Written by Prem Shunyo
“Can we celebrate the Ten Thousand Buddhas?”
Osho said to me on more than one occasion that going to America had destroyed his work. I could not understand what he meant by this and used to say to him, “No, at least you are known all over the world now. You have exposed the politicians in every country, and your sannyasins have matured and grown so beautifully.” But I didn’t understand. I didn’t know he was dying of poisoning.
Looking back at the last three years I realize just how much “work” Osho had to do to create the same high energy that we had attained as a group in Poona I.
I remember once when he was resting all day, he got up for lunch, then on returning to bed he said that he had no work. I said, “For someone who is doing no work, you are doing so much. No work! – there are thousands of people out there who feel that you are ‘working’ on them.”
He said, “That’s true.”
In a discourse in Uruguay I heard him say:
“I have seen thousands of my people changing without their knowing; they have changed so drastically, but the change has happened almost underground. Their mind has not been even allowed to take part in it – just from heart to heart.” (Beyond Psychology)
I know this is true because I have seen so many people totally transformed around Osho. Sometimes we do not realize just how much we have changed, because we are living so close to each other – just like a parent seeing the child everyday doesn’t see how he is growing. But it happens sometimes that a distance is created – not a physical distance, but a distance created within myself when I have been in meditation. And in this space I feel to touch the feet of all my fellow travelers.
My diamond days did not only consist of the cutting of the diamond, there were many days that were just sparkling light. The days being close to Osho, doing small things for him, like taking him food, seeing to his laundry, just being near him and watching him in the simple way he lived. The way he lived so totally, silently and gently. To see him do a small thing like fold the hand towel that he kept by his bedside was enough, but these small things elude description and so it is that the most precious diamonds will remain unsaid.
Osho’s sewing room was unique – Gayan, Arpita, Asheesh, Sandhya and Suniti were kept busy constantly, because Osho was not fussy and yet very fussy. Opposites met here when he would be so easy about what he wore that he never even knew in advance what his robes would be, not even the fancy celebration robes. The robe would be put out for him to put on with the matching hat and socks. With the “winged” style, sometimes we would have a disaster, when the fabric would be too stiff to make a wing and it would look extremely weird. There was one dress that stuck out like armor and looked so funny. Osho called Gayan down to his room for her to see what the mistake had been. It was about five minutes to discourse time and I said that I would give him another robe for discourse. “No, no,” he said, chuckling, “Let me wear this one, just to see people’s reactions.” I had to put my foot down on this occasion and insist that he not wear it. I knew people would only laugh, but he didn’t care. On the other hand he enjoyed choosing materials and sometimes would reject a dress after he had chosen the fabric. I said to him, “But you chose the fabric!” he said, “Yes, but I don’t always know…”
He said to me, “Bring out my festival dresses…every day is a celebration.” And then a week later: “Why do you give me these gaudy gold dresses? I like plain dresses.” When he liked a robe it was so beautiful the way he would touch it, and looking pleased would say, “I really like this one, this is simple and yet rich” – and he would do it every time he wore it, as though seeing it for the first time. Most of all he liked to wear black.When Vivek returned from Thailand she changed her name to Nirvano – for a fresh start – and brought Osho a tray filled with imitation gold and diamond watches. he liked these very much and for the next year he continued to receive and then give away watches. We asked everyone going to Bangkok to bring back a watch for Osho, so that he could give it away. Osho loves to give gifts and no matter what he gave, whether it was something
very expensive or something small, it was given with the same love. There was no difference in what or to whom he gave. We made a cupboard for him, filled with gifts, and he chose things for people with such care. He used to open the cupboard door to see what he had to give away and many times he would call me into his bathroom, and there he would be, squatting Indian style, looking into his bathroom cupboard, and one by one he would pick out a shampoo, a cream, and with each one he would say, give this to…and give this to…. Sometimes it would be a few minutes to seven and time to go to Buddha Hall and he would give me twelve or more gifts to give to people. On our way back from Buddha Hall he would ask me if I had given the gifts yet!! With Osho everything is done NOW. There is no other time for him.
Anando and Nirvano decided to build a “walk-way” in the garden for Osho, so that he could take some exercise and see the garden on the days he was not well enough to come to discourse. He agreed, although I suspect he knew he would not use it more than a couple of times. They also had the idea to build an art room for Osho. He used to paint so beautifully years before, but then had become allergic to the smell of the felt pens and inks. An art room was designed, adjoining his bedroom, where he could paint with air brush, inks, pens – everything we could find that did not smell. The room was made of green and white marble and he liked it so much that although it was very very small, he slept in it for nine months, and called it his little hut – but only painted in it once.
