So out of curiosity I walked towards my next destination in a way  that I got a closer look at the man and his mala.
What I saw was like seeing a falling star. With exclamation, I shouted excitedly, ” Hey, you are wearing Osho Mala?”
The man looked at me, stood up and said, ” Are you a Sannyasin?”

Once I said, Yes, there was a hug, a melting hug, the same very energy one is used with sannyas hugs as if you are entering into each other, there is some transparent openness as if months of dynamic and kundalini has created a window in the wall.

He also felt amazed at the wonder of meeting another sannyasin and that too just arriving in the city from Ireland a few minutes ago,  on his way to a farm house in France where a few seekers are living as a community.

I was in a hurry also to be at my part time work so I asked him for a quick selfie with the thought, I will write at sannyasnews about this incident,  how wonderful was the original idea of Osho. (Mala)
We exchanged the mobile numbers and names. Pramendra was suppose to be picked up by someone so there was no chance that we meet again.
I was simply surprised and was walking with the feeling, ” MY God, first time during last 15 years i have met someone in Germany with Osho Mala.”
It was reminding me that lost era of innocence in Osho Hugs and a common base where strangers from different parts of earth could see the one humanity.

Around an hour later, I got the SMS from him that he will be picked up next day, so has the time to meet up if I feel like.

I wrote him back, i have one and half hour extra time, we can meet,  have a coffee and meditate in the silence of the churches.

As I came to know, Parmendra took sannyas 6 years ago in Miasto. His elder brother was already a sannyasin. When he told him his wish to go to Pune, brother said, ” Pune has not that energy anymore, better you go to Miasto.”
Four months in Miasto become his turning point.
While talking and listening, I was observing too, how alive and present he is, as if is really struck by some higher calling.

I was sharing my stories about Pune, its spring and autumn and how bad (in my view) the policy of the management at root level have made the branches go dry, otherwise, Freiberg was once a very happening Sannyas city.
When I asked, ” Have you ever seen someone wearing Mala in England or Ireland?
His answer was No, but he said it  does not matter to him at all.
While describing  in my eyes the dried up sannyas scene , I also mentioned that a few ex. sannyasins are living together under the leadership of an Indian in Freiberg.  As he was curios to meet them, I gave him their address.

Next day, came the message, Met a Ex. Sannyasin at UMA. No love and light only pain and darkness. Thank you X

Spontaneously i wrote , ” Lols.”

Shantam

http://www.oshonews.com/2013/09/do-we-deserve-democracy/

On August 10th another so called,  ‘Open Letter’,  from the Inner Circle (IC) was sent out to Osho Centres by Global Connections. It is simply a continuation of the effort to discredit, to defame and to mis-inform the Osho Centres by telling lies and misinterpreting facts.  Here is my response:

The IC refers to a trademark, Rajneesh’ for EDUCATIONAL SERVICES – NAMELY CONDUCTING COURSES IN SPIRITUAL THERAPY, MIND AND BODY TRAINING, MEDITATION, SELF-TRANSFORMATION, AND COUNSELING, which existed in the US saying that this was a valid trademark till 1993.

Fortunately the IC graciously attached the original registration of this Mark. And this one is really worth looking at: The application for this mark was filed on Sept. 9th, 1985. Only 6 days later on Sept. 14th Sheela and her gang left the Ranch only to get arrested a few days later in Germany for the criminal actions she had committed. The application for this mark was Sheela’s ‘parting gift’,  so to speak. In her desire and lust for control she wanted to set up a system that would give her all the power to dominate all Osho Centres!

In Europe she had set up a business called “Rajneesh Licensing LTD”  and I have the copies of the Franchise Contracts drafted for the Centres to sign!  (Up even until today Sheela insists on the fact, that she was acting according to Osho’s will,  and thereby does not take responsibility for her own actions.)

However Osho publicly denounced Sheela’s statement especially in an Interview with the German Osho Times in Dec 1985 in Kulu Manali where I was present:  Osho says: “That’s where I differed from Sheela. As I started speaking, I found out, that she has done absolutely the opposite of what I have been teaching for 30 years. I am for individuality, I am for freedom, I am for the freedom of chaos. … While I was in Poona, thousands of Centers around the world were working without any order, without any structure. … She dissolved all those small beautiful centers and created big communes so that more money can be created. My interest is not money. My interest is how more consciousness can be created. But her whole effort and her whole clique was concentratedly working on one goal: how to create more money…. Whatever she did was absolutely against me.”

