It was a lovely day, and a lovely way to take a final goodbye. A meet up in a pub on the warmest day of the year, a stroll down into the woods, a cheerful picnic, a five-minute meditation. Then 25 or so friends of SannyasNews co-founder Parmatha spread out and cast his ashes among the trees and ponds of his favourite corner of Hampstead Heath, shortly after what would have been his 74th birthday.
Here is Dominic (Navajat in the background) taking a handful of ashes from an urn in front of a picture of Parmartha, who died on July 20 last year.
Pictured below (with more pictures) is Omkar, casting his lot. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… and to the leaf mould from last autumn, and the rich mud of a shrinking pond among the flowers and greenery of high summer. Parmartha’s body goes back home to the earth that gave him birth. A time for singing, a celebration of the living and the dead.
Paras and Vibhava
From left: Nishi, Colette, Matthew and Dominic
A pensive Prabuddho
Visible from left: Sudipa, Prabuddho, Eulalia, Ajana, Matthew, Dominic and Arten.
Thanks to Nishi, Lora and Pankaja for the pictures.
When I return to my home town in Scotland I no longer look for people in the street who I once might have known. The reason being that I will not recognize anyone from the good auld days because, like myself, they have aged a lot and no longer look like they did decades ago. Same goes for the group of people attending Parmartha’s wee memorial service. I remember some of their names but cannot really recognize anyone.
One thing is for sure, PM was a well loved and respected man. I only met him once. We went for a clifftop walk on Ibiza’s north coast. I spend a lot of time surrounded by Nature and therefore I can easily detect if someone is used to being in a natural environment or not. Parmartha, I am happy to say, was right at home in my neck of the woods.
Whenever I think of a friend who has died I immediately say their name and recite Om Mani Padme Om. I do it for Parmartha right now.
That’s the way to do it.
I would like to have joined in.
You’re a good man, big P.
You put in more than you took out.
Dear Clive/Jitendra,
So grateful that you did share with all of us what all of you Friends felt the right moment and the right place in nature to complete a circle.
Same as Arpana, I would have loved to be part of it.
Same as Lokesh, I´ve to admit that I may not be (or may not have been) able to recognize some of the Friends, when meeting them by chance in Munich.
And vice versa…
That´s bitter-sweet.
Deeply grateful for your sharing –
Madhu
Wow!
What a lovely way to say final goodbye. Formal or non-formal Rituals of life and death have warmth of life.
The above photos are more touching than the photos of Trump and family meeting Queen and her family.
Hello Shantam,
This is the best comment from you I have read so far.
Nice one!
It`s also good that people doing their own styles of ceremonies/celebrations around funerals is going really mainstream these days with friends/relatives just chipping in however feels right.
I like to think that Osho has played at least a part in that development.
Hats off!
Just experienced something rather odd…
Returning from an hour-long soft-tissue massage this afternoon, I adjourned to the Waterlow Park cafe for a coffee and dark chocolate (as one does in these circumstances) and took my seat outside, perusing the book that had arrived this morning about the recent research on ‘entities’ etc. accessed by the plant-based DMT…
Shortly, looking up I saw, sitting on a park bench in the area below, about 20 or so yards away, someone who was, to my eyes, the very spitting image of…Parmartha!
The build, clothes (windcheater-type top), hairstyle and the way of sitting, arms crossed, then one hand close to mouth with thumb on chin…plus that he was often looking towards or seemingly at me…Then a friend of his, a black woman, appeared and he got up and embraced her…all so very reminiscent of Parmartha that I was almost convinced it was him…
I didn’t want to hang around so, after finishing the coffee and chocolate I walked down the steps and observed this ‘visitation’ that was masquerading as another person…or so I liked to imagine…
There before me, enjoying a meet-up with a friend, both sitting on the bench and in ‘good spirits’ (to coin a phrase) was…a middle-aged woman, maybe 60-ish…
Strange, the tricks the mind can play…although the recollections of Parmartha stimulated by ‘the vision’ had been so real….
And I’ve just read this prediction for today from an online astrology service…
Jun 05, 2019 – You are feeling nostalgic and like your heart is really wandering into the world today, Scorpio. This is the effect of the Cancer Moon in your ninth house of foreign affairs. You may be thinking of a specific person that is afar, or you may be feeling like you want to make an impact in the world at large today.