One day he called me into his “little hut.” It was monsoon and the rain was falling hard. He said: “This is how Haikus are written:
Meditation Raindrops falling on the roof. They are not poems; they are pictorial” ….and then he lay down and went back to sleep. Plans were made for a swimming pool to be built for Osho, and an exercise room with the latest exercise machines. Everyone was busy exploring every possible method that would help keep Osho anchored in his body while he fought the poisoning for nine years. That was the length of time given
that the damage would last. From Japan we tried potions that were supposed to draw out toxins, and special baths and even a radiation belt that with the right amount of radiation was proved in Japan to cure many illnesses.
Friends from all over the world, from an alchemist in the remote hills in Italy to a famous Japanese scientist, sent medicines and herbs for Osho to try.
But Osho was getting increasingly weak. He stopped discourses in the morning and instead had massage sessions with Anubuddha and Japanese Ananda. He still came to speak to us in the evenings though.
He began to suffer from syncopal episodes, “drop attacks,” suddenly falling to the ground, which raised the possibility of damage to his blood vessels, particularly in the heart. We were constantly worried (it actually terrified me!) that he would fall when no one was there, and would break a bone. And yet we didn’t want to hover around him all the time and intrude on his space.
In March when we celebrated Osho’s thirty-fifth year of enlightenment in the new Buddha Hall that looked like a space ship with its new roof, the series “The Mystic Rose” began. This was the series that gave birth to a new meditation, a new group, and a new salute – each revealing the magic of Osho’s spontaneity. The salute was “Yaa Hoo!” and we greeted Osho when he entered and left the Hall by raising both our arms and shouting in unison “Yaa Hoo!” This really tickled him. Each night when Osho went to sleep I would pull the blankets over him before turning out the lights and creeping out of the room. As I pulled up the blankets he would look at me with laughing eyes and say, “Yaa Hoo! Chetana.” The whole commune had a Zen stick during this series, and the echoes of its force can still be heard. For a few days there had been some giggling and small disturbance in the audience, and one night it happened while Osho was answering a question about silence and let go. The atmosphere was such that it felt as though we were moving higher and higher with him, together as one. It was a discourse in which one almost forgot to breathe, and just as the silence and Osho’s voice were stretched almost beyond the skies – there was an
outbreak of hysterical laughter. Osho continued talking, but the laughter increased and then a few more people started to laugh with the mad laughter. Osho paused and said, “This has gone beyond the joke”…but still the laughter continued. With everyone stopped in mid-flight, the minutes ticked by… Osho looked out into the audience and with great majesty and serenity, he put the clipboard down, stood up, namasted everyone and walked out of Buddha Hall. He said, “Don’t wait for me tomorrow night.”
As he stood up I ran to the door to accompany him in the car back to his room. I felt sick with shock and when we reached the room, I bent down to change his shoes for him. I wanted to apologize, for surely my unconsciousness is no different than anyone else’s – but I couldn’t speak. He said for me to call Neelam, Anando, and his doctor, Amrito. By the time they came Osho was already lying in bed, and he talked to them from his bed for nearly two hours. He said that because we were not able to listen to him, then why should he come to Buddha Hall each night? He was in a lot of pain and he was only living for us; it was just for us that he came to speak each night, and if we couldn’t even listen….
It was freezing cold and dark, except for a small bedside light, and Osho was speaking in a whisper, so that Neelam, Anando and Amrito had to put their heads very close to Osho, in order to hear. I was standing at the foot of the bed watching in such shock that I didn’t even know what I was feeling. I would say to myself, “What are you feeling?” and I didn’t know. I was a blank, I could not register what was happening for me. Osho was saying that he would leave the body, and Neelam was crying. Anando tried joking with Osho, but his sense of humor did not seem to be functioning – a very dangerous sign. Finally, my emotions came like a tidal wave and I began sobbing, “No, you can’t leave. We are not ready. If you leave now, then I’m going with you.” He paused and lifted his head off the pillow to look at me…and I cried, and yet also felt a sense of being in a drama. We were all shivering with cold and crying, when finally Neelam said: “Let us leave Osho to sleep.” Osho used to take a night snack. It changed with how he was feeling, but during these few months
he would take a snack two or three times in the night. It used to help him to sleep if his stomach was full and he told us once that it was something that had started when his grandmother was looking after him and she used to give him sweets. His snack was due at about midnight, and so when he called me I took it in, and while he sat up in the bed, I sat on the floor. I waited…but he did not say anything more about leaving his body. In fact he talked of other things, as though nothing had happened, and so I kept very very quiet, and was not going to remind him.
