Photo: www.aboutadidam.org/contacts/index2.html

Friends
Many emails have come because of this series. I wish to share some of these with you all and insert my response:

EMAILER:
Very much appreciate the balanced view of your comments on Adi Da Samraj. I have been his devotee for 30 years, and have been a blindly believing cultist at times, and have made most of the other possible mistakes in the guru/devotee relationship as well. However, Adi Da never settled for egoity in any form, even when disguised as devotion. He served beyond human capacity in his absolute commitment to the liberation of his devotees, and all beings. I am profoundly grateful to have been alive while he was.

MY REPLY:

From my own experience of the master-disciple love affair I have with Osho, one passes through blind love to conscious love of a master, just like one might start with what Tom Cruise once famously — and honestly — quipped was “lust then trust” for his love process with Nicole Kidman.

Forgive the vulgar metaphor but I think it is necessary for those who have not yet enjoyed the higher relationship of love of a master. There is a kind of emotional euphoria that one has in initiation with a master. It is a higher initial “lust” — it is a yearning for the higher, a thirst for the light. One sees that light shine radiant in one’s spiritual teacher. If it is true light then this spiritual lust, to be close, to be merged with the teacher becomes “trust” in the process of being “taught” to travel the same road, eventually on one’s own merit by that teacher. As anyone who has loved a master knows, the honeymoon of initiation is followed by the work on one’s self under a master’s compassionate and sometimes-hard instruction. Osho was ever subtle in his spiritual hits and hugs. Love hurts. Higher love hurts deeper, but it is unutterably sweeter than mundane love.

We disciples used to laugh at ourselves and sing the Roberta Flack song “Killing Me Softly With His Song‚Äö?Ñ?? as our theme song:

Strumming my pain with his fingers,
Singing my life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song,
Killing me softly with his song,
Telling my whole life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song…

Here is a second emailer who I felt voiced honest skepticism about his master. The kind that all disciples from time to time might feel:

EMAILER:
Interesting comments. As a full Adi Da retard, who first became interested in spirituality through J. Krishnamurti, I find your comments interesting. But it sort of brings up a few questions, such as how Adi Da and J.K. could be put in the same grouping, in that Adi Da was precisely the kind of authoritarian Guru J.K. spent much of his life railing against, and Adi Da was an outspoken critic of J.K. as¬¨‚Ć “talking school” figure of no real spiritual force.

MY REPLY
I sat before J. Krishnamurti three times, in Ojai, California in the spring of 1981. I had the pleasure of conspiring to create a situation that made him laugh in public — a rare thing! That’s a story for another day.

There’s a long held tradition in the East that teachers publicly criticize each other. If they are authentically enlightened, they do these slams on each other not to get one-upmanship on the other, steal, and convert followers. Real teachers are not politicians. Real teachers criticize each other for us.

They throw us into a reevaluation of why we are here with them. Every enlightened being, it seems, comes to their revelation upon their own unique path and authority. They then perhaps become many unique doorways for us to enter into the same mystery room of eternal life. In their criticism, they better contrast the different doors, not because theirs is any better than others. It is done all for you to find the right “door.”

On the other hand, if masters, including your own, start to kick the doors, know well whether they do so to deepen your understanding of the door you have already chosen in which to pass.

EMAILER:
I wonder what your make of Adi Da’s rampant megalomania and narcissism. It’s certainly not unprecedented in spiritual types, but doesn’t it seem very “old school”, and not the harbinger of some new form of spirituality, but rather the death of something long since discredited?

MY REPLY:

The only “rampant megalomania” we can deeply encounter and transcend is within us. Have you understood your own ego? Can a right choice be embarked until you understand this ego in “you”? Are you saying this about Adi Da after discrediting your own ego? It’s your ego that’s the point. Is it not? Maybe your master was an egomaniac and a narcissist and profoundly blind.

Is that your problem?

What about your blindness? Can you see yet? Isn’t your seeing more important than Adi Da’s blindness, if he was indeed blind?