Follow the psychic cues and signs that you are being given today. There are many that are telling you exactly what you need to hear to change the world, or, your world.
Follow your heart with this one, and it will not lead you astray. You also want to listen to that inner voice of yours as it is sending you some powerful messages today. Don’t feed any drama today, and you will be just fine.
What signs are you getting, Scorpio?
SD,
Did anyone have odd experiences with birds in and around the funeral or the celebration? I am not the first to have found that it`s quite a common occurrence around death.
And SD,
I think your vision is true and I guess that there will always be people meeting and embracing throughout all eternity.
And anyone who`s ever done it is part of that for ever.
I don’t know, Frank.
But I certainly had an odd one around the time of my mother’s death, where a large crow, or it might have been a raven, was sitting on top of a tennis net where I was about to begin playing at Hampstead Heath courts. There was just something about that bird, which simply sat there, unmoving, that informed me that her death was imminent.
Almost as if it was indicating, “Life (and Death) are what happens when you’re making other plans….”
I was staying at my mum and dad`s the night my mum died. In the middle of the night I was woken by an owl screeching loudly outside my window, very close, on the roof above. I had never heard an owl in the area, even in the distance, before that.
The next day, in the morning, she died.
I remember I went for a walk in the fields later that day and came across a bird-watcher who was looking at something through his binoculars on a tripod. I chatted to him and asked him what he was looking for.
He showed me a tree across a field and said “Owls. There were two of them in that tree yesterday, but this morning I can only see one.”
MOD:
DOES ANYONE KNOW THE EMAIL ADDRESS OF Matthew Gibb (seen in several photos here)? WE’D LIKE TO SEND HIM THE LINK TO THE ARTICLE.
Remarkable, Frank.
SD, seeing as how I was in a highly emotional state already, it didn`t even seem that strange, in a way.
I have spoken to many people who have had broadly similar experiences (now including you) to the extent that I have started thinking that it might be quite ‘normal’ in a statistical sense.
In fact, I like the idea that wyrd and crazy things happening are ‘normal’. It`s probably a good frame of mind to approach life with!
Btw, if you can have visons of the dead on just coffee and dark chocolate (altho` they are definite psychoactives), you might not even need the DMT!
The right brain, unconscious, pre-conscious, the uncarved block, the dreaming or whatever it is, breaks through with everyone in some way sooner or later.
Even my dad, who was Mr Straight, whose religion was rationalist scientist, in his last years rather sheepishly admitted to me that he had seen my (deceased) mum in the room at times.
Frank,
When the bird-watcher you spoke to said that there were two owls and now only one, maybe he was looking at ‘your’ owl, and the missing one was dead (perhaps caught on the ground by a fox)?
And yours, the one that survived, simply flew far and wide that night – going to places it doesn’t normally – searching and calling for its missing mate.
I know rational explanations are not always welcome, but why would a bird care about the death of a human?
Hi Anubodh,
I don`t think that a bird would care about the death of a human. That is probably too much cause-and-effect thinking. The things just seem to happen/co-exist/coincide.
The perceived connection or meaning may have been entirely been in my mind other than the occurrence was very unusual in that I only ever heard an owl that close on that night and met a bird watcher in the area for the first and only time ever that day. And his pointing out that there was only one owl now seemed a strangely fitting statement to hear from a stranger in a random conversation, given the circumstances that I now only had one parent left!
From a scientific point of view, sure, there`s no proof, repeatability, and no utility for it whatsoever. I would never try and convince anyone in a white coat about such a thing!!
Maybe the next time you’re woken in the night by a bird “screeching loudly” outside your bedroom window, it will be a ‘swan’ and not an owl.
Your rational explanation of Frank’s owl incident was a good one, Anubodh, but Jung’s concept of synchronicity, of which there are so many instances, in almost everyone’s life, is worth bearing in mind as well.
Here’s a good article, including the writer’s personal experience:
https://tomkenyon.com/synchronicities
I would never try and convince anyone in a white coat about such a thing!!
Wondering if these white coaters can ever see other colour coaters!?
@SD 9 June, 2019 at 11:46 am
I’ve never come across anyone who is so rational, yet so open to the ‘irrational’ – and that is not a criticism. Really interesting juxtaposition.
I more or less go along with Jung`s own findings which were that he found that synchronicity is more likely to happen in a variety of special circumstances.
Among his patients Jung observed that synchronicity often happens during circumstances of emotional intensity and upheaval, and often peaks right before a psychological breakthrough.
These situations of an “aroused psyche” include such life-changing major events as:
Births
Deaths
Falling in and out of love
Turning points or personal crises
Rescues from danger
Travel.
Frank, part of the experience of your mum’s death involved the owls and what followed.
That said something to you, touched something in you, that doesn’t have to be rationalised by calling what happened synchronicity.
Enough that you were touched and the owls are part of that, part of how you dealt with the experience. (Owls always seems really wise and mysterious to me, or symbolise that to me).
Human beings have spent most of their existence on this planet closer to nature than we are, unless we make an effort.
At such times in our lives we become more aware of the ineffable; and the loss of other people, for whatever reason, takes us beyond words, and experiences like yours help. (I’m struggling to get this out. I’m at the limits of my capacity to articulate).
Arps,
True enough.
Jung`s “synchronicity” was an attempt at some kind of scientific appellation on his part.
He was trying to slot it in for the white coat brotherhood.
Whereas in reality it seems to be more to do with something like an artistic, poetic, existential, ‘right-brained’, ‘wyrd’ attitude towards life.
Frank,
Methinks there was a time we humans didn’t have a word for everything, so during personally meaningful events, didn’t fixate on the specific for which there was a word, in the way ‘civilised’ people do.
And because of your life’s experience you were closer to that, and you took it all in, including that for which there are no labels. Yet!!!! Your awareness was wider in field. (That’s a little closer to what I’m trying to say).
Everybody has said something that I was in a way trying to say about this, and as Madhu has said, I also felt that sense of poignancy, and I agree with Shantam and Frank about rituals, it was a lovely goodbye.
And I think rituals of some kind, gentle rituals at such times are really valuable, a chance to acknowledge the contribution people have made to our lives and say goodbye. And big P made a contribution to all our lives, as we did to his.
Also something poignant about seeing those people together, some I vaguely recognise, whom I haven’t seen for years, who were as young as I was when I last saw them, mostly baby-boomers coming to the end of their time.
Namaste. Something like that (I want to say a lot more, but I can’t seem to get to what I want to say).
This thread and comments really shows our difference of opinions are not more than sportsperson tactics. We don´t play politics here to knock the other out, we are good human beings, seekers on the path, and thanks to Osho, once we jumped over our cultural conditionings.
With the spirit of sannyasnews, “Welcome all sannyasins” is the same as foundation of Osho´s work, “Come, Come, yet come again.”
Parmartha has left a small legacy behind. Just want to know how I can send 60 Euros a year as contribution for this little big project.
MOD:
WE’LL BE ANNOUNCING THE SN FINANCIAL SITUATION SOON, Shantam. Many thanks for your support.
Good sentiments expressed by Shantam, and yes, everyone else.
On the subject of donations:
It would be a simple matter to make SN pay for itself and I daresay generate a profit. If the editors decide that is a good idea, all that is needed is a creative director to deliver some simple advice. I know just the man for the job. Ahhh, I can see it now…SN stocks will become hotter than Bitcoin although gold might be a better long term investment.
How about an OshoCoin?
Lovely!
Sorry I missed it, heard about it from Emmet – who couldn’t find it!
Good man, Parmartha.
Farewell!
Oh, such a beautiful farewell for Parmartha. Thanx, SN, for sharing this.
I just returned to Pune early this morning from my three months travel, which started with the final journey with my mother’s ashes & then immersing them in the Ganges at Haridwar. Her final journey was so beautiful, the urn appeared to be dancing playfully in the river before disappearing into it; my very dear sannyasin couple friends J & M were also present with me in this joyful event.
I then stayed with them in their commune (which is under construction) for a few days and later stayed alone in Rishikesh for two and a half months or so, then another week or so travelling in between to various places in that area, & before leaving again spent a very beautiful time with J & M.
So somehow was good to see ‘Coming Back To Earth’!
This is my people, my family,
The place to tune my heart to recognize myself.
Every time I die with each of them.
Here I am not afraid.
Compassion is the basis of an endless ecstasy,
While Osho never denied me a smile.
Hi, Parmatha and all…nice to see you all under green leaves, celebrating the scattering of your dust…sorry I was not there. Nobody told me…
I would have come and brought a beteen of you back to Ireland…to scatter in my garden. I look at you every day, I placed your pic next to my toothbrush…so I see you morning and evening….