He came to talk to us the next night and ever since that night the audience was no more an audience, but a gathering of meditators. The quality of our listening changed, and even now, with new people arriving, they slip into that quality like a silk glove.
A few weeks later at the end of each discourse Osho began to take us into a meditation that started with gibberish. Everyone in the hall would let fly the nonsensical garbage of their minds. Osho would then tell us to “Stop – as though totally frozen,” and we sat as still as statues. Then, “Let go” and we collapsed onto the floor. While we lay on the floor Osho gently urged us into the silent spaces that were to become our home. He gave us a taste of our inner world where we would one day reside permanently. And then he would bring us back and ask: “Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?”
The diamond is the hardest substance in the world and I have had some of my hardest days with Osho while he has been trying to hammer my unconscious woman’s conditioning. A conditioning centuries-old; that is so deep that it is difficult to disassociate myself from it and see that it is not me.
You have to understand that by “centuries-old conditioning” I mean that my woman’s mind was programmed by my mother, and hers by her mother, etc. Also you need to, if not accept, then at least play with the idea that our minds are not “new.” Our minds are a collection of thought patterns that have been passed down through the ages. Nobody has ever given women so many opportunities to evolve as individuals and be free from slavery as Osho has. It has always been a matriarchal society around Osho.
I have enjoyed hearing all the praise going to women in Osho’s discourses over the years and have heard men sannyasins moaning that they were born the wrong sex in this life. But it was in the early part of 1988 that Osho gave women a different kind of attention. It seemed that we had received so much compassion because we needed it. Women’s conditioning is harder to break through as we have allowed ourselves to be treated as slaves and deep down women still have a slave mentality. In response to a question from Maneesha when she asked about disciples receiving special treatment, he said:
“…it is not a question, Maneesha, that special treatment means ‘moving into Lao Tzu (Osho’s house) and having private, daily chats with the Master.’ If you are aware of what you are asking…do you see your jealousy? Do you see your woman?”
He went on to explain that people come to see him only for their work. That not everybody in the commune could do the same work. Somebody had to take his food, somebody had to take notes and do his secretarial work. He explained why Anando was suited to her work, and Maneesha had her work. He went on to say:
“The first commune was destroyed because of women’s jealousies. They were fighting continuously. The second commune was destroyed because of women’s jealousies. And this is the third commune – and the last, because I am getting tired. Once in a while I think perhaps Buddha was right not to allow any woman in his commune for twenty years. I am not in favor of him: I am the first who has allowed men and women the same, equal opportunity for enlightenment. But I have burnt my fingers twice, and it has always been the jealousy of the women.
“Still, I am a stubborn person. After two communes, immense effort wasted, I have started a third commune, but I have not created any difference – women are still running it. I want women here in this commune not to behave like women. But small jealousies….” (Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen)
I was also to get a shock one evening sitting in discourse, when Osho said:
“…This very morning, Devageet was working on my teeth. For the first time in years, when I left his dentist’s chair, I asked him, ‘Are you satisfied?’ …Because I could see his dissatisfaction – that he has not been able to do the work he wanted to do on my teeth.
“In the evening I told him to finish it, because who knows about tomorrow? I may not be here, then fixing my teeth will be absolutely absurd. He did try his best but I am a master who is teaching everybody to be present at every moment. And even people who are close to me go on asking me, ‘Do you love me Bhagwan?’
“I cannot do otherwise. It is not a question of your qualities, my love is unconditional. But I can see the poverty of the human heart. It goes on asking, ‘Am I needed?’ And unless you are free from the desire to be needed, you will never know freedom, you will never know love and you will never know truth.
“Because of this anecdote, I have to report to you: Chetana works hard continuously, taking every care for my well-being, but she still goes on asking, ‘Do you love me?’ I am on the dentist’s chair under maximum gas and she is asking, ‘Do you love me?’ And because I had promised my dentist that ‘I will not talk…’ but it is impossible.