Our true teachers are a paradox dancing in a mystery. It takes guts to be with them for they may be false, or, they may play false to test our truth, each moment ‚Äö?Ñ?¨ what Gurdjieff called our “living faith” rather than some robotic faith borrowed from others. Osho used to call it our “trust.”

EMAILER:
Likewise, I much appreciated Da’s breaking of taboos when I was in Adidam, but really, is there no discrimination allowed in this?

MY REPLY:
A true master teaches that your discrimination must come from your own inner witnessing consciousness. Whatever they do, even if it is shocking, is done to awaken this inner intelligence. Only false masters have followers.

In the beginning, we are not true to ourselves. Why then do we seek the help of a teacher? Moreover, when we begin the path with a master, we are all to some degree false, because we want to follow them. They even let us worship them according to our falsehood, so that we might come closer and see that falsehood burned away by a conscious process of birthing ourselves with the master as midwife to the mystery.

EMAILER:
Are we really to assume that every Zen teacher whacking his students is actually enlightening them, or are some just assholes who like to take out their frustrations on others?

MY REPLY:
That is the danger. They may be as big an asshole as you or I. That’s why it takes guts to seek a teacher. If we do so to seek ego nourishment, we find egoistic masters. If we are seeking something beyond ego, we may sit at the feet of the egoless.

EMAILER:
Surely, you are aware of the “Dark Zen” scandals of the 1930′s and 40′s, when supposedly enlightened Zen Masters not only approved of the Japanese military conquests of that time, but actually encouraged the slaughter of many innocents, saying that death by the sword was some kind of profound spiritual practice that should be regarded with appropriate awe and respect. So we had zen military officers running around Nanking cutting off the heads of civilians to demonstrate their transcendence of these mundane matter of life and death. I take it you heartily approve?

MY REPLY:
Never assume anything. Who promulgated this “dark Zen” story? Upon what basis do you assume I approve or even know about such a story? A real master teaches us to be spiritual skeptics in the purest sense of that ancient Greek word, which means, “to investigate” and not with prejudice for or against. When a meditator simply witnesses the body, mind and world around him or her, he or she does so without judging. Even the thoughts of judgment that arise are allowed simply to be around one, like a cloud in the sky as the watching continues. Eventually the cloud moves off and there is sky.

EMAILER:
The issue with Da is, sure you gotta break some eggs to make an omelet, but what if all you get are burned omelets? Don’t you at some point have to question the skill of the chef?

MY REPLY:
At some point, will you question the skill of the recipient of the meal? Do you have a good sense of taste in masters? Isn’t that more important? Just what do you “eat” from others?

EMAILER:
In Adi Da’s case, he sure did do a lot of crazy things, and if he’d enlightened a bunch of people, well, that’s probably all be understandable and forgivable. But by his own admission, he’s never enlightened anyone, and hasn’t even produced any mature spiritual practitioners by his own standards, so you gotta ask, what the fuck was the point? Or am I just being bitter and unenlightened to even dare ask these questions?

MY REPLY:
Your question is honest and disciples have asked such questions since the first master taught one. This is the Zen “koan” to meditate upon. Real masters say many things. It is up to the disciple to understand when what is said is a device or provocation or when the words of a master are a frame for something unsaid that you experience.

Do you “know” if anyone was enlightened with Adi Da, or Osho, Or Krishnamurti, or Buddha, or Christ?

Unless “you” are enlightened, how then will you “know”?

Who cares what Adi Da said? What is important is your enlightenment, not his. Bring yourself back to your enlightenment.

Look to what a master says or does that resonates with you beyond your mind, your emotions and your gut.

A real master teaches you to walk without feet. Fly without wings and think without mind.

John Hogue
(24 December 2008)

Osho in Greece, 1986

Friends,
India is on our minds these days, what with Islamo-Fascist terrorist attacks on hotels, a train station, a hospital and a Jewish center in Mumbai. The attacks have prophetic significance. I will soon deliver a comprehensive report on India’s 9/11 terrorist event and where it takes us next.

