravaged face is led through the carriages by a small boy aged ten or eleven. The old man sings a loud, off-key dirge, possibly an old folk or religious song, which to my ears is as movingly lyrical as it is excruciating. Several people throw loose change into the boy’s bowl, either in appreciation or quite possibly to hasten the duo away to the next carriage.
Although Pune is only 150 kilometres from Bombay, no Indian rail journey is ever high-speed, so nightfall descends before we reach Pune Rail station and check into a hotel. Lying on an unfamiliar bed with heavy white cotton sheets, I listen to the cacophony of traffic noises outside, including rickshaw horns squawking like exotic birds. Tears overtake me again as a deep dark gap opens. Calling it a Void with a capital V would sound more ‘spiritual’ than merely a gap, but this does not feel spiritual in any way I had imagined. However, I’m about to start learning, in India, how nothing and no one is here to meet my expectations; how this gap between wishful thinking and actuality is an ongoing fact of life.
*
I was finally in my evening darshan, in the enclosed garden at the back of Bhagwan’s (Osho.s) residence with a group of about thirty seekers, facing his empty armchair on the marble-floored courtyard. Bhagwan suddenly appeared in his white ankle-length robe, “like a being from Outer Space,” as Gino described the event, giving a silent namaste greeting to everyone, his hands pressed together.
Bhagwan was well-groomed, of average height and weight for someone of forty-six accustomed to living in luxury. He had white hair at the sides that gave him a distinguished look but no hair on top, a flowing beard, and beautifully expressive eyes and hands. But all this fails to describe the atmosphere he generated as one disciple after another came and sat before him. I was overawed by the radiant loving-kindness Bhagwan emanated to all. Wow, it will be wonderful if he’s like that with me! Finally, a minion called out, “Prem Sudesh,” and it was my turn. Despite my best intentions, as I walked toward the front, a thought bubbled up, This is like going to the headmaster’s office at Featherstone Secondary Modern Boys’ School, except we’re all wearing a different uniform. Look, there are the prefects.
One of them, a bushy-haired Scots bodyguard named Shiva, tapped the ground where I was to sit. I noticed Bhagwan’s manner had shifted from beaming, all-giving love to a markedly reserved demeanour. After all, his teachings were described as syncretic, meaning they often contradicted each other, depending on whom he was talking to. Perhaps he switched manner in the same way. Or maybe my inner door was too closed for his beam to penetrate? To my surprise, he recommended a series of quiet, meditational courses. “Ever done anything like an Enlightenment Intensive?” he asked with a twinkle. He also gave me a laughing meditation, which I was supposed to do for five minutes on waking and before sleeping.
During the three-day Enlightenment Intensive course, around fifty westerners faced each other in two long rows. One person asked a single question of his or her opposite number: “Tell me who you are,” whereupon the other answered with the first honest response that occurred to him or her. Which might be, “I’m a robot,” “I’m a grasshopper,” or “I’m a mythological princess.” Or in my case, “I’m a factory that produces problems.”
After five minutes of this, we swapped roles. After twenty minutes, we swapped partners. And that was it; that was the structure, from morning to night, fifteen hours a day for three days.
The American leader had a trainee German assistant, Ule, whom she left to ‘instruct’ us for each evening of the interminable ‘Tell me who you are’ mantra. Whenever anyone protested about the sheer boredom of repetition, Ule, in her maddeningly neutral Teutonic accent, urged them to “point the arrow of questioning inwards.”
Nevertheless a camaraderie built up, and there were two familiar faces: Heeren, the musicologist, and another new friend, Gillian, who had met Jerry back at Arundel Place and become his girlfriend within five minutes flat. Bhagwan had now given her a new name, Prem Meeta, meaning Friend of Love. With her slim build, long dark hair, wide-spaced eyes and effortless tendency to shine in a social circle, Meeta reminded me of the Four Marys in my sister’s girls’ comic Bunty, who were the most popular girls in school. There was also a freckle-faced New Zealander called Leah, who had I am rebellious written all over her face. Sitting opposite me on the evening of Day One, Leah waited until Ule, (vigilantly checking that we were all still ‘pointing the arrow inwards,’) had walked away out of earshot, patrolling down the line of enquirers.