“Because I did not say ‘I love you’ she must have become so disturbed that she forgot to put the towel in my bathroom. I had to take a bath without a towel. Later on, when I asked her, she said, ‘I am sorry.’
“But it is not only her situation. It is almost everybody’s situation. And my whole teaching is that you have to be respectful to yourself. It is falling from dignity to ask this – and particularly from a master whose love is already being given to you. Why be a beggar? My effort here is to make emperors of you.
“The day, the moment you will understand the tremendous glory of being present, nothing is needed. You are enough. Out of that arises the great joy, ‘Aha! My god! I have been here and was looking everywhere else.'”
I had not consciously demanded “Do you love me?” but the Master works on the unconscious. He brings unconscious desires to the surface because
once seen and understood then they have no influence on the person any more.
This incident had evolved out of a series of dental sessions in which Osho had been working on my unconsciousness, while Devageet had been working on his teeth.
While Devageet would be hovering over Osho’s mouth, dental tools poised, Osho would be talking the hind leg off a donkey. At a typical session would be Amrito, Devageet, Nitty, Anando sitting on a stool on Osho’s right, where she would be taking notes, and me sitting on his left, next to Nitty. Osho would occasionally bring out his hands from under the blanket with which we covered him, and take a swipe at Nitty, or Ashu, who sometimes assisted Devageet. Or he would hold one of their hands, making it very difficult for them to work. Anando would have the buttons on her dress pulled, or her throat and heart chakras tapped. It was a lot of fun, except I was usually without my sense of humor during these sessions. The monologue would go like this:
Osho: “I can hear your thoughts…. Chetana, this is not it…. Chetana, be a witness…. Where is my Anando? (takes hold of Anando’s hand)…. Chetana has to be in her place. This is not her hand…. I don’t want to interfere with anybody’s freedom…. Chetana you are forcing me to speak. I know you more than you know yourself. Drop the need to be wanted. I can see the difference in your hand (He is holding my hand)…. Chetana be silent, be a watcher…. Leave my hand! (He drops it abruptly and puts it back under the blanket.) …Be there Chetana. Just be there. Yes, with your tears. I am hard, but what I can do? I have to be hard on myself. Just be without jealousy…Devageet! (Yes Osho) Chetana is too much harassing…. Can’t you just be – that’s my whole teaching – just BE. (wagging his finger at me!) …Chetana, your function is just to be…. Where is Chetana? Just hold my hand otherwise you will be lost. I say sometimes hard things which I would not normally say. Don’t take offense, just meditate over it…. Chetana, you can go and do your work if you want. Any excuse is good for the unconscious…. I can hear a sob and also the door open and close…. I want you to be here once and for all. But don’t ask it again and again. Be silent and be here…. I am
cruel, I don’t care about consequences…. If you ask again Chetana… No! Chetana is weeping, but weeping is not to help. Do you see my tears for Chetana? Asking to be wanted, that is what she has to drop…. What a drama on a small stage, where except me, nobody is aware…. Laughter in an empty theater…. Women are difficult as far as understanding is concerned…. What a difficult task to be a master…. Take note, Anando, that Chetana is still wanting, and she has everything that I can give…. (Then he would start searching for the button on Anando’s dress), saying: Searching for the button… What happened to your button? Take note that I tried to find the button but I could not. It has to be there. You are hiding…. Chetana, I can hear your mind. The eternal need to be needed. I want everybody to be here out of love not out of need………..”
Sessions like this would last for hours and while his teeth were undergoing a series of treatments, maybe it would take weeks. I was not sleeping well during this period because part of Osho’s program was having a snack about every two hours through the night. He would call me, I would take him the snack, be there while he ate it, and then I took the dishes back to the kitchen. By the time I went back to bed, and slept for about an hour, it was time for the next snack. For about ten weeks I didn’t sleep more than two hours at a time. I guess, what is known as R.E.M. sleep was disturbed. The necessity to dream seemed to be so strong that dreaming was happening to me even before I was asleep. I have heard Osho say that if a man sleeps eight hours, then six hours will be dream sleep.
I was amazed to see what a mess my unconscious was in. Days, months, can go by and life seems easy and everything is fine, and then suddenly I had the opportunity to see what was going on at night and I realized that my mind is totally mad! Normally a person is not aware of all the dreams, but if they are continually woken up in the middle of a dream, then they can see it, and it’s just an amazing mess of release and unburdening of the unconscious.