It is interesting that with reference to the trademark in the US, that was filed by her 6 days before she left Oregon. The current Inner Circle now wants to prove that Osho wanted a trademark!  I simply insist on the fact, that in Europe no such trademark has ever existed before 1998. And it is throwing dust into the eyes of people trying to connect this trademark in the US with the situation in Europe. Suddenly it is supposedly to replace Sheela’s US trademark in Europe!  What nonsense!

Osho Global Connectons was originally designed as a meeting place of Osho friends and lovers so that they would be able to meet and support each other. In an article from Swami Amrito, also known as Dr. John Andrews, published in the Osho Times in 1990 he writes: “Point one is, that in the Sannyas-World organism replaces organisation. The form of the hirarchical structured organisation has given place to the concept of the organism, a concept in which each part of the organism is connected to any other part. The whole approach of a leader like in Rajneespuram (Oregon) we have left behind us and nobody is interested in repeating it once more.”Amrito goes on quoting Osho: “An organism is something similar to your body. It functions as a unity, but each organ of the body has its own individuality. There is nobody by which it is dominated.”

Looking at the situation of Global Connections today it seems to me, that it has deteriorated into an ‘Licensing — Company’ acting as an agent for OIF.  Ma Vatayana testified in the US trademark case, that she is “policing and monitoring the centres”. The names have changed but the spirit is the same. Insofar the sentence: “Osho Centres are Osho’s centres and have particular guidelines, which Global Connectons takes care of – exactly as Osho arranged it.” This is a complete lie.

At this point I want to say something about the issue around UG Krishnamurti,  that the IC is raving about.  UG Krishnamurti was a friend of mine and I was seeing him sometimes. I do not think that it is the IC’s business to play peeping Tom and bother about who is seeing who as a friend. To mention this story now,  and being holy about it is simply cheap and actually belongs to the category of religious fanaticism that cults and so called ‘sects’ display to ‘discipline’ their  ‘flock’.

What gives a delicate twist to the IC’s letter about me with the picture of me and UG Krishnamurti is the fact, that this picture is stolen from the my-space account of a private person and that this is an infringment on the copyright of the person that took the picture (I know that person)! That shows the ‘sincerity’ of these people if it comes down to intellectual property rights: if the morality serves their ambition for power and control they make a big fuss about it; If the morality stands in their way and does not serve their purpose, they simply do not care about it.

It is true that the last thing Osho wanted is a religion. But that is exactly what is created through the trademark. Saying that is is not a religion does not mean anything. What matters is the actions of the IC and OIF and the effect and the results they create! I call it a trademark — religion.

Hundreds of Sannyasins have been banned from the ,Resort’. The people that have testified in both the cases in the US and inEurope – simply stating facts in their testimonies(!) — have been heavily harrassed and bullied by OIF! Of course they are all banned from the ,Resort’! Their Facebook-pages have been removed without warning. Videos were removed from YouTube (and had to be put back on again after the intervention from a lawyer). They were threatened with legal actions, bombarded with so called Cease and Desist Letters (Unterlassungserklärungen) and were asked to agree to the trademark or else they would loose their Facebook pages.The latest action is the attempt of OIF to close down the website(!) of www.OshoNews.com<http://www.OshoNews.com/>!

What else than a ‘Religion’ or a ‘cult’ is this? What else than a revival of Sheela’s dream of power and control is this?

The IC’s letter from August 10th ends with another big lie, which is constantly repeated to mislead and antgonise people:  that the court case in Europe is about the legal protection of the trademark and(!) the copyright. This is absolutely false and defaming! This court case is only — let me repeat — only(!) about the trademark and has nothing to do with the copyright. It is not part of this litigation.

Cologne, August 21st,  2013
Ramateertha

One of most fundamental contributions Osho gave to me and us was the reminder that we live in a deeply manic, violent and phobic society, not just robotic as described by Gurdjieff or filled with selves who think they exist but don’t, according to advaitists like ganga /papa/ meatymooji. And it’s up to us to do something about everything. Or die trying or laughing at the effort.

Osho’s existence was a direct call to attention of the role of state violence and conditioned vested, bondaged mentality in limiting life. Osho, the man and his voice was a direct target of this mania and violence through the history of the ending of the ranch , his institutional imprisonment and the forced retreat to the backwaters of India.Whatever you think of Karma , you still have to choose a target of preference, and mine is always the vested power of the state and its agents.