In Predictions for 2008, I already indicated where “next” might be going nearly a year before it happened. The bloodshed in Mumbai taking place during the American Thanksgiving Holiday is the first step in a new global crisis that I predicted would appear in the year 2008. The terrorists aim to bring on a new Indo-Pakistani border standoff dragging Pakistan down into social, political breakdown and chaos.

A far more significant event took place on Thanksgiving Day holiday that the media, engrossed in the Mumbai terror has almost completely overlooked. American mystic Adi Da Samraj (aka Bubba Free John, or Da Free John) has died on this, America’s unique national-quasi-religious holiday. Thousands of his devotees from across the world are at this moment converging on the Fijian island of Naitamba to partake in a meditation vigil around the lifeless body of their master who had apparently suffered a massive heart attack on 27 November 2008.

Adi Da Samraj (1939-2008)

Many of them hold hope that Adi Da, who they believe is the greatest of yogic masters, will re-enter his lifeless body after three days. To anyone who has trekked on spiritual pilgrimages through India, as I have, you learn of stories of great masters suddenly falling dead and remaining without a pulse for three days before miraculously coming back to life. Sai Baba of Shirdi (1835-1918) is said to have accomplished this feat because of his Yogic powers. Perhaps Adi Da will do the same?

I am sorry to predict that this will not be the case for Adi Da. He is, as the Buddhists say, “gateh gateh, par gateh, pare gateh Bodhisvaha gateh.”

He’s gone, gone, completely gone from his corporeal form.

I have mentioned and quoted Adi Da in Millennium Book of Prophecy and Messiahs: the Visions and Prophecies of the Second Coming. Adi Da shared a vision with G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, J. Krishnamuri and Osho, of the current birth pangs set to release out of the travails of the 21th century a balanced and harmonious New Humanity. The year 2008 marks the first contractions of the century-long travail.

The passing of Adi Da Samraj brings to mind my first-hand experience of the great let-go (Mahasamadhi) of another spiritual master nearly 19 years ago.

I inserted the following account of my experience of Osho’s passing in a commentary for Century 4 Quatrain 31 of Nostradamus’ book “Les Propheties” written back in the 1550s. I wish to present it again here as an offering of condolence and love to all those thousands of Adi Da devotees who are undergoing this most significant moment in a master-disciple relationship: the physical connection becoming an immortal connection.

***

La Lune au plain de nuict sur le haut mont,
Le nouueau sophe d’vn seul cerueau l’a veu:
Par ses disciples estre immortel semond,
Yeux au midy, en seins mains, corps au feu.

The Moon in the middle of the night over the high mountain,
The young sage alone with his mind has seen it.
His disciples invite him to become immortal
His eyes at the middle, his hands (folded) on his breast, his body in the fire.

We see Nostradamus describing the moment of awakening experienced by a young man who is alone at midnight. He has seen it — the truth of being — which transcends the dialectics of words and is beyond any duality.

The prophecy jumps into the future: the sage is no longer alone. He has many disciples who, by opening their hearts and minds, imbibe his existential truths. His body may die, but his essence, his immortality, lives on in his disciples. In some secret manner the sage will dissolve himself into them.

Two possible clues are hiding in the double pun of midy: either it means the sage faces south, in his temple or in meetings with disciples, or the word can mean “meridian” or “middle.” One, therefore, can picture the young sage as a mystic from the East whose eyes move up toward the middle of his brow — his third eye — when he rises into a mystical ecstasy.

Line 4 could contain more complex layers of meaning, some that your author may have witnessed first hand when he was invited to participate in the funeral celebration and ritual cremation of one of this century’s most controversial mystics, Osho (1931-1990).

On the evening of 19 January 1990, the body of Osho was brought into the public meeting hall at the Osho Commune International [situated in Pune, 110 miles east of Mumbai]. Several thousand white-robed followers danced and celebrated in front of the flower-festooned bamboo bier, in the most unusual and happiest funeral I have ever experienced. There were certainly a lot of tears but even in the midst of grief, most of the faces in that hall were filled with a glow of gratitude and love for a man who for them was the most remarkable person they had ever known and loved.