As this whole process got disturbed, then I began to get a bit delicate. I was “touchy” to say the least. Looking back it seems impossible that I should have been hooked so easily, but Osho knows
exactly where our buttons are and when to press them. It also seems impossible that, sadly, I could not understand what he was trying to do. My ego, my mind and its workings, was so transparent, so out there – how come I couldn’t see through it?
I was angry, crying and disturbed and asked Osho why he had been shouting at me. He said that he had been telling me to sit silently and be a witness to myself and what is happening around me – and it was not enough for me. It was not enough for me to just sit silently. He said he was not shouting at me, but shouting at my unconscious. Couldn’t I see that it is my conditioning, my mind that is ruling me? He said I was comparing myself with Anando thinking that she was in a better position than me. He said that Anando was just doing her work – and I should do mine. But my conditioning was saying that she is getting more. “Can’t you see?” He said.
He went on to say that he thought that this was why Buddha never allowed women to be initiated. That women had been treated as commodities and they supported it. Women want to be needed and think that if they are not needed then someone else will be used in their place and they will be useless. He said that the conditioning of wanting to be needed is so great, so deep, that it was not possible to see it for yourself. Someone had to show it to you. To be needy is to be without dignity. “It is humiliating. Stand alone.” He said, “Be enough unto yourself.”
Osho had just finished his dinner while this conversation was happening. Anando and I were sitting on the floor and Osho was at his dining room table. I looked at him and saw how tired he was, what a hopeless and thankless task He seemed to be doing. He was trying to help me to wake up and I was getting angry with him. I looked at him, slightly bent at the shoulders with weariness, what did he gain from trying to help me? Nothing! He looked ancient – an ancient seer with an impossible mission. His compassion is endless, his patience and love is as vast as the sky. I cried and touched his feet.
A month passed and Osho’s health took another turn for the worse. So many times he was to say to me that he could not believe that the United States government could be so cruel.
“Why they didn’t just kill me?” He said.
The pain was increasing in his joints, especially the right shoulder and both arms. “My arms feel crippled.” He was very wobbly when he walked and he began to spend more time in bed. His days were becoming shorter and shorter. One day he got up at 5.00 a.m., had taken a bath and then breakfast, and while walking back to the bedroom from his dining room he looked at the clock on my table and said “Oh! 7.00 a.m. My day is finished. Another day!” It was seven in the morning, and for him it was the end of another day. He used to laugh that we called his meals, breakfast, lunch, supper, because in fact they were only snacks and he did not know what time of day it was unless we gave the snack a name.
He began to sleep in the daytime more often, so he did not do secretarial work with Neelam and Anando as before. Anando, and sometimes Neelam, would come and talk to him while he was eating lunch or supper. He dictated a book to Anando during his meal times. A book that covers his whole philosophy, The Philosia of Existence: The World of Osho. It was an intimate scene, Osho sitting at the small table, under which he always crossed his feet, resting on the table leg or a cushion, and Anando and Neelam sitting on the floor with their notepads and letters. One wall of the dining room was entirely glass, and it looked out onto a rose garden that was illuminated at night.
It was on one of these occasions that Osho said, “Chetana can write a book,” and he gave me the title, My Diamond Days with Bhagwan, subtitled, “The New Diamond Sutra.” I told him that when I had first become a sannyasin I wrote to him saying that I would give him a diamond, and at the time I was puzzled why I made such a promise, because I knew I would never have the money to give him a diamond. I didn’t realize when he gave me the book to write what a gift he was giving me, and so I was never able to thank him.
He didn’t give me any guidelines for the book, nor, as time went by, did he even enquire if I had started writing. He mentioned Diamond Days only once to me and that was a mysterious happening. It was in August 1988 and Osho called me on the beeper system. It was the middle of the night, and I hurried down the corridor with the worrying thought
that he may be having an asthma attack. I unlocked the door, and saw that he was sitting up in the bed wide awake, the room in darkness except for a small bedside light. The cold air and minty fragrance of the room woke me up. “Bring a notepad,” he said, “I have something for your book.” I returned with a notepad and pen and sat on the side of his bed where he could observe what I was writing. He dictated the following to me, and said for me to write the names in a circle.
He made sure I had got it right and then lay down and went back to sleep. I never queried it with him, or even mentioned the list to him. I simply put it in my file and that was that. I never told anyone about it, and have always considered it to be “for the book.” It is interesting to see that although he spoke of twelve people, He gave me thirteen names. But then, Nirvano’s name was to be dropped although that was not known at the time.