“I am just so sick of all this bullshit,” Leah said. “I’ve been in so many ashram groups like this one. They all put you in a pressurised structure until you have a catharsis. What’s so special about having a catharsis? Have one and you’ve had them all.”
Further down the line I could hear Meeta’s voice repeating, “I’m so bored, I’m so bored, I’m bored, I’m bored, I’M BORED.” I suppressed a smile that might give way any moment to hysterical laughter and rearranged my expression into one of earnest attention to Leah’s words.
“The premise is simplistic,” she continued. “Keep searching for an answer that isn’t in the rational mind, and you’ll go beyond it. You’ll be more likely to go up the fucking wall, I’d say.”
Later that day I noticed Leah had vanished. She told us afterwards that walking out of the group was the best thing she’d ever done, and indeed I envied her for what looked like strength of character. But if I’d followed suit, I would’ve judged myself as running away.
Finally, at around 10.30p.m, even Ule realised we had to rest, and announced it was bedtime. As with all residential groups, we each helped ourselves to a light mattress and bedding from a regulation ashram-issue burgundy or black-cotton stack against the wall, then found a place to lie down.
That first night I dreamed a ladder appeared beside me, stretching up so far I couldn’t see the top. A tremendous light emanated downwards from the clouds. Heeren came up to the ladder’s base and pointed resolutely upwards, saying, “Bhagwan’s up there, man, waiting for us to reach his level. Follow the instructions, you know where we’re going.”
I opened my mouth to say I wasn’t sure, but Heeren was already climbing; soon his visibility faded amidst the clouds. I began to follow, but before I’d gone two steps, my brother Chris appeared and held my arm, his eyes shining bemusedly. “You know that even if you get to the top,” he said, “you’re going to have to come all the way back down the other side. No one’s ever going to take the Southall out of you mate.” Chris quickly vanished without waiting for a reply. I sighed and headed upwards. Each rung seemed a lot higher than the last, and my breathing soon became laboured. Then, someone brushed my shoulder; Meeta was hovering in the air beside me.
“Why not let go of the ladder and float up?” she asked. “It’s so much easier.” With a hand-gesture conveying simplicity, she ascended past me, and I noticed little wings sprouting from her Birkenstock sandals. Or were they little jets? I hesitated. Leaning back, taking a deep breath, I let go of the rungs. Then I fell, spiralling downwards. The light receded, and soon there was complete dark.
I sometimes wonder if I can ever get anything out of another of these pieces, and Sudesh catches something. The flavour of the trains. Being there, which all seems so very long ago and so very much the past.
Nice writing style. (He’s read a lot of modern novels, I’ll be bound).
This is one of the most sober descriptions of a ´gap´ I’ve read for a while, Steven K. Small, aka Prem Sudesh, passing it over to Parmartha (your editor?):
“Tears overtake me again as a deep dark gap opens. Calling it a Void with a capital V would sound more ‘spiritual’ than merely a gap, but this does not feel spiritual in any way I had imagined. However, I’m about to start learning, in India, how nothing and no one is here to meet my expectations; how this gap between wishful thinking and actuality is an ongoing fact of life.”
There are tears happening in life, in my life too, which have nothing to do with sadness and grief, there are tears happening in life which are more relating to a deep recognition and acknowledging of the unknowable and a re-connecting to a ‘telephone operator’ of the Inner.
Those tears are very precious.
A bit reluctant I’ve been to respond at all, seeing that some ´German-bashing´ (especially concerning women) is still quite alive here in this UK, quite male-dominated website.
Some of the the most enjoyable experiences of a time (long passed meanwhile in the sannyas-scene) in the Presence of the Master were that the question of differences amongst the codexi ´nationality/ies´ were much more diminished, as it is nowadays, in spite (!) of the numerous forms of denying the latter..!