By not only opening up the conversations , but by being an example of unsilenceable integrity against oppression, he stood as unique testimony to the role of the state in being the agent of violence, through corporate and institutionalized, cradle to grave suppression. This also was a warning to us as evidenced by all the exchanges we have had on here, at SN, as regards our own failures to safeguard ourselves from our own Quislings.

However where all other self-realized One’s miserably fail and weakly, cowardly so, is in removing the notion of consciousness from actualizing its effects and being responsible for it in the world as we go. And through redemptive accountability for the world which we make and agree to on the way to prescribed cosmic unity. They, the other you-tube realized Ones , refuse and fail to confront the world on it’s own terms, and provide nothing useful in fundamental collective, humanist and accessible examples as a radical or inspiring voice …not a single rebel voice amongst them.

By attempting to shortcut or prune their concerns into the actualizing of other-worldly consciousness they do a disservice to the experience of life itself, and prevent that solidarity which arises from collective social and parallel engagement. Engagement that confronts the world from which consciousness itself is painfully born.

Further, this website is tracked for significant communications of all the contributors, by vested interests of the government agencies for any forms of dissent that refer back to anything Osho represented as being potentially threatening to their political agenda. SN would be rated on that scale of things to watch, because of what happened in the States, whereas all the other ji ji’s just have nice disciples, we had troublesome for the State and each other ones.

The fact that none of us engage in that kind of effective debate here is not due to what Osho was capable of, and inspired, but what we have left OUT of the whole picture that our lives around him now represent in his material absence. That trouble-making provocative fire, where others are cool and insignificant by their lack of immersion or example.

Personally, as most of you should know well by now, I have a line in the sand for other sannyasins who have no interest in the consequences of Osho’s complete legacy to us, either in their personal or collective lives. That legacy includes libertarian radicalism, and animal compassionate humanist concerns. When actions are taken with integrity towards a complete fellowship with what Osho did, how he was able to voice with precision the double speak of hypocrisy, he offered a more relevant and complete understanding of humans living in suffering and responsible for the ecology of their own internal and external world.That’s why I have only had veggy girlfriends all my adult life and currently live with a dumb but kind hearted vegan.(ouch, she just thumped me).

To me it is a great shame that there are not the given examples of that intention, as living, thriving parallel self-sufficient politically confronting communities of complete political intent, and part of that failure was/is in resting upon introspection and psychology as being the solely formative representations of his market-place legacy.

I take very small initiatives here in lambasting those who claim anything less than a veg-eatarian lifestyle as being representative of what sannyas was and is ethically all about. I cannot sponsor now or before by my energies, those who want to be liberated and engage in the search for personal liberation whilst still being incapable of making some simple first steps.This has actually prevented me, happily so, from investing in the manifest hypocrisy of either therapist, meditation mongerers or those who espouse and mouth platitudes in Osho’s name.

Some of you will know about me living on a Greek island for some years and some of you will be surprised to know that the money backing the Osho centre there comes from a family who make or at least made then , their money from meat packing on the mainland. Draw your own conclusions about me or them, but just to let you know I have never been back and avoided the centre whilst living next door to it, literally for that and other reasons.

Now my opinion may not prevent hypocritical cruelty per se, but it comes down to who or what do you support when offered a choice, and in whose company in the market place. Further there are two Greek sannyas restaurants cafes there which make money from the selling every day of flesh. This was never my version of rebellion, and although I socialized and very rarely had a coffee at these places, my laughter was always tempered by the fact that despite our affinities we were never going to be deep friends. Somethings don’t wash, including spearfishing, lamb lard dinners, octopus legs and the tethering of a goat in the yard ready for slaughter at easter before the centre opened.

Most of the Greeks I met there were very very primitive in this regard and it came as no surprise when the cholesterol addicted centre leader dropped dead just a few years ago. There is a limit to hypocrisy. Some of you may even accuse me here of enjoying a dead gloat. As long as it died naturally, I have no problem with that.

So what of all this, well this piece comes about after watching what I could bear to watch about cruelty to animals on You Tube, prompted tangentially by the simple comment of elephants Lokesh made. It is not legally permissible to describe what I would like to do to the elephant torturers of Ringlings circus in the States, although I spent eight long weeks in Virginia chasing them up and down the state, informing the public what exactly went into this vindictive and cruel plebean circus market of so called childrens’ entertainment for the proles and by criminals. Luckily the Chief of Police in Norfolk VA then, was a feminist woman who sympathised with our actions and who knew very well of the circus’s employees criminality, some having been prosecuted for other offences prior so her force was instructed not to impede our protests.