In the center of the circle is ‘Bhagwan’, and going around the circle clockwise the names are: Jayesh, Avribhava, Nitty (Nityamo), Nirvano, Kavisha, Maneesha, Devageet, Neelam, David, Chetana, Hasya, Anando, Amrito.
He said: “Twelve can be named. The thirteenth remains unnamed. This has been my secret group. The secret group of thirteen. In the middle the unknown Bhagwan.”
It was eight months later that Osho formed the Inner Circle of which there are twenty-one members. The above “secret group” was never given a function to perform by Osho, they simply remain what they are – a secret group!
After each time Osho was sick, when he came back to give discourses he looked very frail, and as though he had moved light years away from us. But as he started talking he gradually became stronger. It was noticeable how his voice became more powerful and after a couple of days he looked quite different. He always said that talking to us keeps him in the body, and the day he stops talking, then he will not live much after that. He looked so strong when he was talking that it was difficult to believe that he was sick, but that was the only time in the
day when he had any strength. He was saving all his strength to come and talk to us.
I had never heard Osho mention anything he said in discourse after it was over, as though the things he said came out of the blue, and were not retained in his memory. But there was one evening after a talk when he said to me that didn’t I think he had put a certain point over very clearly? The way he emphasized it made me take a second look, and it was:
“On the stage it is all acting.
“On the stage it is all simply drama.
“Behind the stage it is pure silence.
“Nothingness, rest, relaxation.
“Everything has moved to total tranquility.”
He began talking on Zen but it was more as though he was preparing an atmosphere of silence than talking. He would pause and say “…This Silence…” almost pointing to it, or pause and draw our attention to the sounds around us – the creaking of the tall bamboos; the sound of rain, the whine of the wind amongst falling leaves: “Listen…” he would say, and a blanket of silence would descend on Buddha Hall.
I could never know whether Osho was joking, or using a situation as a device, or whether things really were as they appeared. For instance, ghosts: Osho had said many times in discourses that there are no such thing as ghosts, they are only man’s fear. He also knew that I was intrigued by the idea of ghosts and I even told him once that I had met only friendly ghosts and was not afraid of them. In any situation around Osho the only way I could be with it was to take it absolutely sincerely because that is how he was. On the subject of spirits and ghosts, he said that he doesn’t mind these spirits as long as they don’t disturb his sleep. He called me on several occasions and asked if someone had been into his room.
On one occasion, he called Anando in and told her that he saw a figure walk through the door, cross the room in front of his bed and go and stand behind his chair, before coming back across the room and try to touch his feet, and then walked through the door again. He said he had been
sleeping peacefully, and this spirit had disturbed his sleep. He wasn’t sure if it was a dead spirit or someone with a deep longing to be with him. He thought it might have been me, as she walked like me and her body was like mine. I had actually been sleeping while this spirit was walking through doors. It had been a particularly nourishing sleep, one of those times when one is half asleep and half awake, but totally rested. So when Anando told me, I thought well, who knows, maybe I did. Maybe my longing was satisfied during my body’s rest and that’s why the sleep had been so nourishing.
Osho’s room is behind a small corridor and the access to that corridor is a double glass door, which is usually kept locked, and his room is always locked. One end of the small corridor is Osho’s room and the other end is a room where I would sometimes stay when I was helping to take care of him. A few times he has called me into his room and said that he has heard someone knocking on the door. This did not seem possible, because the doors had been locked and no one could get into the corridor. It has been happening for a couple of years, though not often, except lately. It first happened when Nirvano was here and he told her someone had been knocking on his door and to find out who it was. This was at 2.00 a.m. She went around to everyone’s room in the house to ask if we had been up and knocking on Osho’s door. Nobody had, and the guards at the gate were not aware that anyone else had entered the house. It happened many times since but the mystery was never solved.
Four days before Osho’s birthday celebration on December 11th 1988, he became very sick. Nirvano and Amrito were taking care of him and I was doing his laundry in a room just outside his. The house felt deathly quiet and dark. I knew he was very sick, but I did not know why, or what was wrong. Then came a week when I received no laundry from him at all and I knew that he must not be moving from the bed, not taking a bath, and not changing his clothes. Osho never wanted people to know when he was very sick, because then people worry and get depressed and the whole energy in the ashram goes down and it does not help anybody. He almost died during these few weeks.