If the author of this honest, juicy report is enjoying these ´gaps´, which he is talking about even nowadays, I say ´hello´, dear friend – and
All the best, for you and us all -
With Love,
Madhu
Is there also a chapter in the book when Swami Prem Sudesh reverted back to his original name?
Why don´t you order the book, and read, Shantam Prem, to find that out, if that is your concern?
Btw, what I really like is the cover graphic design of the book: the destination sign on top of the driver’s cab of that train reads: ‘Beyond’.
I recently got this book, have already read quite a lot, and I recommend it as an honest, interesting, entertaining, thoroughly enjoyable account of one decidedly individual person’s odyssey through the psycho-spiritual minefields (and “beyond”) of our times.
I agree with Madhu, Shantam – read it and all will be revealed….
SD, you can sell me second-hand or you think it is worth to keep on the bookshelf?
Personally, I have no interest in the books of sannyasins based on the past where authors have no insights for future.
Curiously, thought why not check whether book is available at Amazon? It is not, but introduction is there. I paste this as it feels authentic. Surely I will get this book.
“This book is about one person’s search for truth and wholeness. The gap referred to in the title is what fuelled that search; the empty space between anticipation and disaster, longing and loss, idealised belief and reality. This journey has involved falling into that gap over and over again, before slowly learning to recognise and even befriend it as an inevitable aspect of life.
If I could backtrack through time and hand this memoir to my twenty-year-old self, he might have avoided some big mistakes. Then it would resemble a flat-pack furniture assembly manual, with words replacing the diagrams. Of course, the conscientious flat-pack buyer reads those instructions before assembly. However, for those who designed and built the original item, the instructions were written after it was put together – possibly following much trial and error. One thing has become clear: in the end it is only the universal Allen key of compassion that can fit all life’s pieces together.
Outwardly, this particular story moves from teenage rebellion against working-class tradition, through far-left politics, philosophical exchanges on London’s Underground, via various cults offering their versions of psycho-salvation – at a price. Finally, there is arrival; a remembering of completeness, of that which has been there all along, whilst rambling through the bucolic heartland of the Wiltshire-Somerset border.”
Many were touched by Osho, and in a number of ways, in his lifetime. As always, Osho gave different recommendations to different types, and maybe to the same types at different stages of their journeys.
Certainly he said that there was no substitute for a living Master as a trigger for growth, and people should move on to other Masters, or even to their own paths to enlightenment, after he was gone. BUT also in other places he said that he would be able to work with his sannyasins much better when he was not in the body, and plagued by corporeal pain.
I don’t feel either are right or wrong. In my own case, I have continued to feel Osho in my life, and even stronger after he left the body.
In many other people whom I respect, they felt to move on and be with living Masters; and also there is a third category, those who decidedly wished to follow their own path, unguided by teachers or others.
Until fairly recently I would put Steve K. Small (Sudesh) in the middle category. He tried other disciplines and teachers, and in the last few years, he moved into the final category, following his own path until his epiphany on a Somerset hill.
I personally have never felt the need to decry or put down people who are no longer Osho sannyasins but whose lives were clearly touched by Osho’s living presence.
I would suggest respect should be in order from all sides. To my surprise “Osho sannyasins” often write to me and remain fundamentalists, and even unnecessarily critical of those who move on, or maybe more accurately “move in”, in other ways.
Again and again I have written on this site and my facebook page, “For all practical reasons, Neo-Sannyas initiated by Osho has died an untimely death as far as developed western world is concerned.”
It does not mean longing and search has died. These two things are natural phenomena. Shops put their shutters down but not the daily needs. There are new gurus, mini-gurus, healers and therapists who have opened their own mini-stores. I am happy to note, Indians’ monopoly in this branch is shrinking drastically.
Therefore ‘Osho Sannyasin’ has no relevance for the present or future as far as western world is concerned. Its past will remain alive as long as few thousand westerns with Indian names in their twilight years are still in their bodies.
“I don’t feel either are right or wrong. In my own case, I have continued to feel Osho in my life, and even stronger after he left the body.”
Hear hear.
:star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star:
Find it difficult to follow you here, Shantam.