So if anyone is reading this and could use my activist thoughts and experience in a location where consciousness, fun, ethical integrity and libertarian libidos come together , do drop me a line.

Further, when we ask ourselves what to do with living with oneself and how to best address the schizophrenic being /not being, here /not here , I/not I consolations of being out of step with a materialistic universe that doesn’t ask permission before it incarnates people willy nilly because of never ending piss taking/ infinite love derived from erm itself, then…. perhaps engaging in using those elements of pissed-off-ness, even if sullied by frustrated gloating or any other less-than-virtuous-motivated-motive, then we begin to feel and assume engagement in significance and absorbtion instead of fantastical displacement activity such as trying not to exist, when we quite clearly do, however greedy we might be of those who don’t.

Just a thought….as part of my contribution ,whilst here, to evolution.

Now back to the music.

for further info on how many political agendas does it take to have your website surveyed then read this…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-mcgowan/communication-management-units_b_2944580.html

and view here….

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/25/exclusive_animal_rights_activist_jailed_at

Prem Martyn

Scenes from the launch

Bangalore, Aug 19:  Osho lovers who came from all over Karnataka for the release function of the book ‘Pralaya Idu Badukalicchsuvavarige Maatra’ by Osho. The book was released by the Shree Nidumamidi Swami at a glittering ceremony held recently.

Source: Daijiworld Media Network – Bangalore

Society is the sum of its parts. An enlightened society means that enlightenment is the highest value and everyone is consciously working towards spiritual awakening.

This was the case for the 4,000 years of the last age of enlightenment in India. In this golden age everyone had developed the third body to be responsible and almost everyone had access to the fourth body in meditation. The result was a flowering of creativity, spirituality and social development. There was little violence until the great war at the end of the cycle.
The absence of violence and abuse is essential, but it is not enough. When social and economic injustice exist, conflict is certain to follow. Most wars have been fought over control of land and resources. Ancient India had excessive private wealth, which bred the conflict that eventually led to the great war, the Mahabharat.

In the age of conscious civilization resources will be shared more equitably. There will be no poverty and there will be limits to personal wealth. Everyone will enjoy an abundant and comfortable lifestyle and the gap between  rich and poor will be less than it is today. Everybody will be free to choose their work according to individual interest and capacity. Those with greater responsibility will enjoy a higher standard of living. But the difference between the living standard of a manager and a cleaner will not be as significant as it is today. There will be an abundance of material necessities for all to enjoy.

Enlightened ones will monitor those who are entrusted with responsibility to ensure there is no abuse of power. Spiritual growth will be given a high priority. Everyone will benefit from a lifestyle that supports the inner quest for awakening and freedom from suffering. Enlightened ones will meditate with seekers every day in a climate of love, awareness and playfulness.

Soon this utopian vision will be reality and our present violent, greedy and unjust society will be but a memory of the Kali Yuga, the age of darkness.

Maitreya

www.ishwara.com

“I’m down to my last few hundred dollars” Asha said. I didn’t say anything. By this time all I had was an old camera someone had given me, which I was trying to sell on M.G. Road.

“There’s a guy coming up from Goa to see me“ she went on. “He wants me to do a run. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a false-bottomed suitcase to Canada.”

I could hear the nervousness in her voice…But when the ‘scammer’ as she called him arrived, far from being the oily gangster I had imagined, he turned out to be a sun tanned young Dutchman – alert, humorous and quick-witted.

I’ll call him H. He had brought the suitcase for Asha to examine, and it was expertly made. There were two and a half kilos of Manali in the false bottom, and two and a half in the false top, and the only thing you could feel was that the lid was a bit too heavy. But then the lid had those criss-crossing straps so that you could pack things there too. We started to talk and quickly found we had a lot in common. We all loved India, and had no desire to go back to the West. H. as it soon became clear was into smuggling as much for the adventure as for the money…

To cut a long story short, we decided that Asha and I would do the run together;- and soon afterwards we found ourselves checked into a Bombay hotel, with our tickets to Brussels. The plan was that I take the suitcase to Brussels where Asha was to get a new passport with no trace of India on it, and then take the case on to Montreal. The first thing was that I, unkempt and dressed in crazy orange clothes, be made to look normal. There was a tailor’s shop, Paradise Tailors, right by the hotel where we were staying – little more than a shifty old Indian with a Singer sitting under some wooden stairs, but he measured me up and said he’d have some Western-style trousers ready in time for the flight. I had an expensive haircut, then back at the hotel I tried on the navy blue blazer with brass buttons H. had lent me. I put on a pair of glasses I had but never wore (“makes you look intellectual” H. had said) and through which I could not see properly. What I did see looked eerily like a successful dentist.