After ten minutes the body was carried off on its final journey to the burning ghats, the simple funerary crematoriums one finds along Indian rivers. Chance would have it that I walked alongside his body all the way to the ghats. I could see him perfectly. Osho didn’t look dead at all. Now I understand the stories about Zen disciples who resisted burning their master’s body until they were sure he was really dead and not just playing a prank. Osho was just lying there. Very transparent, delicate, as if he were glowing from the inside. He was the most alive corpse I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe he was actually dead until one of the pall bearers got a little carried away by the energy of the celebration and his dancing gait made Osho’s head and neck bob about like rubber.

There were between 2,000 to 5,000 thousand people in white [robes] at the ghats. I sat in the first row. I saw the man’s peaceful face for the last time, bathed in the light of electric torches as the final logs and flowers were lowered on to the funeral pyre, to the sounds of musical instruments and thousands of voices singing a stirring devotional song. The verses warmed the cold and humid Indian night air with the words, “Step into the holy fire, walk into the holy flame, oh! Halleluiah! Halleluiah!!” Soon a great flame leapt up from the funeral pyre. Osho’s family was to my right. They were crying like children. His younger brother Amit, in particular, was sobbing with such innocence and beauty that I was carried into his sobs. But even as the tears came I sensed a presence, a heresy, growing inside me. “What are you crying for?” said the heresy (as if it could speak). I felt I was saying goodbye to someone who hadn’t left — couldn’t leave me. For the rest of the night this heresy grew, and along with thousands of others I could not contain my delight.

Let us look again at the quatrain.

Osho claims that his enlightenment took place in a park in Jabalpur, India, when he was alone, sitting under a malshree tree at midnight (in the middle of the night) on 21 March 1953. At the time had just turned 21 years old (the young sage). He was born with five planets in the sign of Capricorn, which in occult astrology is symbolized by a high mountain cutting into the limitless sky. Osho describes enlightenment as a state of “no-mind,” in which one lives in an ultimate state of freedom he also calls blissful aloneness. In the East the mind and the ego are to be witnessed as false phenomenon outside of consciousness until one recognizes the truth of one’s authentic being — which he often referred to as “It.” (The young sage alone with his mind has seen it).

Osho often told his disciples that upon his death “I will dissolve into my people” in what he called the Buddhafield, the next stage in the evolution of human consciousness. This is a collective experience of enlightenment that all equally unique individuals can draw from. The days when people give up their responsibility to saviors are drawing to a close. Rather than the arrival of a Messiah in the 21st century, Osho predicted more of a collective awakening, or impersonal messianic experience. In other words, the Messiah is not coming — he is already hiding under our false egos and programmed behavior. The Messiah is within. Osho once said to Kurt Braun, the author of Rajneeshpuram: the Unwanted Society, that his people would become his autobiography (his disciples will invite him to become immortal).

Dr. Amrito, Osho’s personal physician, once told me that his patient experienced a strange physical phenomenon caused by his enlightenment — he felt constantly on fire inside. Osho was noted for keeping his room temperature at around 40 degrees to keep cool (his body in the fire). I can attest to the fact that he gave his daily discourses facing south in the commune’s meeting hall. He regularly could be seen with his eyes fixed in the middle of his brow in ecstasy. And his body on the funeral bier lay with its hands folded in the fire of the cremation pit.

Does this quatrain refer to the life and death of Osho? The one who knows [Nostradamus] lies buried in the wall of a Salonaise Church.

Quatrain Indexing Date: “Q31″ = 1931. Osho was born on December 11, 1931.

(Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies, pp. 323-325)

***

Stay tuned for more commentary about the Indian’s 9/11. Also tune into History Channel this Sunday evening (11/30/08) to see my appearance in the documentary: The Next Nostradamus.

John Hogue
(28 November 2008)

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