Love is Life

Excerpt from the upcoming book:
Love is Life - Moving beyond the Fear of Intimacy


It's 10th September 2002, a very special day in my life in the Osho International Meditation Resort - because I have just left everything behind to start a new life. At my first visit which was two decades ago, my very first impression was influenced by some people who did something ordinary in a very unusual way. They unloaded a small truck with wood and had an easiness in dealing with each other and in their way of moving, which I had never seen before and it touched me very directly. It was clear that one day, I also wanted to be like this and a part of this resort life.
Well, some things take a little longer, because I was fully involved in the so called "wheel of life", as the Indians say. Life, since my youth has always associated with meditation, but it was determined by external things. First there was education, then followed an apartment, a relationship, independence in my profession, a nicer home, a new relationship...and it would have continued forever. Professionally, I was at a high peak and had freedom and creativity as a therapist in courses and individual sessions - and had more than enough money. Then a relationship ended unexpectedly, and I asked myself what I really wanted in life and suddenly I remembered.…

Now was the right time to fulfil my internally given promise.

The first moments after checking in at the Welcome Center, when entering through the main gate of the Osho International Meditation Resort - which I had  visited many times before - were something special, because now it felt like being a part of the place - even if no one knew it yet. While I was walking around with this new feeling and was saying "hello" to all the places and to some familiar faces, a crystal clear intensity of finally arriving home, was inside. I carried this feeling quite silently in me like a light and it was not important to tell anyone.

The Meditation Resort is visited by about a hundred thousand visitors from a hundred different nations every year. It is a forty acre large area on the outskirts of the city of Pune, about one hundred and eighty kilometres southeast of Bombay and is located in the luxurious Koregaonpark, next to beautiful old villas, each surrounded by a huge park with high trees and a handful of gardeners and other workers.
It is probably the most modern Meditation Resort in Asia and you can find everything on the campus that you need for everyday life, which makes life very simple. It is a paradise with shadow spending trees, many waterfalls and ponds with countless frogs and a white swan couple. On the paths stroll white and blue peacocks, waiting to be feed especially with papayas.
Usually I come in the morning for breakfast, choose from the variety of daily programs what interests me, and often stay up late into the night. It's like a small town, where everything is provided: on arrival the Welcome Center is the place to check in and get help for the most possible easy and soft landing. Zorba Restaurant offers a variety of international organic food, the Cappuccino-Bar is decorated in the evenings for nightlife events, Basho takes care of the wellness – there is an Olympic size natural shaped swimming pool, tennis courts, sauna and Jacuzzi. In the Bookshop, Osho's lectures are provided in the form of beautifully designed books, CDs, tapes or DVDs and can be purchased...even photos because to protect privacy, no photographs can be taken inside the resort, postcards with pictures of the place can be sent next door at the post office of the resort. The Osho Times magazine is distributed worldwide. Cyber café is open almost the whole day for sending emails or making international calls. Next to it is the Cappuccino-Bar and lured by the music I often go to dance before bedtime.

In the resort, only long maroon robes are worn, to make it easier to step out of our personality – they can be found as well as cosmetics in the Galleria and money can be changed in the house bank – the money is again exchanged into Vouchers, because there are no money transactions in the resort. An unreal cock crows on the hour to announce the time and it still makes me smile to hear it after all these years, especially if the battery is weak and the cock hoarse. In the modern first-class Osho Guesthouse it is now possible to stay over night in the resort. Healing Arts has a doctor, who takes care of all the big and small physical complaints, the travel agency cures the wanderlust and in Final Arts Studio everything for artistic expression, from paints to clay, pottery and sculpture can be found. Osho Multiversity offers a variety of trainings and courses, from bodywork to psychotherapeutic courses and meditation. There is a booking desk for individual sessions - and certainly a time will come, when I start to work as a therapist here. However, I would first like to start off with a break from the therapist-existence and figure out who I am without it. Now there is time just for me and I am anxious to know whether something will be missing.
Last but not least, the central place here is the Buddha Hall: it is a huge tent-like structure, where silent and active meditations with dance and movements are offered. Osho mentions how difficult it is for the Western mind to simply become silent and suggests active stages in meditations as preparations to deepen the silence. Silence cannot be obtained through discipline, it happens when we rest inside ourselves, unidentified with all the thoughts and emotions. The hall is open on the sides and only protected by the world's largest mosquito net which is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records. The music of the various meditations can be heard on the campus and its atmosphere is spreading all over the place. Currently, a new pyramid shaped meditation hall with access over a large water-basin is in the final construction phase and will be inaugurated in the coming weeks...the move will certainly be a highlight.

The best thing here is the ease and light heartedness. The days are like love stories with the trees, people and situations. Sometimes, I am totally touched by so many people gathered in one place to celebrate and also to be silent together. When everybody appears freshly showered with white robes for the evening meditation called Evening Meeting – the culmination of the day where all people come together to meditate – its an incredible joy. It looks so pure, all troubles and thoughts of the day seem to be unimportant and make space for a blissful silence. This is what meditation masters have tried to teach their disciples when entering the meditation hall: leave your shoes and mind behind.
The meditation is called The Art of Listening and the first stage is dancing and listening to live music, second stage is listening in silence to Indian music interspersed with moments of complete silence and third stage is listening to a daily changing Discourse of Osho, who always encouraged us, to not only listen to the sentences, but to the gaps of silence between the words. Then a few hundred people sit in meditation and there is pindrop silence, just outside the bamboo sing when moving in the wind...Those are moments when eternity happens! Osho's words are helping me to dive deep into truth, into the being and function as a mirror as well. What if he isn’t telling us what to do, but every word is just to help us to illuminate our inner world, so that we find the shortest way home, which is usually less than one millimetre away? Meanwhile I have heard and read a lot of Osho... I can’t say where exactly the trust came in, but I think it doesn't have much to do with his words. When I recognize something that gets confused by the words, still my appreciation of Osho's enlightenment is not dependent on this. This confusion is also helping me to recognize my innermost truth.

Narayandas is currently responsible for welcoming people to the Evening Meeting and because we know each other from the past, he invited me to help. That means before my first Evening Meeting I was actually sitting in a white robe and welcoming people, including the ones who have already been here for a long time and some of the familiar faces smiled at me so dearly when they saw me sitting there, that I melted completely. Osho spoke about how everybody has his own unique way of being here in the Commune, which was a very liberating welcome. The adventure has already started.

The book is an autobiographical experience report about awakening into a new life and describes the experiences during the years staying as a resident in the Osho International Meditation Resort in India.

Copyright © 2008, Spersa Jutta Kreis, Rev. 30.01.2008