And let’s also acknowledge those unsung heroes who provide essential help and support along the way, eg the ones who set up and run the dossers’ warehouse and those (Hare Krishnas, Salvation Army (shock, horror!) or whatever) who take the trouble to give these people a good meal every day.

Not quite as ‘on-the-edge-outlaw-anti-hero-glamorous’ as your man, but they give much to many and almost certainly save many lives along the way.

I speak from some admittedly relatively very small experience, having, almost every day for a year or more, resorted to the Hare Krishnas for my main meal, during a particularly tricky internal period; also having found myself on ‘Skid Row’, penniless in Toronto, as a 20 year-old travelling student, housed by the Salvation Army (and fed by being given meal tickets by compassionate, middle-aged inmates for whom it was their ‘permanent’ home – you know, the type respectable, well-heeled society would look down upon – and fear – from a self-perceived lofty height).

He then got a job, fortuitously, as a janitor for a large French castle, from the grapevine of work opps in Geneva. In France he went to meet a sannyas artist and from there he went back into Germany and joined an artisan union where he got an apprenticeship, being sent from workshop to workshop learning more about his trade and earning a bit along the way. He is currently in a European country amongst sannyasins, keeping his act together.

The underclass, the grapevine, the chances, the opportunities…each time I have met people recently I have heard some amazingly intrepid stories of courage, survival, fortitude and the balls to face life with, taking these individuals to the edge of their trust and beyond. I’m very happy that these stories exist and marvel at the tales of sheer dropped-outness that people still have to confront and live in. Without cash, without ready made strategies, or compromised and constricting compromise.

Everyone has a story. I love the way the magic still shines through in people’s lives to make dreams come true, in the face of adversity. And the way Osho pops up in these stories to acknowledge how personal risk, can lead to collective welfare with an expanded heart.

Nice.

Meaning? 2464 unique individuals?

I certainly can’t read people in the way I thought I could before sannyas, as regards class, likely music interest, possible occupation, tribe etc.

I can remember meeting a punk with a mohican, which was still unusual, late seventies. Middle-class doctor parents I think, and he was doing a Maths Phd.
Early 70s, lot of pretty obviously Tory-looking people around, don’t you reckon? Obviously lefty-looking people. Much less so now, certainly round my way.

Some hippies were actually from wealthy backgrounds and so-called ‘well educated’. It applied in small measure to those Ashley Rd. sannyasins and the Poona hut sannyasins. Not, of course, all, but a fair sprinkling. Of course, at the time they never revealed much. But it may explain their intellectual interests in spirituality.

Irrespective of background, their lifestyle was often supported by fringe or mainstream criminality – at least in the normal sense of that term. In order to be ‘around’ Bhagwan (Osho) and stay in India (at least that was the rationalisation), drug-running and drug sales, pimping and prostitution, and other unacceptable faces of capitalism were not totally uncommon. I heard the story of Gurdjieff and his practice of catching and painting sparrows to look like canaries, and then selling them to support his spiritual journey, on many occasions, spliffing around the huts.

I don’t think it is true to say none of them were interested in meditation. Many had their own times to informally edge towards some mystical stillness, though yeah, they didn’t like to be told the kindergarden style of instruction that some straight sannyasins seemed to like at the ashram.

It is true very, very few did groups, or became commune members. Their disdain of ordinary ‘work’ was very plain to see, though some squats and huts were kept to pretty high standards of cleanliness, and I had some good meals at some of those places!