eyes showed inner peace and contentment. He was a delightful host during the kirtan celebrations that were held every week at his residence. Dadda had not been in good health for some time. He had six heart attacks since 1975, and was admitted to the hospital for heart failure about a month and a half before he left his body. The following is a personal account of how I experienced the incident. It was one of those damp evenings of the monsoon season in September. After supper, I was working in my office. I had been working for half an hour when I heard a female voice: ‘Swami, Dadda is dead. We are going to have a celebration in Buddha Hall.’ The message came like a jolt. I immediately put my papers aside, got up, and joined other sannyasins in the Buddha Hall. The news cut me off from everything else; it just pushed me into the moment, and I remained seated silently in Buddha Hall. Just a week before, I had met with Dadda in his hospital room. I had an appointment with him. In fact, it was agreed that we would talk about Osho and he would tell me stories, incidents from Osho’s childhood. He looked as cheerful as ever and also seemed to have greatly recovered from an attack of paralysis. He had now been hospitalised for about five weeks. Doctors had assured his release within the next few days. But as I sat, touching his feet, he looked at me and said: ‘I don’t feel like saying anything more than what has already been said previously by me (about Osho). I don’t like to see people anymore. I don’t even feel like eating anymore. I feel sorry for this, since you have come from such a long distance especially for this.’ I told him not to feel sorry, and said that we could arrange a meeting later when he was fully recovered and back at the ashram. I chatted briefly with Ammaji (Osho’s mother) and Shailendra and Amit (Osho’s brothers). With the help of his sons, Dadda walked slowly out of the room, feeling very hot and exhausted. We brought him back to the room and laid him down on the bed. He closed his eyes and went to sleep. I returned to the ashram. Dadda left his body on 8 September 1979, at 8:45 pm. But this was the death of his physical body. He had attained the state of samadhi, the state of detachment of mind from body, early that day at three o’clock in the morning. And with that first glimpse of the eternal he became aware that he was going to die. He sent a message to Osho to come as he wished to say goodbye to him. However, immediately thereafter he sent another message that Osho need not bother and need not come. Osho went to see his father anyway. This death was extraordinary, but then again so was the meeting of father and son, the master and disciple. Two beings—one already one with the whole, and the other stepping into it. It was their last meeting. The father had loved his son immensely. Osho had served him lovingly since childhood. At one of my meetings with Dadda, he remembered fondly how once during an illness, Osho, when he was fifteen, used to give him a massage and, despite the doctor’s prohibition, bition, bring sweets to him secretly and feed him. But now this illness was the last one, and father and son were no longer the same. It was an incredible meeting of two beings in an intimate yet unattached relationship. So a great celebration began in Buddha Hall at about nine that evening. Disciples were crying, dancing and singing ‘Hallelujah’. That is the way Osho wanted it to be. Because, as he says, ‘He left the world in utter silence, in joy, in peace. He left the world like a lotus flower. It was worth celebrating. And these are the occasions for you to learn how to live and how to die. Each death should be a celebration—but it can be a celebration only if it leads you to higher planes of existence.’ Around 10:30 pm, Dadda’s body was brought into the hall and laid on a marble stage from where Osho gave his discourses. Osho’s mother and other family members, full of tears, were near the body. There was a distinct glow on Dadda’s face and he looked to me more as though he was deep in meditation, rather than dead. After a while, Osho came. As usual he smiled and signalled greetings to everyone with hands pressed together in a namaste. Then he placed a garland of leaves around Dadda’s neck and knelt down. It was a remarkable scene; the energy in the hall was intense. Osho touched his father’s head at two spots. In his lecture later that day, he explained what he was doing.
‘I had touched his body at two spots, one on the agya chakra because there were only two possibilities, either he could have left his body through the agya chakra, in which case he would have had to take one more birth, though only once more. And if he had left through the seventh chakra, sahasrar, then he would not have to take birth again. First I checked his agya chakra. I put my hand on his agya chakra with a little concern because the chakra through which life departs opens up like a bud which blossoms into a flower. And those who have experience of chakras can immediately feel, just by touching, from where life found its way out. I was very happy to see that his life had not passed through the agya chakra. Then I touched his sahasrar, which is also known as the ‘thousand petal lotus’, and found it open. He flew away through the seventh door.’ In a few minutes Osho left the hall smiling, and a little after that the body was taken to the nearest cremation ground, followed by the hundreds of ochre-robed sannyasins chanting, ‘Rejoice, rejoice!’ Around two o’clock in the morning the body was placed on the pyre and the fire was lit. As the chanting and dancing reached its peak, the orange-coloured flames engulfed the body and the whole cremation ground lit up in its glory. Celebrating life and death in the same spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment