OSHO AND KERALA - STORIES OF BOUNDLESS BOUNDARIES - 1

                          

                                              E X H I L A R A T I O N 

                                     Yes, that’s the word for the moment..

Years ago, when I was reading chapter 23 of ‘Glimpses of a Golden Childhood’   for the first time, I noticed the spiritual significance of that word 'exhilaration'. While speaking about his years living in Gadarwara, Osho said that perhaps Jesus had visited that village. Osho’s words were, “Just the idea that Jesus too had walked those streets was so exhilarating, was such an ecstasy. This is just by the way. I cannot prove it any historical way, whether it is so or not. But if you ask me in confidence, I can whisper in your ear, 'Yes, it is true. But please don't ask me more...” I felt whoever is reading Osho’s words must experience similar exhilaration.

Exhilaration, it seems, is almost a re-living. Transcending the space-time boundaries, one is entering into another dimension. Breaking the time capsule of memories, one is enjoying the freedom of limitlessness of remembering. Like theoretical physicists talk about the wormhole connectivity of parallel universes, we slip into another dimension of universe so suddenly through remembering. Remembrance takes one into the depths of the moment, unlike the memories which take him away from the moment.

I had another reason for my exhilaration: those were the days, whenever I was travelling through Mumbai-Pune highway, I was trying to remember that Osho too had travelled on those roads. Many times, whenever I was walking around the Cross Maidans and other places in Mumbai, where Osho had conducted meditation events in the early days, an ethereal mood would overcome me.

Perhaps all places of pilgrimage emerged as places of exhilaration. The very ambience of the place and some incidents which had connected to the deity, to the master figure, like Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathushtra or Jesus was enough to have a space-time transcendence. This is how such places developed over time into centres for pilgrims and worshippers.

Perhaps, that feeling of deja vu when I entered Buddha hall for the first time twenty years ago, wasn’t it the same as exhilaration? In spite of not seeing Osho alive, those unknown pulsations which immediately transported me into a world,altogether strange yet also known- was it just my imagination? Or just another mind game? I don’t think so.

When we realize or are reminded by the masters that ‘all and everything’ in our living is interconnected, interrelated and interdependent, and we therefore understand this living phenomenon as ‘UNIVERSE’, (physicists use the term 'multiverse’ for an altogether different purpose) and to connect with anything or anyone, in past, present or future, must be as simple as that of turning pages in a book we hold in our hands. Yet it seems there is a knack to it. And if this is so, anything can be the trigger; a fragrance, a moonlit patch of grass, a colour pattern, a certain tone, or a dense silence, an invoking shape .... 

Something that is not connected immediately, can also be an excuse for a ‘connection beyond’- a name, a myth, a place, a person, may be a particular date. That is how, the stories and mythology, become a reason for inquisitiveness, or a channel of connectivity to the beyond. Once that connectivity is established, those tales are left forgotten behind. It is fortunate that, even though the priest & politician mafia had tried hard to pollute the purity of these channels, these ‘exhilaration circuits’, they were not fully successful. Anyone can access these circuits anytime, depending on the intensity of longing they express.

With this as a background, it was merely out of a childlike curiosity, that I started enquiring about Osho's connection with the place where I was born and living - Kerala, the southernmost part of India. It all started when I heard Osho talking about Aubrey Menen. It has been said that it was he (Aubrey Menen) who had introduced Osho to the west. Aubrey Menen was very familiar in Kerala as he was spending his final years in Kerala (Thiruvananthapuram) and died there only. When Osho uttered his name, an unnecessary question which had persisted in me for the last many years - ‘why Osho didn’t visit kerala?’- vanished at once. And I said to myself, ‘Aha!’.

After researching in Osho’s discourses, I could make a long list of names, the Keralaites who Osho has spoken about. Some are legends, some are people who were contemporaries of Osho. Besides, I also searched, whether he had said anything about Kerala.

This was not done out of any patriotic prestige; this is just to remember that how insignificant one’s physicality is; just a remembering, how illusory the space and time we are experiencing is.

AUBREY MENEN

He was born to an Irish mother and a Keralite father, Dr.K.Narayana Menon. Originally, he was Aubrey Menon, but it is said that, to distinguish himself from V.K.Krishna Menon, who was a famous nationalist and political diplomat of those days, he anglicized his name as Menen.

I remember, as soon as Aubrey Menen had returned to Kerala, one of his

famous books - THE SPACE WITHIN THE HEART- had been translated into our language (Malayalam). This was sensational news because of the  contents regard to homosexuality. Being a good satirist ( some called him ‘the wicked satirist’), Menen always carried an aura of controversy around himself. His novel The Ramayana, As Told by Aubrey Menen (1954), was the first banned book of independent India. 

Adding the strangeness to his life, it is said in the literary circle, the day he died (1989 Feb 13), a lot of people were murdered and injured in Kashmir in the name of another book, the ‘Satanic Verses’ by Salman Rushdie, and the next day, it was banned in India.

According to Menen, when he met Osho in Mumbai, ‘THE SPACE WITHIN THE HEART’ was there in Osho's personal library. And Osho had noted a few lines

of that book with his special double dots. It is very clear from his book, THE MYSTICS, that Aubrey Menen was really impressed with Osho and his approach towards meditation. 

Menen had a wide range of experiences from Nazi rally to John F kennedy, from many so called masters to many crowd pulling personalities. But,‘the stillness produced by Rajneesh’, as he describes the experience, was totally new and touching for him. That’s how he chose Osho’s picture as the cover for the book.

In spite of being a journalist, a satirist, a novelist, Menen stands aside from the writers crowd; not because of any unique insight or any remarkable contribution, but because of his intellectual honesty (or what else is intelligence?), his humor sense and sincere observation of the within and without.

HERMANN HESSE

In many situations, Osho has emphasized that ‘Hermann Hesse is one of the Western minds who has come very close to the Eastern way of looking at things. Perhaps there is no other man of his quality who understands the East better.’

And Hesse’s novel SIDDHARTHA has got a place in the ‘Books I had loved’. Osho praises Hesse for a word coined by him -philo-sia- as a translation for the Indian word ‘darshan’.

Whoever going through Hesse’s works, especially Siddhartha, will be wondering about the Indian spiritual elements and ambience he had brought into. Osho has mentioned him as the one who had gone beyond the enlightenment even. It is not accidental that he was enriched by such terms or insights. Hermann Hesse’s childhood was deeply connected with Thalassery - a municipality in the northern part of Kerala where his mother Marie was born; his grandfather, Rev.Dr.Hermann Gundert was a missionary and Indologist who spent most of his life there.

Guru Nitya

Hermann Gundert had come to India, engaged with missionary work as part of the Basal mission. He was a scholar in many Indian languages - Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. When he settled in Thalassery, he had contributed immensely to the Malayalam language. One of the first Malayalam grammar reference books was written entirely by him and so was the first Malayalam - English dictionary.

Hesse most likely spent only a short period in Kerala, as his grandfather became very ill and was forced to return to Germany. When Hesse was fifteen years old, his

grandfather died and a large library of Indian Scriptures and Books was then fully available to him. Around World war I, Hesse made another trip to Kerala, north India, Burma, to re-discover the indian roots in him. It is said that ten years after that journey, he wrote Siddhartha.

I have read only Siddartha, Wandering and a few short stories by Hesse. Reviews say that Demian, Steppenwolf also carry the very indian vibes. In my experience, ‘Wandering’ in particular has a flavour of Kerala; the images Hesse depicts through minimum of words and the passing thoughts he captures so silently, the geography, the green environment- all are very Keralite. When it was translated into Malayalam by well known philosopher, psychologist, author and poet Guru Nitya, he has mentioned clearly

in his foreword, that Hesse brings out the poetic
impressions of his childhood spent in Thalassery.

Another track of his love affair with India was happening through Romain Rolland, who is also a Nobel winner. Romain Rolland had close contact with India and many indian personalities, like Vivekananda, Gandhi, Tagore, Narayana guru and others. Hesse had a very close friendship with him.

Nowadays, Thalassery is an important tourism spot connected with Gundert and Hesse. Many interactive projects are happening between Kerala and German governments in this regard. Hesse's 125th birth anniversary turned into a big festive event, celebrated in Thalassery in November 2001.

A.T. KOVOOR

Abraham Kovoor was born in Thiruvalla, Kerala in 1898. After working briefly in botany at C.M.S college in Kerala, in 1928 he went to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. Koovor taught botany at Jaffna College, Vadukkoddai for 15 years, and later at various other colleges; he retired in 1959 as a teacher at Thurstan College, Colombo. He also practiced hypnotherapy and applied psychology and he was the founder of the Rationalist Movement of India and Sri Lanka. He died in 1978 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

In 1976, Osho was asked a question written by Kovoor in a magazine called The Weekly Current. Osho answered to this question in the series Ecstacy: The Forgotten Language, and a few months later in The First Principle. In both discourses Osho is really fiery, as is his way always.

Kovoor had called Osho crazy, ignoramus, fool, dangerous, voyeur, sexual pervert and absurd. And Osho is explaining the real meaning of those words; the meaning they should have. He reminds Kovoor that all his meanings and ideas are just borrowed, which is not applicable to a man who calls himself ‘a rationalist’. 

One of the major contradictions as a rationalist is Kovoor’s request to the Government of India, to prevent Osho’s work. Osho points out that Kovoor is just a poor atheist who tries to make rationalism another religion. Showing the childishness of his concept of God, Osho says that he must be suffering from senile dementia !

Osho has made a sharp observation about rationalists and atheists -‘From Charvak to Dr.Kovoor, their whole history is the history of impotence. All that is beautiful has come out of the religious people, the theistic people.’ 

Lack of creativity makes the life of atheists utterly boring and dry. When I went through the wiki pages of A.T.Kovoor, the last sentence is really ludicrous. According to the site, there is one ‘spiritual successor’ (even to a rationalist !) - Basava Premanand, founder of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations.

In 2008, one of Kovoor’s books, ‘GOD, DEMON AND SPIRITS’ was in Indian news
again having been translated into punjabi, one politician had imposed an ‘immediate ban’ on that book.

God, demon and spirits…. are they still worthy of a ban?

originally published in: https://www.oshonews.com/2021/04/10/menen-hesse-kavoor/