Worse followed. I went back to Paradise Tailors, but when I tried to put the trousers on I found I couldn’t get my foot into them. At first I thought I must be trying to get my foot into the pocket, so I turned them this way and that – but no, he had made the legs so narrow I could not get my feet into them at all. My self control snapped.

“Paradise, you arsehole!“ I screamed. I was like The Imperialist in revolutionary propaganda. Paradise leapt to his feet and flapped round his broom closet like a frightened hen. Finally he fished round under the spot where he had been sitting and, muttering viciously to himself in Mahratti, produced the rest of the cloth I had bought and with which he, like an Indian tailor in a panto, had hoped to abscond. Finally he fitted panels, large diamond-shaped panels with malevolently crude stitching, into the sides of the trousers. They looked insane.

Check-in was at two in the morning.

Going through Emigration I was pulled out and told to wait. I sat down on a bench with two Africans. They looked guilty as hell. I tried not to think. Asha drifted past, looking dead cool. “Oh, are you on this flight?” she said sweetly. “Well, I’ll see you in transit then.” I could have murdered her. Then Emigration gave me my passport back again.

Finally we boarded. The cabin was monstrously hot and full of what were apparently Korean businessmen. They were all dressed the same and didn’t move. It was like Zen at its worst. After a long delay the plane taxied off to what by now I was sure was certain doom in Brussels.

Neither of us could sleep. There was one trippy bit where we seemed to be caught in a loop, flying round and round over Mount Ararat in a bald and ghastly dawn. Asha and I had a furious whispered row up there. At last the airline served some breakfast and mercifully we both passed out until just before landing.

Coming through Immigration in Brussels a muscle in the side of my neck started to twitch. I had not known muscles could do anything like that. It was as though I had some small animal inside my shirt collar. I’ll never get away with this, I thought…Then the bag didn’t show up on the carrousel. There were lots of dark blue ones, but each time I thought I had spotted mine it turned out to be somebody else’s. (“Don’t look around. Don’t make eye contact,” H. had said. “Whatever you do, don’t look alert – that’s what they’re watching for.”) Another flight was starting to come through, and still no suitcase…That first run was the only one I got frightened on. I don’t mean that later I developed nerves of steel; but while the run was actually happening I didn’t get scared. That was one thing I did learn from drug-running: real physical danger does not produce fear. On the contrary real danger produces fearlessness…

Suddenly the suitcase was there. I picked it up and headed for the exit. “Rien, merci.” I said to someone in blue, in my best schoolboy French. He made a chalk mark on the side of the bag and I was sailing towards the glass doors…and through them…

Asha was there, looking wonderful, with a bunch of roses. So was our contact, another young Dutchman. “I came through in that blazer a month ago” he laughed, as he ushered us out of the airport. I couldn’t believe it. Sunlight, autumn in Europe, thousands of dollars. “You looked really straight” he said, as he opened the doors of a beat-up old VW.
“You could have been a dentist.”

Pari

Pramada

Pramada played cello with ELO, a seven-piece band led by Jeff Lynne, from their first live gig in 1972 until he left in January 1975. He was a member of the UK Medina Rajneesh commune in the 80′s where he regularly played music for satsangs. Post Medina, he produced operas for Sadlers Wells and Covent Garden. In 1992, he released a double cassette as part of Tim Brophy & Deva Pramada.

Face the music (ELO information site) have posted a tribute to Pramada

Klaus Gutzeit started the original German Bakery many years ago in Pune, at the suggestion and request of some of his sannyasin friends, who sure knew he could bake from previous times in Goa! The news of the blast on Feb 14th in Pune reached Klaus in the calm of the hills of Himachal Pradesh. Despite now being 64-years-old he immediately packed his bags and set off for Pune.

“I was shocked and it was important for me to be there,” said the nomadic German. “On the first day we opened the German bakery years ago in Pune when Osho was alive, there was a mad rush. After that we have never looked back,” he recalled.

“I thought it would help them a little on seeing me, being with them in their moment of grief…also I thought I should give them my support,” said Gutzeit, who is now in Goa, the place where he learnt he had it in him to be a successful baker. He was shocked by the devastation he saw but says terrorism can’t be allowed to win. “When I think about it, I’m filled with anger and sorrow. But we have to live with it and look forward with optimism. We can’t let terrorism win, the human will is much stronger than that,” he said.

