After a while, he tried to persuade his wife to come and meet the guru with whom he was infatuated. She wasn't interested. She only wanted to be a wife and mother. For Westerners who will read this account, it is worth mentioning that almost everyone in India has a guru to consult or worship. Whatever your caste or social status, rich or poor, businessman or farmer, you had access to some kind of guru.Even today, though India has evolved socially and economically, Indian families all have their guru, with whom they consult when it's time for the daughter to marry, or for advice on investment decisions or other important matters.
The First Door that I mentioned in this book, the door of devotion, is an experience grounded in centuries of understanding for Indians, who don't have a problem with kneeling on the ground and touching the feet of a person in whom they recognize a spiritual quality.
So Neelam assumed Osho was just one of the many gurus who went around India giving advice to people, with no special quality, and she didn't feel attracted to this world. But, after many months of persistence on the part of her husband, she agreed to go and see Osho.
At that time Osho used to lead meditation camps, experimenting with various meditation techniques that he subsequently developed and perfected, and which were ultimately used in the commune from 1974 onwards. During breaks between his discourses and the meditations, many Indians got in line to receive his blessings, including not only those participating in the meditation camp but also people passing by, who, realising a guru was available, would stop to touch his feet.
Neelam got in line with her husband. When it was her turn, she fell at Osho's feet, almost fainting, and remained there for a long time. She was utterly stunned by the force of the Master and from that moment stayed close to him. Even after Osho's death, Neelam stayed in the Pune commune for nine more years, then left to construct a new meditation centre close to Dharamshala, in the Himalayas.
In India, it is a tradition that when you find a Master you bring him a gift as a symbol of your recognition. Neelam and her husband spent days thinking what they could give him, and in the end they decided to bring him a diamond ring that had belonged to her mother and her mother's mother. It was the most valuable and precious thing she had, and she wanted to send a signal to Osho that her devotion was total.
So at the next meditation camp they brought the famous family diamond. Neelam got in line with the others and when her turn came she kneeled down to touch the feet of the Master, then gave him the box with the diamond in it. Osho looked at it, brought it near to him and blessed Neelam by touching her head. She moved away in order to give space to the next person in line, who was a passer-by, like many others who were taking advantage of the situation in order to receive blessings from the guru. This man was not one of his followers.
Osho also blessed him, and then gave him the diamond he had just received from Neelam!The man was there only by lucky coincidence, and he was given her precious diamond! Neelam was very shocked by this incident but nevertheless continued in her devotion to the Master. About twenty years after the ring incident, Osho reminded Neelam of the gift of the diamond.
He told her, "If you give an object to someone as a sign of love, you need to totally let go of it, otherwise it is just an attempt to tie that person to you." He had waited almost twenty years to make sure the teaching was understood, then closed the circle by explaining the message behind his act.
For thousands of people – whether they had money or not – the Ranch experience was one huge opportunity to see their attachments and their desires. It was another chance to be total in giving, in love, without expecting anything in return.
Real love is in fact a gesture that manifests naturally in the fullness of the heart –the heart full of nectar, full of joy in sharing, full of divine energy that isn't personal, a heart that overflows and shares with everyone without discrimination.
The Master, by the simple fact of his being, like the sun or the stars, lights the way for those who open their hearts to this light. His giving is not an intentional act; he's not thinking, "Now I will work on Tom, Dick and Harry because they need to change their attitude toward life, or because they need to open up to love." Osho simply let the energy flow, interfering in the stream of events as little as possible.
With this in mind, it becomes clear that all the criticisms that were levelled at Osho after the Ranch were just hollow words blowing in the wind. From the standpoint of the growth of human consciousness, it didn't matter that Osho committed practical errors, because, as he himself said: "I am not God! I am a human being with his limits."
This needs to be remembered, because many people expected Osho to be infallible, that he should have seen the future and interfered to save his commune. But all these ideas were just a projection of the mind of individual disciples who imagined that their Master was a special being like God, mainly because it satisfied their egos.
Osho perhaps made errors in calculating and anticipating events, but this doesn't take anything away from his message, his teachings and his energetic presence. The change that is experienced with a Master happens through work done by the individual, by the lone disciple, on himself. It is for this reason that the spiritual path is a solitary path, because it depends totally on us – how much energy and awareness we put into the process of transformation.
If the disciple is closed, a real Master cannot do anything, while a false master may try to persuade or push the student toward change according to the direction he thinks is right. Osho, Lao Tzu, Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff, Chuang Tzu, Socrates, Saint Francis, Buddha, Mahakashyapa and all authentic Masters have never forced anyone. They never promised anything to their disciples; they simply remained available, and whoever was alert enough could feel the fragrance of their spirit.
Of course, disciples who lived through the events that took place in the commune while remaining identified with their own vested interests, their own ego attachments, could only suffer feelings of betrayal. But the Master, in his compassion, never compromises.
In August, 1986 at Juhu Beach, Mumbai, when he started talking again, after having flown the skies of the planet and been in half-a-dozen jails, Osho declared: "Now I finally have my disciples. I have had to dirty my hands working in the mud for decades, looking for my real disciples. Now that the base of the temple has been built I will raise the temple for all myreal disciples, those alive now and those coming in future generations. Like a fisherman who throws his net, I am now pulling it up, and I find myself with the people that remain with me because they are my real disciples."
When he pronounced these words we were crammed in the living room of the Indian disciple who offered his house to the Master. We were about forty people, of which only five or six were Westerners, and the rest Indians. In the following days, slowly, day after day, many old sannyasins arrived, and in the space of six months hundreds of devotees came back to the feet of the Buddha, having passed through one of the most intense spiritual devices ever to take place on such a scale.
On January 4th of 1987, we returned to the old commune in Pune in order to live with him the last three years of his stay in the physical body.
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