Neo-Sannyas is very much alive for me. I figure behind this comment is your either conscious or unconscious world view that somehow neo-sannyas needs an organisation, and a strong one based in Pune, and around what you see as Osho’s samadhi. Even if this happened it would just be a religion.
Those who were with Osho from the early formative years will go on feeling Osho´s presence the way others feel the presence of their Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and Nanak.
Few think it is a kind of rocket science to feel Osho. In simple terms, all the human beings cultivate their emotional and spiritual investment.
When I said, “Sannyas is dead for all practical reasons in the West” it is based on the fact any young person with a bit of common sense will get attracted to dozens of living masters of theirs rather than being sucked by second-rung therapists.
And moreover, none of the ladies and gentlemen at this site have understood the concept of Osho´s work from the point of view of the founder. Mixing one´s own mind is so obvious.
Big P,
Do you ever get the feeling of having taken Sannyas again?
I feel like that has happened to me so many times.
I’m going through it again now. Fantastic feeling. Affirming.
Good post, PM.
Perfectly correct!
Again, the depraved cockney baboon travellers who think that they are a light unto themselves and who have betrayed Osho`s vision have missed! They failed to follow simple instructions for journey given by divine conductor and ended up up the Arsenal chanting mindlessly with phoney gurus and sitting mindlessly with have-a-go advaitists!
After purchasing one-way ticket to Nirvana Central and travelling for some time, after breakdown of train, instead of moving on down the carriage, they have attempted to jump from train and failed to listen to instructions of Indian driver and fallen into the gap of mind!
Mind is the gap! And they have fallen into it!
They have decided world is their oyster and ended up in the wrong zone on Circle line of abc maharishis and mini-gurus and other bogus ticket-collectors!
Remaining passengers of neo-sannyas have also gone down the tube and have died untimely death with drivers asleep at wheel!
True disciples are those who refuse to move on and remain effortlessly rooted in happy memories of the here and now 40 years ago, and stay in deep, egoless heart-to-heart connection on Facebook and other important sites!
Yahoo!
Hari Om!
Mind the gap!
Frank boy, you are lucky that meditation made you see “I am a twat”, it was quick. If you look around, the people who could not see it are around trying ‘to help’ with all kinds of bullshit, and just confusing more…. XXX
BELOVED MASTER,
WHAT IS YOUR TASK HERE?
What is my task here?
Once upon a time, there was a frog. But he really wasn’t a frog, he was a prince who looked and felt like a frog. A wicked witch had cast a spell on him: only the kiss of a beautiful maiden could save him. But since when do cute chicks kiss frogs? So there he sat, unkissed prince in frog form. But miracles happen. One day a beautiful maiden grabbed him and gave him a big smack. Crash! Boom! Zap! There he was, a handsome prince. And you know the rest: they lived happily ever after.
So what is my task here? To kiss frogs, of course.
Osho,
The Divine Melody
Chapter #2
Chapter title: Become a Flame
Once so many frogs became princes, they did what they were supposed to do.
They took their swords out for the most eligible girls available and also for their personal kingdoms.
Has not every action its consequences?
Don`t be silly.
They all lived happily ever after, of course.
SD,
Are you plugging the electrodes in your head or licking 12 volt batteries etc?
Does it work for you?
To be fair, I had a go myself recently.
Definitely works.
No, Frank, I’m not, but I know a couple of people who’ve done similar stuff to John Dupuy and they both enjoy it. One of them never misses a day, usually does two different sessions, reckons it’s far superior to TM, drugs, drink, tranquilisers, Prozac and sleeping pills, and that it’s a significant, even vital part of his ‘anti-depressant’, general self-help routine, enhancing his self-awareness and general functioning, probably adding years of well-being to his life.
Good to know a little bit more about the kind of mind-frame prevalent in many of your contributions here re other´s expressions (also to mine), as I didn´t have a clue how come that what you feel as your responses resemble quite often more a kind of ´Spanish Inquisition´ and interrogation or painful questioning of disecting manner in an official office, than a heart-to-heart connection and sharing amongst riends.