The Bakery is now run by a local family, the Kharoses, but Gutzeit got to meet his old Nepalese friend Gopal, who has been in the bakery for 20 years. “I gave him my moral support. I am too old now to be of any real help to him,” said Gutzeit, lovingly called Woody by his friends. “I hope there will be a new German Bakery soon. There is so much moral support and demand for it.”

Woody, a school drop-out, who describes himself as a “simple traveller, doing writing, painting, and photography”, arrived in India in 1970 at the end of a road trip that took him one and half years. He never left.

It is quite hot in Delhi these days, and it may get hotter. But whether it is hot or cold, it does not stop Osho lovers to travel anywhere, because it is not that four letter word “work” or “duty’. It is really another four letter word–”play”.

Whenever it becomes unbearable in Delhi, I find myself packing for Dharmshala, some times to conduct a meditation camp at Osho Nisarga, and other times to just be there–to feel the cool breeze and view the beauty of snow-clad Himalayan peaks of Dhauladhar. Dharmshala is also famous for Buddhist people- the Dalai Lama and other Buddha-lovers are living there. In fact, they have created a very spiritual atmosphere in Dharmshala.

I do not stay there too long, and often the very next week I find myself returning to Delhi for editing Osho World magazine or facilitating another meditation camp at Oshodham.

When travelling I notice a current aspect of human greed. The travel to Dharamshala by air has become as expensive as flying to Dubai because there’s only one airline flying to Dharmshala. Exploitation by monopoly.

Comparing the airfare, I got an idea: Why not fly to Dubai and have a meditation camp there for some Osho lovers in the Middle East. It is really mysterious that you wish, and then things start moving in that direction. After having a camp on the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh, I started planning my trip to Dubai. And in the last week of March I found myself in Dubai conducting a meditation camp. This was the first camp there and organised without any publicity. And it is true maybe that one cannot publicise openly there, though I am sure there are thousands of people reading Osho books and listening to Osho discourses in Dubai, and waiting for the taste of meditation. It became quite clear when I was there that more and more people will join in meditation workshops in the future. It was a good start.

After a gap of two days, and after Dubai, where Arabic and Islamic culture has been flourishing, I travelled to Chitrakoot. And as a matter of fact, it is easier to travel to Dubai than to Chitrakoot, though not that expensive. This real tiny town is in the heart of Hindu religion and culture. Dubai and Chitrakoot are such a big contrast! And into such opposite extremes, Osho is entering in a mysterious way. As Dubai does not have a large number of Osho lovers, so is the case with Chitrakoot, though the people there are knowledgeable about meditation and Samadhi. While in Dubai, I noitced even the people from India living in Dubai have only gone there to make money. But who knows, those who are intelligent and sensitive, their prosperity may create boredom, and they may be able to look for something more meaningful beyond it. They may turn to meditation.

This way the Zorba – the outworldly rich person – may get attracted to Buddha, the spiritual richness. And at this point people may turn to an holistic vision, which Osho offers to the whole humanity.

Osho says In Messiah, Vol. 2: I have been proclaiming the New Man as Zorba the Buddha — which is a meeting of East and West, which is a meeting of science and religion, which is a meeting of logic and love, which is a meeting of the outer and the inner. Only in these meetings will you find peace; otherwise, you will remain a battlefield. If you are miserable, remember that the misery is arising out of an inner battle that goes on day in, day out. There have been great Zorbas in the world. “Eat, drink and be merry” is their simple philosophy. “There is no life beyond death. God is nothing but an invention of cunning priests. Don’t waste your time on unnecessary things; life is short.” In India we have a whole philosophy, the system of the Charvakas. Perhaps a charvaka is the most articulate Zorba, and if you try to understand him he is very convincing: “There is no evidence, no eye-witness of any God or of any life after death. There is no evidence or proof that you have an immortal soul. Don’t get caught in these words, which have been created just to create a conflict in you so you can become Christians, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, Mohammedans.” India has also known great Buddhas. They say the world is illusory; all that is true is inner, and all that is untrue is outside. So don’t waste your time in desires, in ambitions; they are nothing but the same stuff as dreams are made of. Use the small time that you have in your hands to go as deep inside as possible so that you can find the temple of God — your godliness. If you listen to the Buddhas, they seem to be convincing. If you listen to the Zorbas, they seem to be convincing – and then you are in trouble, because you have both within you.

Swami Chaitanya Keerti