Googled a bit more and again about the Integral Forum this morning and types like Ken Wilber (or Andrew Cohen there, amongst others, in former years); being gripped again by this feeling cold and tired by the long intellectual discussions of a self-proclaimed ´elite´.
True, the brain is quite often defined as a bio-computer and seen like a machine, which needs just a good ´mechanic´ for a good and convenient outcome (treatment) in terms of human relating on intra- or inter-personal or collective levels, or even that which some call nowadays the trans-human level.
The very latter quite often sensibly with a stink of lust to power and greed for profit (in any realms). not only in my eyes but also from experience.
True, and no doubt about it, that we live in a thoroughly technically oriented world nowadays, down to the basics of human communication and its measures.
And quite inconvenient ´truth´ is also that man sees his fellow humans more and more like rats in a laboratory which are to be manipulated (be it technically or pharmaceutically) to smoothe the system´s challenges of living together in more and more crowded places.
What is addiction more than indicating some great loss of essential life qualities and/or incapacity to deal with traumatic issues?
And if such loss cannot be named anymore and brought into conciousness, be it filled then by dope, drugs, drinks and tranquillisers you named, or simply gone over it by technical triggers (with less then bodily sickening after- effects) it stays, in my view, like a wound one has covered without exposing it to fresh air and the healing capacities which may be invoked simply by becoming conscious of something.
Not interfering, not striving to make some symptom ´go´and disappear, and more than sometimes would be having to allow to be exposed in all helplessness, seems to have become a great ´no-go´area.
And as technical measures and means are progressing at very high speed, this habit of denying symptoms gets bigger and bigger, more than ever before, I feel.
Madhu
I wonder why Madhu and other such liberal leftists don’t get that men will write and express themselves the way they are.
The militant ladies of the West have really killed the spirit of their western men. (Maybe this is the reason many such get perverse joy to fall in love with Muslims and get slapped from time to time).
MOD: POST EDITED.
Thanks, Shantam Prem, for showing up again in your true colours, speaking up in permanence and sustainably (and I even guess, more honestly) about the predominant average UK and elsewhere male mindsets here.
What would those do without you?
Madhu, I cannot say about the real world around you and its effect on your sensibilities; as far as this site is concerned, I have the impression almost all of us have high regard, not just for women but every aspect of nature.
Every pun, every satire, every sharp-witted sentence is written by everyone without any malefic intentions.
Take the things in a light way.
“Every pun, every satire, every sharp-witted sentence is written by everyone without any malefic intentions.
Take the things in a light way.”
(Shantam Prem)
As I already said to you, Shantam Prem:
´The mystery´ why a male sexist, sadist, racist and pervert can claim here for the rest of the buddhies, as a kind of spokesman, to be ´just joking´ or even claim to be a satirist or even “sharp-witted”…this mystery gets more and more lifted.
Won´t take it easy, so I spare you the effort of making similiar approaches.
Madhu
Madhu, I suggest you take into account my post of yesterday (11.56am) before you start making assumptions about my “mind-frame” and likewise, about what these ‘tech’ methods involve (ie what you think they avoid).
According to John Dupuy (the interviewer in the video), for example, committing himself to one of these paths necessitated experiencing and looking in depth at the causes of his lifetime of ongoing debilitating malaise. It was a process of profound exposure, certainly not a matter of covering it all up, ‘cutting corners’, ‘cheating’, as it were, by ‘taking some medicine’. If it were merely the latter then I’d share your reservations.
As it is, from current evidence, it seems to me that there’s much potential therapeutic good inherent in this stuff, although I’d prefer to suspend judgment about any specifically ‘spiritual’ claims, tending to agree with Frank on that.
On tech methods: I am all the tech I need.
You and how many drugs, Bong?!
Sometimes I too get gaps in the mind. No, I don’t start painting or creating music, I write. Here is one sentence from the gap:
“Best way to kill the master is to use his words as sound for ears entertainment.”
Quite so, Shantam. You must do your ironing in silence from now on, ok?
This is good one.